An Ontological Study of Death: From Hegel to Heidegger

Introduction: Philosophical, Historical, and Pathological Models of Death

1 Introduction Philosophical, Historical, and Pathological Models of Death The decision to be without being is possibility itself: the possibility of death. Three systems of thought—Hegel’s, Nietzsche’s, Heidegger’s—which attempt to account for this decision and which therefore seem, however much they may oppose each other, to shed the greatest light on the destiny of modern man, are all attempts at making death possible. —Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature Hölderlin’s Empedocles, reaching, by voluntary steps, the very edge of Etna, is the death of the last mediator between mortals and Olympus, the end of the infinite on earth, the flame returning to its native fire, leaving as its sole remaining trace that which had precisely to be abolished by his death: the beautiful, enclosed form of individuality. —Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic The idealist attempt to recover death was not originally the feat of philosophers but that of poets like Rilke. —Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness In his major philosophical work from 1943, Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre outlines two paradigms of death based on the image of a borderline.As Sartre points out, every boundary is a Janus bifrons: it simultaneously looks in both directions, not only dividing space into two separate domains but also forming part of that which it demarcates. Whereas metaphysics and realist theories have long regarded death as a deferred reality “on the other side of ‘the wall,’” the ontological or existential outlook interprets death as “an event of human life” (BN 680). This difference in perception—and ultimately of conception— is summed up as follows: “Whether it [death/boundary] is thought of as adhering to the nothingness of being which limits the process considered or whether on the contrary it is revealed as adhesive to the series which it terminates, in either case it is a being which belongs to an existent process and which in a certain way constitutes the meaning of the process” (BN 680). Death can thus be understood in one of two ways: either as a constituent aspect of nonbeing or as an integral phenomenon of life. The former standpoint posits death as the transition to a nonhuman form of reality, whether physical corruption or metaphysical transcendence. In either case, our finality remains an experience that eludes our cognitive and empirical grasp and that furthermore turns us into another kind of existent, something utterly different from what we have been all along. According to the contrasting ontological view, death forms an inseparable part of our being and “influences [our] entire life by a reverse flow” (BN 681).As a result of this inverted perspective, death becomes interiorized, humanized, and individualized. Sartre states that the first attempts to “recover” death, that is to incorporate it into existence, stem from literary figures like Rainer Maria Rilke and André Malraux, while it was only later that Heidegger put his philosophical stamp on this humanization of mortality (see BN 681–82). Sartre’s ensuing critique of Heidegger in Being and Nothingness is not of central concern here; nor do I intend to dispute his claim about the progenitors of what he conceives as a modern recovery of death. More important than the issue of his judgment about individual authors and their specific viewpoints is his overall dualistic model, which draws a visual distinction between two main concepts of human finitude.As we will see throughout the course of this study, an inherent tension exists between metaphysical attitudes toward death and the ontological holism adopted by a host of German poets and philosophers that include but also predate Rilke and Heidegger.To Sartre’s list of key play2 An Ontological Study of Death ers in this ontologization of death one would have to add, following the example of Blanchot and Foucault in the opening quotations above: Hegel, Hölderlin, and Nietzsche. This study examines the ontological turn in conceptions of death as manifested in German literature and philosophy from the late eighteenth to early twentieth century. In more precise terms, I argue that the dialectical thinking of Hegel and Hölderlin erases the metaphysical paradigm of death and sets the stage for the existential interpretations advanced by Nietzsche, Rilke, and Heidegger.All five of these philosophers and poets seek to integrate the traditional realm of nonbeing into the heart of existence. Moreover, throughout this development from the dialectical to...