February 25, 2009 at 8:40 A.M. Access is still obstructed to my MSN Group, Critique. I cannot prevent or repair damage to my writings at that location at this time. However, I will continue to struggle to return to that location.
Jim Holt, "Death: Bad?," The New York Times, Sunday Book Review, February 15, 2009, p. 27.
Simon Critchley, The Book of Dead Philosophers (New York: Vintage, 2009).
This Sunday Jim Holt decided to review one of the books written by a New School Continental theorist in mitigation of his description of us "weird" phenomenological-hermeneutic types as constituting a mere "sprinkling" among intellectuals -- adding to the flavor of New York philosophy, perhaps -- even as we are, presumably, far from important to the philosophical conversation of our culture. Science-based, analytical and pragmatist philosophy is what matters, not that fuzzy Continental stuff. Right, Jim?
Being one of those "sprinkles," I am sure that phenomenology and hermeneutics are vitally important developments in Western thought. Nobody has counted lately, but most people in the world studying philosophy and working on these highly difficult theoretical challenges -- including quite a few scholars pursuing fusion approaches with Chinese philosophy -- are probably best placed in one of the traditions associated with Continental philosophy.
People like me are silenced, suppressed, censored, denied publication opportunities in order for "Jim Holt" to appear in the pages of America's premier newspaper and inform us, drum roll please:
"The idea that death is not such a bad thing may be liberating, but is it true? Ancient philosophers tended to think so, and Critchley (along with Hume) finds their attitude congenial. He writes, 'The philosopher looks death in the face and has the strength to say that it is nothing.' ..."
The issue, Jim, is not so much whether death is "nothing" as whether life is "something." My own humble article might be entitled: "Life: Good?"
There are several "difficulties" (as philosophers say) to be noticed right away. For example, exactly whose death are we talking about here? Jim Holt's death may result in bearable pain for most of us. On the other hand, our own deaths or the deaths of our loved-ones are exceedingly worrisome and to be avoided. There is a remarkable consensus on this point on the part of philosophers. Paradoxically, however, there is also a wealth of writing by philosophers and others suggesting that a life deprived of meaning and without purpose is a kind of living death. Such lives are not worth living.
"A major purpose of these meditations is to investigate what the important things are -- not in preparation for dying but to advance living. It is undeniably important to avoid the worst fates -- not to be paralyzed and comatose for the preponderance of one's life, not to be forced to witness those you love being tortured, and so on -- but I mean to refer to things, activities, and ways of being that are positive and good. As for what typically goes on psychologists' lists of what constitutes 'positive mental health' -- things such as being healthy and confident, having self-esteem, being adaptable, ["adjust!"] caring -- we might specify our subject by supposing such traits already are present. The question then becomes: How should one live who has reached the ample launching pad these traits provide?"
Robert Nozick, "Dying," in The Examined Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), p. 22. (Nozick was terminally ill when he wrote these words.)
How indeed. For some very strange persons this need for purpose and meaning requires an intense, life-altering engagement with the great questions in philosophy, beginning very early in life, certainly long before any alleged "middle-aged morbidness" can explain our peculiar intellectual habits. We need freedom and love. Loss of these qualities is loss of humanity. Worse, the sense that life has meaning and purpose -- if it arrives at all -- usually brings with it the unwelcome knowledge that this purpose and meaning reveal for what (or whom) the thinker will die. ("Why Philosophy is for Everybody" and "Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
The meaning of death is concerned with the reasons why we live. Hedonists and epicureans do not usualy do well at the hour of their deaths. This is no doubt because death is rarely a pleasure. The exception may be one's third visit to the ice capades -- or a single trip to the Republican National Convention -- which may well make death a welcome respite from the agony of listening to more speeches opposing gun control.
Death is acceptable as the realization of one's purpose or the culmination of a life well-lived for others, for persons we love, or fighting for a cause in which we believe -- like the American Constitution's promise of freedom, equality and dignity for every human being. This is a promise which is increasingly unfulfilled. However, it remains the greatest promise in world politics and a responsibility that we share as Americans. Every human being matters under the vision of the Constitution. I still believe that promise and in the document as well as the tradition which contains it. No one who dies for that dream-like and increasingly distant vision will ever die in vain.
That sounds "corny" or "old fashioned" to many people today who are into the whole nihilism thing in their East Side apartments and Chelsea art galleries -- even in the offices of The New York Times, perhaps -- where this so-called wisdom is no doubt often expressed. We are told that "there is no truth" or that "truth is relative." Jim Holt may have expressed such opinions in the past, even as he now speaks of or alludes to the "truth" concerning "death being nothing." Jim Holt is an ironist. We are delighted to benefit from the thoughts of Jim Holt, philosopher. ("Incoherence in the New York Times.")
George Santayana did not attend Columbia University, of course, nor did he write for the Times. Somehow, this unusual Latino -- who actually wrote his texts himself, although people found this hard to believe and I know the outrage Santayana must have felt at this response to his work -- expresses melancholy concerning mortality and loss, also in meditating upon optimism and stoicism in the twentieth century:
" ... you talk about yourself as inspecting the universal joke of things from the point of view of the grave, and wondering what is the use of taking life in the unsophisticated and primitive way you attribute to me. At the same time you blame yourself for lack of energy and give me your paternal blessing, trusting my illusions may not be shaken too rudely. But I should like to know how the path of least resistance has led you to the point of view of the grave, (pun apart) which according to my naive notion of things lies decidely in the direction of the greatest resistance. What you call the point of view of the grave" -- also, Mr. Holt's review for that matter! -- "is what I should call the point of view of the easy chair. From that [perspective,] the universal joke is indeed very funny. But a man in his grave is not only apathetic, but also invulnerable. That is what you forget. Your dead man is not merely amused, he is also brave, and if his having nothing to gain makes him impartial, his having nothing to lose makes him free. ... "
Santayana offers some witty digs at his school friend's "pose," then concludes:
" ... the point of view of the grave is not to be attained by you or me every time we happen not to want anything in particular. It is not attained except by renunciation. Pleasure must cease to attract and pain to repel, and this you will confess, is no easy matter. But meantime, I beg of you, remember that the joke of things is one at our expense. It is very funny, but it is exceedingly unpleasant."
Daniel Cory, ed., Letters of George Santayana (New York: Scribner's, 1955), pp. 14-15 (Letter to Ward Henry Abbott dated Jan. 16, 1887, posted from Berlin).
Santayana's life-long commitment to Spinoza and Aristotle, Thomism and (Santayana would deny this) Kant, certainly allowed for his serenity at the hour of his own death: "Are you in difficulties, Professor?" Santayana's secretary and friend, Daniel Cory, asked the Spanish philosopher this question as Santayana was dying in Rome.
"Yes, my friend," Santayana answered. "But the difficulties are entirely physical. There are no spiritual difficulties whatsoever."
Death is a familiar companion. Every day and night, she is with us. Death is a seductress. In the end, we all surrender to her charms, some more willingly than others. Her sister is Life. They quarrell over their favorites all the time. Death takes the living; life restores the cycle, eternally, by providing new organisms to replace the old and exhausted ones. Love (life) and Death are engaged in a never-ending waltz. ("Faust in Mahattan.")
Nothing is as horrifying as eternal life in this earthly condition. Think of the centuries of boredom and loss of meaning, the instant pointlessness of everything, if one might do "it" tomorrow, then who cares about doing "it" today? It is the loss of all our tomorrows (MacBeth) that makes our todays so priceless -- the loss of those I love is what gives infinite meaning to every minute with them and bottomless pain to their unwanted absence or loss in my life. "Out brief candle ..." To add mystery to that loss in the form of unexplained absences (not to know the whereabouts of persons you love) is to describe the lowest circle of Dante's Inferno.
To choose even such indescribable pain as the absence of a deeply loved person because this pain is inextricable from one's love for that person is to describe the ultimate defeat of death -- not in nature, but in the realm of human meanings where we must face the question of whether death is "good" or "bad." My answer to this question will depend on those who are near to me when I live my response by (I hope) affirming my choices as I lay dying.
