The Significance of Death for the Experience of Body and World in Human Existence

Abstract

An ancient definition of philosophy understands it as learning to die, indeed, as a striving toward death. Death is also understood as the separation of body and soul. This interpretation of death, soul and life, powerful ever since, shows that particular views of death, man, his body and his soul are inseparably joined: still further, that the issue of death, with all its implications and consequences, decides not merely incidentally, but intrinsically, what it means to exist as body. For whether it is the body, or the entire human being which dies, whether or not I or something of me is immortal, is important not only for dying itself, for the moment of death, but affects the course of our existence as a whole, our relation to ourselves, to our fellow human beings, and to the world. Whether or not death in the final analysis matters, or affects our existence crucially, whether it be conceived as “natural” or as fundamentally contradictory to our entire existence, is also of incalculable significance for a philosophically directed inquiry into body and soul.

Throughout, “body”, “bodily”, “bodilyness” will be used to translate Leib, leibhaftig, and Leibhaftigkeit respectively, all of which refer to the live body. Wherever Körper or related words are employed in the original, reference will be made to the “material” or “physical” body.