Philosophy of Death?

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

Denizen - is that picture the frontspiece of The Last Man by Mary Shelley? I have the book somewhere.

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It's used on that book cover, yes. It's also used on some editions of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

These idea are not new to Heidegger - they go back to Epicurus and the Stoics - and these Ancient writers are much easier to understand than Heidegger! Check out "What is ancient Philosophy?" by Pierre Hadot for starters.

Also, Heidegger uses an overly complex language to express platitudes and the ideas of other philosophers. I mean "Being-Towards-Death". Come on! Who uses language like that? Trite, meaningless, over-complicated... The age of modernist obfuscation is over, it's time to read readable philosophers again...



To paraphrase Montaigne, you don't have any choice in it, mate. If you are worried about death, don't worry, death will soon teach you about death. (Montaigne is wonderful on the subject of death.)

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Claiming that Hiedegger was expressing platitudes shows that you have failed to grasp the meaning of his destruction of Western metaphysics. His style of writing may be difficult, and his use of hypens may be a little ponderous, but nothing he wrote was either trite or meaningless.
You need to check yourself before you offer people on this forum advice about "where to start," because your inane claim about death that "you don't have any choice in it, mate" shows you don't even understand Heidegger's point, which is that, while we are all doomed to die, we do have the choice to die on our own terms, at a time of our own choosing, rather than waiting for nature or an accident to kill us.
It is time for you to stop denigrating thinkers you do not understand. The time has passed for superficiality in philosophical analysis.

It's not American but in 'Anna Karennina' the only titled chapter is called 'Death.' From what I can remember it's a dragged out burden for all concerned, but also a learning process and a character comes to see his wife in a whole new way, born out of the tragic circumstances of his brother's life slowly and excrouciatingly ebbing away.

Kierkegaard has some interesting thoughts on death and despair.

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Originally Posted by plath

At the moment I'm working on a chapter of my thesis that discusses elegy poetry - and how women factor into that genre. I was wondering if anyone on here could recommend me some texts on the philosophy of death or psychology of mourning? I'm familiar with Freudian theories on death (Mourning and Melancholia), Nietzsche and the like - but was wondering if you guys could suggest any others?

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One place to look is the writings of Raymond Moody. He coined the word "near-death experience" and got me interested enough to read some of Plato (Phaedo, that Jack of Hearts mentioned, and the last book of the Republic). It is a different approach to death than I suspect Freud or Nietzsche would present, or the Stoics or Heidegger, but I haven't read these others so that is just an assumption on my part.