On Death
On Death — Annotated Draft
⚠️ A Note on the Essay
This is not an essay written from the standpoint of a philosopher with a finished doctrine. I am writing this essay as someone who finds death intellectually unavoidable.
Question of death and reason to live
Asking about death is not to ask “beyond life.” In fact, it is about whether there is any fundamental reason to continue living in itself. Here, its continuance does not simply imply staying in the present. It suggests maintaining living organisms. Living organisms do not simply come into existence in the world. They sustain themselves: They eat, recover, sleep, and have relationships. Living organisms are a continuous maintenance process, not a static state of matter. Therefore, the question of the reason for life is ultimately the question of why this living thing must continue to be maintained.
This question becomes even sharper when death is not treated only as a natural event but as a possible relation to one’s own continuation. Death can arrive without choice. However, death sometimes appears as an object of choice. In this sense, death can be both an object to be thought about in life and a limit where there is no more reasoning left. As Wittgenstein said, “Death is not an event of life.” [1] It is not a scene experienced in life, but a point where scenes no longer proceed. This text starts from that contradiction.
1. The non-uniqueness of experience
A human life is made of experience. From birth to death, all kinds of events in one’s life are left as memories. However, experience is limited. Each person sees only a very small part of the world, knows only a few people, and lives in one historical period. Even the longest life (more than 100 years) is extremely short from the perspective of the universe.
Experience is repeated. Joy, grief, erotic desire, and pain have occurred innumerable times before us, and will occur after us. (Here, the recurrence I’m describing is recurrence at the level of types, not tokens.) Therefore, the experiences have two hierarchies. One is that it is repeated across various subjects. The other is that it currently occurs only within a single subject. Nagel’s view that the core of consciousness is the question of “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” is also related to this second hierarchy [2].
Therefore, the non-uniqueness of experience weakens one of human vanities. This does not tell us that nothing matters. Instead, this tells us that we are not cosmically privileged.
2. The material conditions of experience
Experience only occurs through a living organism. Sensation requires a body, and memory needs a system that can store and transform traces. In addition, perception depends on fatigue, hunger, social environment, and chemical reaction. The subject beyond these material conditions cannot encounter the world.
Changes in the organism can alter the way objects and events appear. In a state of exhaustion, nothing may seem impossible. When threatened, the same space may feel hostile, and hunger could cloud attention. In an isolated state, time may take on a different texture.
Here, materialism provides at least one fact: Experience does not occur independent of material conditions. (More radical materialism suggests that mind concepts, such as belief and desire, do not exist in science [3].) In fact, our experience is limited by material conditions.
3. The Asymmetry of the Negative
Negative is not simply the opposite of positive. Negative often takes precedence in a scene of experience: Fear narrows the range of possible actions, and humiliation repeats in memory. This precedence is not only a matter of strength. It is also a matter of time. Negative feelings remain as memory, avoidance, and physical tension even after the event ends.
In psychological literature, it has been discovered that the tendency of negative experiences has a greater impact than positive ones. The review by Baumeister et al. [4] summarizes this tendency with a statement: “bad is stronger than good.”
Therefore, continuing to live is not a simple addition of time. It involves repeatedly exposing oneself to the negative states, which is asymmetric.
4. Structure of Asymmetry
Living organisms exchange energy and matter to maintain themselves. A living organism is an open system that conserves internal state and boundary by exchanging with the surroundings.
Here, thermodynamics can be introduced for one structural explanation. It describes that living organisms are governed by the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy of the universe increases [5]. In addition, according to this law, death is natural and stable.
Instead, being alive is a process of maintaining particular organization against disintegration, disorder, and unpredictability [6]. It suggests that sustaining life is not cost-free. Rather, life is a system that is constantly being corrected.
Nature does not command one to live or die, nor does it tell which choice is good or bad. However, the asymmetry of the negative has meaning again within this description: Living organisms do not experience negative states. They reconstruct themselves to absorb, predict, and avoid those states. Therefore, pain does not exist merely as experience. It alters life.
5. Problem of Continuing Life
It is inevitable to reduce pain in life. Here, there are some possible approaches to the problem of continuing life: meeting people, exercising, changing environments, etc. However, these do not prove the reason for life. They do not provide a final solution for how life should go on. It is a manipulation that changes the distribution and strength of pain while life is still going on.
These manipulations are always temporary. Changing environments do not change the structure of existence. Meeting people can be supportive, but it creates dependencies and wounds.
Solving problems in life is thus limited. It is a condition adjustment, not the final answer. Instead, it does not close the question itself. It maintains or transforms the state in which questions can continue to be raised.
6. Suicide as an Option
It is inaccurate to say that suicide is not an option in the first place. Are there ethics and morals for people on the verge of a cliff? – No. It appears indeed as an option. However, it is not a common option. It is a “termination” option.
The possible approaches discussed in # 5 change the structure of pain. On the other hand, suicide closes the source of suffering. It can be a solution to a problem. At the same time, it is a letting go of problem-solving: It eliminates a problem and at the same time a subject that seeks its answer, rather than the way one discovers the answer.
Camus viewed suicide as a fundamental philosophical problem. He treats “judging whether life is worth living” as the fundamental question of philosophy [7]. His answer is “Révolté.” He does not try to remove absurdity, but suggests an attitude of living with awareness of absurdity [7].
However, his answer is not sufficient.
Révolté requires energy. Rebelling requires physical strength, self-observation, and connection with others. However, in some cases, a person who is devastated may not even have the strength to resist. For him or her, his answer sounds like an attitude command.
Camus shows a form that does not retreat in front of absurdity. However, he does not give a sufficient solution in cases where the minimum condition of rebellion collapses.
Révolté can be a solution to the problem of continuing life. However, not all subjects can perform it. To assume that a form of enduring absurdity always remains may be to underestimate the asymmetry of pain and the cost of sustaining life.
7. Open Conclusion
Death eventually. comes. Natural death is not completely outside of choice. One chooses how to live and what to avoid or take. Those choices can affect the time and form of death. However, suicide brings death into the form of action. Therefore, suicide is both the will and the end of the will. It is both a problem-solving and a cessation of problem-solving.
Natural death and artificial death can lead to the same physical end. However, the two do not have the same structure: While natural death arrives at the limit of life processes, artificial death brings its limits forward into action.
Therefore, what remains is not a simple either/or choice. The command “You must live” is not enough. It assumes knowing the reason for life. Suicide can be a solution to the problem in the sense of physical extinction. However, it is not problem-solving that completes the answer, but problem-solving that closes the question itself. Natural death also brings about the same physical extinction someday, but it does not necessarily have the form of will.
I do not conclude here. However, I can only say up to this point: Life does not ultimately justify itself. Life continues to generate problems, and suicide is the possibility of acting on the extinction. However, that possibility cannot be understood in the same form as other solutions.
References
[1] Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.4311.
[2] Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”
[3] Roy F. Baumeister et al., “Bad Is Stronger Than Good.”
[4] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Eliminative Materialism.”
[5] NASA Glenn Research Center, “Second Law — Entropy.”
[6] Karl Friston, “A Free Energy Principle for Biological Systems.”
[7] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Albert Camus.”