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9 Death and the End of Life What is strange in finding here on earth the union for which Plotinus yearned? Unity expresses itself here in terms of sun and sea. The heart feels it through a certain taste of flesh which constitutes its bitterness and greatness. I learn that there is no superhuman happiness, no eternity outside the curve of the days. These paltry and essential goods, these relative truths, are the only ones that can move me. —Albert Camus, “Summer in Algeria” “Eternity is a terrible thought,” says Rosencrantz in Tom Stoppard’s alternative view on Hamlet, “I mean, where’s it going to end?” And Guildenstern adds a little later, “Death followed by eternity . . . the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.”1 Death, as they say, is forever, but if the same were true of life—if one could live a life without end—would this be any less terrible? Some philosophers have argued that life in the absence of death would indeed be terrible—it would be a life, according to Bernard Williams, of unendurable boredom.2 I think there is something important, and right, about this view. If it is flawed, it is only so, I will argue, insofar as it does not give enough weight to the importance of death in giving shape and significance to life.3 It is not merely that a life without end would be a life of tedium—of endless ennui—but that to have a life, and this is not the same as merely to live, is indeed to be capable of death.4 The strong thesis, according to which death and life are indeed necessarily connected, and not in any merely “psychological” fashion, is a central theme in Heidegger’s work, both early and late. It is present in Being and Time, as well as in essays such as “Building Dwelling Thinking.” It has sometimes appeared obscure, however, as to why death should be so important here—why should it be the case, not merely that a life without death would be empty, but that to live a life without death would not even be to have a life? Why could it not be possible to live, and not merely to live, but to have a life, and yet not die? Part of the answer is given in the 178 Chapter 9 understanding of death as a limit, and more specifically, as an end—as the end of life, and so as that “toward which” our lives are lived. “End is place,” Heidegger tells us in “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,”5 and the idea of end that appears here applies no less to death in its relation to life than to the understanding of philosophy and its history.6 If death is the end of life, then it is also that which establishes the place of life, its topos, and to have a life is for one’s life to be “placed” in just such a way.7 The exploration of these issues also has a useful consequence for the understanding of Heidegger’s topological mode of thinking, providing a possible way of integrating some key elements of the early thinking with elements of the later. That is to say, it enables us to see how the focus on the unitary constitution of human life in the early thought—in Being and Time, the unity of Dasein as based in the unity of temporality—might itself be necessarily embedded in the more fundamental unity of place that is the focus of the later thinking.8 Much of the discussion will thus follow a line of thinking that draws on elements consistent with Heidegger’s approach in his 1927 work, and that thereby focuses more strongly on temporality than I have elsewhere, but which gradually moves to a broader and more explicitly topological view. Living and Having a Life What do I mean by distinguishing mere living from the having of a life? As a characteristic of the living, life is ubiquitous. We find it exemplified in all things that are capable of sustaining themselves in existence, of nourishing themselves, of reproducing themselves. But in the sense that I intend it here, the having of a life is something much more specific—rather than mere continued, self-sustaining existence, the having of a life involves having a sense (even if poorly articulated) of one’s life...

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