The Breath of Life and Death

More often than not, philosophy happens in situations. On occasion, some situations feel as if the ground beneath us has shattered, leaving us feeling ambushed, speechless, and astonished. We begin to speak of the situation only to find that there are no words to say what we want, even though what we see, think, and feel is real to us. Witnessing the death of my mentor, Louise, felt as if the ground beneath my feet had broken—as if through her dying, something about my living suddenly became undone. In reflecting on Louise’s death, I found myself thinking about her life in particular, and life and living more generally. In reflecting on Louise’s life, I found myself thinking about when, why, where, and how she died, and what it might be like when it is my turn to die. I could not think of her death apart from her life, or her life apart from her death. In my grieving, I was puzzled by my inability to separate death from life, not only because I felt that I ought to be able to separate the two, but also because I sensed something claiming my interpretation of her death at the same time that I was beginning to make sense of it. To quote Judith Butler’s response to Derrida’s death, “I did not seize upon it; it seize[d] upon me” (2005b, 34).

I was also puzzled by the view of others that Louise was no longer Louise shortly after she died. They seemed to believe that, upon dying, Louise had vacated the premises of her body. Religious and philosophical discourses contributed to this interpretation, among which I recognized the influence of Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine. I expected such discourses to surface, and thus was not surprised by this interpretation of the dead body. Yet I was, and continue to be, puzzled by the fact that each time I remember Louise, I cannot do so without reimagining her body. I have to reimagine her body to remember what and who Louise was while still alive. I also have to reimagine her dying body, and especially the dead body I was confronted with shortly after she died. However, the problem I respond to in this essay does not have to do with the confrontation. Rather, I want to address the ineffability of the dying body. I mean two things by this: (a) the body is literally not speaking, in the way a living body might be expected to speak, and (b) the way we think of the dying body renders it and us speechless, and makes it difficult to account for outside medical and psychological paradigms. The dying body is missing, silenced, or taken for granted in what appears to be a very abstract, individualistic, and disembodied way of theorizing death and dying in much of Western thinking. Something about the dying body remains out of language’s reach—it is unsayable.

The abstract, individualistic, and disembodied way of theorizing death and dying is nothing new. Since the time of Hellenistic philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, the topic of death has remained on the margins in contemporary Western philosophy (May). I do not want to digress by discussing philosophical views of death according to ancient philosophers, even though ideas about physicalism and dualism are relevant to this day (Kagan). Instead, I want to situate my problem of the dying body by briefly discussing Martin Heidegger’s work in Being and Time. I want to do this for three reasons. First, in part 1 of the second division of Being and Time, Heidegger offers the most sustained reflection on death in contemporary philosophy. Other philosophers have written on death, some of whom I discuss in this essay. Yet none has been as influential as Heidegger. Second, while Heidegger’s explanation is capacious, his approach to understanding death is abstract, individualistic, and above all disembodied. Third, it is not with the shadow of Plato’s thinking that I struggle most in this essay. Rather, I struggle with Heidegger’s reflection on death as absolutely singular. This struggle...