Schopenhauer - Is it Rational to Fear Death Glenn Mason-Riseborough (1/5/1998) There is a story of a Zen monk who was out walking one night when a man attacked him with a knife, demanding the monk’s valuables. The monk’s reply was, ‘if you are going to kill me, do it slowly as I have never experienced death.’ One of the reasons why this story is so powerful is that it shows death as something that should not be feared. Schopenhauer attempts the same thing when he argues that it is irrational to fear death. In this essay I will examine Schopenhauer’s arguments on the irrationality of death and evaluate whether it is philosophically justifiable to fear death. Beever (1998) breaks Schopenhauer’s arguments against rationally fearing death into two main arguments and treats each separately. The first assumes the truth of transcendental idealism and the second does not. The second is then broken down into four specific arguments, each designed to show separately the irrationality of fearing death. Schopenhauer is much more obscure about this distinction and in fact states that ‘this whole work [The World as Will and Representation] is only the unfolding of a single thought [that of the title], ... every part of the whole work is related to every other part, and presupposes it’ (Schopenhauer (1969), pp. 285,6). While it is clear to me that the arguments that Schopenhauer uses can be seen as progressing from one distinct thought, we can also view some of these arguments separately, and for clarity of thought this is what I will do. To limit the scope of this essay I will not attempt to justify transcendental idealism. Rather, I will concentrate on giving Schopenhauer’s arguments on the irrationality of fearing death, which assume transcendental idealism. I will also discuss Schopenhauer’s arguments as they pertain to a wider view that does not presuppose transcendental idealism. Before looking explicitly at fearing death from a transcendentally idealistic perspective, we need to understand the implications of transcendental idealism as Schopenhauer saw it. Schopenhauer writes of the will as being a ‘blind, irresistible urge’ (Schopenhauer (1969), p. 275) which shows itself in the ‘vegetative’ aspects of the laws of plant and animal life. This will objectifies itself in the ‘world as representation’ (the phenomenal world) in order to understand its own nature. In doing so, it wills that this world exists complete in itself, full of life, and without anything external. Hence this life wills its own existence in a drive called the ‘will-to-live.’ So as beings within the phenomenal world, we humans have a necessary will-to-live. By recognizing this will, we recognize that we as individuals exist only as an objectification of the will. Thus, from this perspective, death of the physical body is a more mitigated form of death. The empirical ‘I’ walks, talks, breaths, thinks, acts out a daily existence in this world, and eventually dies, but the real ‘I’ exists transcendentally as the will, and is immortal (1) . The will is never affected by birth or death and the death of an individual is of no importance. Fearing death is thus irrationally creating an attachment to that which is not fundamentally real; we are equivocating over the use of the word ‘I’ – between the empirical ‘I’ and the real ‘I.’ Assuming this is true it may still be argued that it is justifiable for us to fear death. What we are saying when we say ‘I fear death’ is that the empirical ‘I’ fears death. The empirical ‘I’ is justified in fearing its own death because the will-to-live makes this a necessary condition of its existence. This, however is a psychological justification not a philosophical justification. It does not follow that just because we are designed to think a certain way necessarily, that we ought to think that way. It has been suggested that fearing death is rational, because when we fear death, it is the pain associated with dying that we fear. Schopenhauer denies this and asserts that fearing pain and fearing death are two separate fears. As an example, he gives the case in which people will sometimes give up their life to escape pain when it becomes too unbearable. Conversely, he states that people will go through the most horrendous pain to avoid death. So it cannot be true that fearing pain and fearing death are one and the same. To fear death because of the pain associated with it is irrational. Schopenhauer says that pain ‘lies on this side of death’ (Schopenhauer (1969), p. 283) and we must concede that this is true. But this opens the question of what lies on the other side of death. Could it be the case that there is something on the ‘other side’ that is more evil or harmful than anything in life and it is this that we fear? The Ancient Greek view of the underworld would certainly support this view. According to myth, when Achilles (after he died) was asked what death was like he replied that given the option he would prefer to be alive and be a nobody than to be dead and be a hero. Nagel (1979) argues that this is not what we mean when we talk of death. Death to Nagel is a ‘permanent death, unsupplemented by any form of conscious survival’ (Nagel (1979) p. 1). I agree with Nagel to define death in this manner in the context of this essay. If we include the possibility of an afterlife, then we are ignoring the fact that many people who do not believe in an afterlife also fear death (2) . So from this definition of death you cannot feel pain or be harmed when you die because there is no longer any ‘you’ to feel these things. In death we simply do not exist (3) . Therefore we cannot rationally say that we fear death because we fear what will happen to us when we are dead. So perhaps the fear of death is a fear of absolute loss, of nothingness. While we exist we have qualities, attributes, thoughts, feelings, consciousness and a physical body. When we die we lose all these attributes; thus death is the opposite of life. Death is an absence of all the things that we are accustomed to in life and we fear the day that we lose all these things. Schopenhauer disagreed. He thought that death is similar to discarding waste matter (such as exhalation or excretion) in the sense that we are discarding parts of ourself (albeit not all of ourselves). He argued that we do not lament the matter that is thrown off every day, and it is equally irrational to embalm corpses or to place any significance on the loss of the body. But death is more than just a loss of the body; death is also a loss of our consciousness. Schopenhauer accepts this but points out that we lose consciousness every day when we fall asleep. He states that ‘deep sleep is in no way different from death’ (Schopenhauer Book 4, Section 54, p. 278) and as in the case of freezing to death, it differs only as to the future. Schopenhauer makes some valid points here, but I question whether we can extend partial loss to full loss. It is true that we do not fear sleeping (generally), but when we sleep we do not give up all of ourselves. We still perform basic bodily functions (albeit unconsciously) and our brain still exhibits certain characteristic activities. Consciousness is a complex issue and (neurologically speaking) we are a lot more than just our consciousness. Fearing death may be fearing the loss of a totality of self which cannot be compared with the loss of specific parts. Another suggestion that has been made is that we see life as containing something inherently pleasurable, worthwhile or meaningful. In death we lose all these pleasures and thus it is something to be feared. Schopenhauer’s response would be simply to say that we are mistaken. Life is not pleasurable or worthwhile, it is pain and suffering and there is nothing we can do about it. It is not part of the scope of this essay to discuss Schopenhauer’s reasons for taking this pessimistic attitude. Pessimism is a contentious issue and Schopenauer argued for it, but many philosophers have argued against it. Having said that life is suffering and therefore it is a mistake to fear death on the grounds that life is pleasurable, Schopenhauer then proceeds to argue that fearing death is also irrational if we proclaim the pleasures of life. ‘Whoever is satisfied with life as it is, whoever affirms it in every way, can confidently regard it as endless, and can banish the fear of death as a delusion’ (Schopenhauer (1969), p. 280). Schopenhauer believed that reality exists only in the present. Future and past are only concepts that exist in knowledge and follow the principle of sufficient reason. We do not live in the past or future but in the present, and as such the present always exists. Schopenhauer imagines a questioner asking why it is so that he lives in the present and not one of those countless others who lived centuries ago. This is because the questioner ‘regards his existence and his time as independent of each other’ (Schopenhauer (1969), p. 279). In reality, the present time is like a tangent to a circle, just touching the point at which the questioner exists. This present time is eternal and as such we exist forever in the eternal now. It is irrational to fear death because death cannot deprive us of a present. Despite Schopenhauer’s arguments that maintain that fearing the death of the individual is irrational, the individual still intuitively sees his or her death as something that is undesirable and naturally fears it. Has Schopenhauer given an exhaustive attack on the rationality of fearing death or is this an example of case by case suggesting possible reasons for rationally fearing death and then discounting them? Clearly, if we believe transcendental idealism than we must accept that fearing the death of an individual is irrational, but we still may accept that the individual necessarily (but irrationally) fears death. If we do not accept transcendental idealism then we have a number of arguments that state that particular arguments for rationally fearing death are false. We cannot say that it is rational to fear death because of the pain associated with dying; nor is it because death may be an unpleasant experience. However it seems closer to the mark to suggest that fearing death is a fear of loss. If we assume that this world is all there is, then we might consider that to lose it would be a terrible thing and it is something we can rationally fear. Saying that in sleep we lose everything is misrepresenting the facts because we still have a life, a potential that we can lose. From this point of view I suggest that Schopenhauer has not sufficiently convinced me of the irrationality of fearing death. He has convinced me that some reasons are irrational, but not that all are irrational. References: Beever, A. (1998). Lectures given for paper 280.209FC at the University of Auckland. Nagel, T. (1979). Death. In Mortal questions (pp. 1-10). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schopenhauer, A. (1969). The world as will and representation (E. F. J. Payne Trans.). New York: Dover Publications. (Original work published 1819) The Holy Bible (New International Version). (1973). London: Hodder and Stoughton. Endnotes: 1 It is somewhat ambiguous to talk of us being immortal. The will is immortal and we are objectifications of the will. It is very similar to the Christian view of the distinction between God and man. In death we go to heaven and become ‘one with God’ yet we still maintain a distinction. ‘I am the vine; you are the branches’ (John 15:5). 2 I accept the view that we may rationally fear death if we believe in an afterlife. Of course, this ignores the question of whether it is rational to believe in an afterlife. 3 From this point of view we may see the Zen monk’s response to the robber as being irrational. No matter how slowly he is killed he will never be able to experience death, all he will be able to experience is dying.