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.'"
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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.
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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.
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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