tfilm (02/18/83)
RE: Death/Suicide Nice of J/S to open a discussion on death, since I am now getting into the meat of 'On the Nature of Suicide'. In responding to his comments, I must jump beyond Toynbee's comments on death and proceed to Jacques Choron's 'Mortality and Death'. He says "Statements like 'the fear of death is the obverse of the love of life' are of little help in understanding the nature and origin or the death fear. Biologists caution us against interpreting the concept of self-preservation as if the organism 'knows' through some uncanny perceptivity what is good for it in order to ramain alive. As Dobzhansky points out, the famous 'wisdom of the body' is, indeed, admirable, but 'the body is wise chiefly under conditions which the biological species, to which it belongs, encountered in its evolution. Placed in novel conditions, the body loses its wisdom and becomes surprisingly stupid'. .... Bertalanffy has pointed out that in addition to the biological life man shares with other animals, he lives in a world of symbols. ... wrong, does not do so because of the fact that his biological existence and survival are threatened, but rather because of his quasi-needs, that is, his needs on the symbolic level are frustrated.'" -------------------- I was surprised that my comments on Weismann and Hackett's 'obverse' view on the medical profession's view of death was iterated almost word for word in this paper, something I had no way of foreknowing. This section points out that it is not our biological existence, if at all, that we love, but rather the symbolic or phenomenological world we 'live' in. ------------- Shopenhauer's view of death is discussed earlier in the paper. He departs from Frued's postulate of the existence of an equally powerful death drive (Todestrieb) which opposes an extraordinarily powerful life instinct. Shopenhauer's assertion is that death is the true aim of life. To him, death is "the moment of liberation from the one-sidedness of individuality, which is not the innermost kernal of our Being, but has to be conceivesd as an abberation of it". Thus, death is certainly to be regarded as the true aim in life "because it is the return to the great All (i.e. Kant's unknowable "thing in itself")." Shopenhauer concludes that a suicidal person by no means surrenders the will to live, but only life. ------------------ This is a view somewhat in contrast to J/S, who, I think denies the immortality of Will. It is interesting to review others' thoughts on these and similar topics. I like to listen. For those who are *really* interested, I will quote the references on request. MEL ihuxp!tfilm