The Event of Death: A Phenomenological Enquiry

351 Pages·1987·8.193 MB·English

by  Ingrid Leman-Stefanovic (auth.)

THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY
MARTINUS NIJHOFF PHILOSOPHY LIBRARY
VOLUME 23
For a complete list of volumes in this series see final page of the volume.
The Event of Death:
A Phenomenological
Enquiry
by
Ingrid Leman-Stefanovic
1987 MARTINUS NIJHOFF PUBLISHERS
a member of the KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP
DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER
IV
Distributors
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for all other countries: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, Distribution Center,
P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Leman-Stefanovic, Ingrid.
The event of death.
(Martinus Nijhoff philosophy library ; v. 23)
Bibliography: p.
1. Death. I. Title. II. Series.
BD444.L44 1987 128'.5 86-23494
ISBN-13 :978-94-0 10-8068-2 e-ISBN-13:978-94-009-3509-9
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-3509-9
Copyright
© 1987 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht.
Softcoverreprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
the publishers,
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, P.O. Box 163, 3300 AD Dordrecht,
The Netherlands.
Dedicated to the
memory of my mother
Katya Grib Leman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI
PART ONE:
ONTOLOGICAL ROOTS OF THE PHENOMENON OF DEATH:
A Heideggerean Interpretation
INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
CHAPTER ONE: INDIVIDUATION AND TEMPORALITY
A. Transcendence as the Key ......................... . 9
(i) The Necessity of Individuation
as Revealed in the Meaning of
Transcendence: Lessons from Kant... .......... 14
(ii) The Meaning of Transcendence as Temporality.. 28
B. Temporality as the Meaning of Individuation ...... . 35
(i) Heidegger's Understanding of Individuation
as Grounded in Care.......................... 40
(ii) Temporality as the Meaning of Care........... 44
CHAPTER TWO: TEMPORALITY AS THE MEANING OF BEING-TOWARDS-DEATH
A. Inauthentic Understanding of Death ............... . 55
B. Temporality and Authentic Being-towards-Death ..... 65
(i) Existentiell Attestation of Potentiality-
for-Being-one's-Self......................... 71
(ii) Ontological roots: the temporal structure
of Advancing Resoluteness.................... 81
C. Historicity and Being-towards-death .............. . 86
VIII THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY
CHAPTER THREE: DEATH, TIME AND APPROPRATION
A. The Development of Heidegger's Thought........ .... 95
B. The Later Heidegger on Time and Appropriation ..... 101
C. Death in History, Poetry and Language ............. 112
D. Death and the Emergence of Being in the
Essence of the Thing............................. 125
CHAPTER FOUR: A PROJECT BEYOND HEIDEGGER ................... 131
PART TWO:
DEATH AS AN ONTIC E-VENT:
coming to terms with the phenomenon of death
as a determinate possibility.
INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
CHAPTER ONE: REFLECTING ON ONE'S OWN DEATH:
A. The Intelligibility of the Phenomenon of
My Own Death as a Determinate Event ............... 143
B. A pre-reflective awareness of a determinate
possibility: a phenomenology of imagination ....... 148
C. My Own Death as a Determinate Possibility:
Reflections on Terminal Illness ................... 163
(i) My Own Death, against the backdrop
of Being-there.......................... 163
(ii) Some Patterns of a Terminal Illness ..... 169
( iii) Implications regarding the analysis ..... 189
THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY XI
CHAPTER TWO: THE DEATH OF THE OTHER
A. Solicitude: condition of the possibility of
an ontological awareness of the ontic e-vent
of the death of the Other .......•....•............ 193
(i) A Heideggerean perspective .............. 193
(ii) Heidegger on Solicitude ......••......... 200
( iii) The Relationship of Authentic
Solicitude: Beyond sein und zeit ........ 211
( iv) The In-finitude of Authentic
Solicitude.... ..•........ . .......... . .. . 222
B. The E-vent of the Death of the Other
(i) Understanding of the Potentiality-
for-Being of Others..................... 231
(ii) Solicitude as a projection of our Being
towards-Death: the temporal roots of the
Belonging-together of Death and Love .... 234
( iii) A Death.............................. .. . 257
(iv) Recovery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
CHAPTER THREE: THE PHENOMENON OF IMMORTALITY
A. The Possibility of my own Immortality ............. 285
B. The Immortality of the Other ...................... 290
x THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY
PART THREE:
ONTIC/ONTOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
INTRODUCTION. . . . • • • . • • . • • • . . • • . • • . . • . . . . . . • • . • . • • • . . . . . . . . . . 297
CHAPTER ONE: ONTOLOGY AS CONCRETE........................... 301
CHAPTER TWO: IS PHENOMENOLOGY STILL TOO METAPHySICAL? ...... 325
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Key to abbreviations........................................ 345
THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY
I N T ROD U C T ION
"Before he is 'cast into the world', as
claimed by certain hasty metaphysicians, man
is laid in the cradle of the house .. A
concrete metaphysics cannot neglect this
fact ... "1
In this quote, Gaston Bachelard points to a most cornmon sin
of philosophers: a sin of over-generalizing and abstracting to
the point that their grand systems become irrelevant to the
concrete facts of daily existence. Before I can be seen to be
simply "thrown" in-the-world, let us remember that I am thrown
within a definitive situation, among essents, among significant
Others, "in the cradle of the house", as Bachelard notes: let us
beware of our over-intellectualizing existence to the extent that
we lose sight of the concrete, lived moments which, explicitly
and implicitly, make our lives meaningful.
This book is on the topic of death, not as it relates to
grand metaphysical schemes of the ultimate purpose of the uni-
1 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, p. 7.