Machan's Musings - Death & Dying
by Tibor R. Machan
My friend David L. Norton—whose book Personal Destinies, A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (Princeton UP, 1976), should have been far more famous than any that John Rawls and other celebrities in the discipline of philosophy had written—wrote beautifully and wisely about aging. He gave credit for the germ of his idea to the famous psychologist, Erik Erickson, but David developed the idea in far more philosophical terms than Erickson had. It had to do with how one’s perspective on one’s life undergoes certain critical though very natural and potentially enhancing stages in virtue of human nature itself.
One of the points David stressed is that a person with a good outlook on life will gradually come to terms with the fact that he or she will die and, while never abandoning the quest for living and, indeed, for thriving, such a person will not protest or concoct fantasies in order to manage the fact of impending death. I actually spoke with David by phone about a week before he died of cancer and he appeared to me to have been exemplary in how he dealt with his own imminent death.
As I have been getting older, several family members and friends have died and, of course, I have been spending a tad more time on reflecting on my own death than I used to. But I do remember when way back in my 30s I probably had the experience that readied me best for my own eventual demise.
It was when a tiny kitten I had wanted to become our household pet suddenly developed some ailment and before anything could be done it expired while I held it in my left hand. The kitten was suddenly no longer there, only a dead kitten carcass, no real kitten at all. I noticed, though, that all was very peaceful with this dead kitten, very uncomplicated. I believe it was then that I realized that provided there isn’t going to be too much unbearable pain or suffering, provided those close to me don’t go ballistic about it all, I should be managing death quite well, thank you. Because by all I can figure and have gotten used to, have accepted in my bones by now, after I die there will be nothing for me to think, to remember, to consider, to argue, to feel, to do—it will be the end of my life and, of course, of me.
Sure, there will be some remaining signs that I had been around, but that will not matter to me at all, only to those who care about what I have done, what I have meant to them. It is, in fact, for those who care for me, who will have loved me, that my death will be a problem, not for me. And about this I may be able to do something. If I give them the most I can while I am still around, if I care for them and love them, too. I might, also, be able to help them acknowledge that my being gone is not what should be focused upon but that I had lived with sufficient dignity and joy that my life can be deemed nearly all that it could be. And that, I believe, ought to make them feel better, at least a little, after I have died.
Of course, it is one of the fascinating as well as scary things about one’s life that few things can be fully, accurately anticipated, apart from the next several moments—or perhaps a bit more—of one’s future. Yet one point David, following Erickson, stressed is that this, too, is something that one must accept and embrace and then it will not be an obstacle to living properly and fruitfully.
This goes contrary to what I learned was a main point in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. When I used to teach Existentialism, I studied quite extensively his views on death and they were nothing if not morbid and scary. Heidegger, who despite his serious flirtation with (and one time enthusiastic endorsement of) Nazism, remains a prominent 20th century philosopher—still embraced by some influential philosophers who should know better—believed that we humans are unique in, among other ways, having to cope with the persistent dread of death. (There is some evidence now that some other animals have to cope with it to some measure, too, but not at the philosophical level where they can dwell upon the potentially awesome fact of it.) There are others in the history of human thought who have made similar points.
I, however, liked what I understood to be the ancient philosopher Epicurus's attitude, who taught that all that fretting about one’s death is pretty useless and is merely going to contribute to making one’s life more unhappy than it has to be. This left a big impression on me ... so much so that I turned into someone always a bit puzzled when my own children find bringing up, as a concern with practical matters would require this, the inevitable subject of my demise too uncomfortable. I keep wanting to impress upon them that it will just be something that is best to be sensibly prepared for, so why not simply come to terms with it?
But I guess that’s easy for me to say—I will not be around to experience the loss.
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