PHENOMENOLOGY

OF DEATH
 OBJECTIVES
1. Recognize the meaning of his/her
own life
2. Enumerate the objectives he/she
really wants to achieve and to define
the projects he/she really wants to
do in his/her life
3. Explain the meaning of life (where
will all these lead to)
4. Reflect on the meaning of his/her
own life.
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Discussion
Outline
╺ Being-towards-death
╺ Freedom and
Freedom
╺ Man and the Absolute
╺ The meaning of Life
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Choose (3) from words
below that best
describe your future.
Write your choices in
your notebook. a. Success
Explain your answer. b. Fortune or Money
c. Fame
d. Power
e. Recognition
f. Happiness
g. Meaning or Purpose
h. Sickness
i. Contentment
j. Faith
k. Love
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l. Death
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1.
BEING-TOWARDS-DEATH
Martin Heidegger

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Martin Heidegger
A German philosopher whose work is
perhaps most readily associated with
phenomenology and existentialism,
although his thinking should be
identified as part of such philosophical
movements only with extreme care
and qualification. His ideas have
exerted a seminal influence on the
development of contemporary
European philosophy.
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 “
The question of mortality
highlights the reality of the
human person as a being who is
a mystery to behold. The very
being of the human person is a
profound question because one
can never fully capture what it
means.
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The reality of Death
╺ Mortality is a condition for personhood
╺ An ultimate possibility that ends all other
possibilities
╺ An existential human condition
╺ A mirror of life, to look at death is to see life itself
╺ Certain and Uncertain
╺ Not near or impending possibility, it’s a reality of
otherness, not yet mine to experience
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Death
╺ Heidegger’s concern is to describe the
condition of a being that faces its own
impending death
╺ A result of our being immersed in a crowd
╺ A crowd tempts every person towards an
inauthentic mode of existence
╺ We are immersed in the “they-self” (uncaring
10 self and superficial)
Inauthentic Life
╺ A life lived in its momentary or lousy
states
╺ Life not lived in a holistic way
╺ Linear and purposeless
╺ Lived in the everydayness of existence
without meaning

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 Authentic Life
╺ Man must face the possibility of death as his own
possibility
╺ Facing death is not actualizing it, that would be
suicide (it demolishes all the potentialities of man
instead of bringing them into s whole reality
╺ Anticipation of the possibility of death
╺ Man must realize that death is his own-most
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possibility
AUTHENTIC LIFE
╺ Death individualizes man because it does not
belong to everybody
╺ Authentic man does not outstrip death
╺ In accepting death as the possibility, man frees
himself
╺ Anticipation reveals to death its lostness in the
theyself

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 DASEIN
╺ Term used to refer to a human person
╺ ‘DAS’ meaning “there” and ‘SEIN’ meaning
being
╺ A person existing in the world, not an abstract
concept
╺ Heidegger is interested with the existence of
the human person in the world
╺ The human person is a being-in-the-world
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 BEING-IN-THE-WORLD
╺ “Being-in” is not a spatial concept, but signifies
involvement, engagement with entities in the world
╺ “The-world” does not refer to a place, it’s a system
of references.
╺ Man realizes that he is a “not-yet”
╺ Death as an ultimate teast is the fruition of man’s
being in the world
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 ‘NOT-YET’
╺ As long as the person is, he is a ‘not-yet’
╺ Man is not yet complete, not yet whole
╺ Continually realizes what it means to be in the
world in terms of possibilities
╺ To be in the world is to be an unfinished project
╺ Man is a process that culminates toward an end
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 ‘NOT-YET’
╺ The nothingness in human existence
╺ Our own-most possibilities
╺ Nothing is final in man as long as one is
╺ Finality comes to us in death where we can no
longer be
╺ Death is the fulfillment of the being of man
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 5 Characteristics of Death
1. one’s ownmost
2. Non-relational
3. Cannot be outstripped
4. Certain
5. indefinite

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 Death as possibility
╺ Revealed in anxiety
╺ A possibility that cannot be taken over by another
╺ Man stands, dreads, and confronts the reality of
his being
╺ Man is anxious about the reality of death
╺ He dreads his being-in-the-world and anxious
about the possibilities that will be lost forever
╺ Our greatest fear is being separated from the
ones we love
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 MORTALITY
and
FREEDOM
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 Death as possibility
• Ultimate experience of man
• Death when accepted as a possibility is an
experience of freedom
• Man can be free and can waste life away, that there is
endless joy and pleasure
• In a crowd, it is Seen as something that one can avoid
• An evasiveness, illusion of mortality where man is
held captive by his illusory self, by the crowd
• One is imprisoned in desires that gives inauthentic
21 meaning to life
 Man in captivity
• Man with vices will lose grip of the true purpose of his
existence
• Man becomes detached and insensitive to the
authentic meaning of existence
• When he dies, it’s as if he did not live at all
Human Freedom
• Through this, man can realize the true meaning if his
moral existence
• An acceptance of mortality as giving true value to life
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 Human Freedom
• Man should refuse to be dictated by the crowd
• Man makes choices by himself on the basis of what
really matters to him
• We have one life so we devote this life to a greater
actualization of a true sense of purpose or meaning
• We should see life as a meaningful whole
• By seeing life this way, we will no longer fear death
since our lives has been lived meaningful
• The sense of freedom can take place by accepting
that there is one life to live, a life with commitment for
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others
 Human Freedom
• Man should refuse to be dictated by the crowd
• Man makes choices by himself on the basis of what
really matters to him
• We have one life so we devote this life to a greater
actualization of a true sense of purpose or meaning
• We should see life as a meaningful whole
• By seeing life this way, we will no longer fear death
since our lives has been lived meaningful
• The sense of freedom can take place by accepting
that there is one life to live, a life with commitment for
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others
The Human
Person and the
Absolute
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 Death
• Seen as a release from the world and a unity with the
Absolute
• The Absolute has control over our fate, thus, God is
Someone we dread for
• We fear everything around us
• We dread the wrath of God and how God might
punish us for all our sins
• The reality of God is beyond us, there is the feeling of
awe, wonder, and reverence for the greatness of the
Absolute
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 Death
• The ultimate question in dying: Shall we be united
with our Creator?
• A cruel realization that comes only in our deathbeds
• While young, we remain unperturbed and not worried
about what lies beyond us
• We prefer recognition and wealth and we lose tract of
the real value of faith
• The ultimate test, the final examination
• Unveils the truth and meaning of all things
• The fundamental option in life is to choose to be truly
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free
The meaning
of Life
Elie Wiesel
 Life, Death, and Meaning
• Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to
all those who need us desperately
• One must hold to life and transcend what was thrown
to us by tormentors
• We lose hope by feeling unloved
• The loss of meaning is the absence of goal or
purpose in life
• One ceases to be and simply lives like some
biological species
29 • We need something to anchor our life
Life, Death, and Meaning
• A sense of purpose requires commitment towards
some value
• A value similar to a candle in the night that lights our
way as human beings who are cast into the
uncertainties of our fragile humanity and fragmented
world
• Evil must be resisted, history is not abstract
• History is the development of the spirit
• History and human action are one
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Life, Death, and Meaning
╺ A lot of people suffer, and we must not render the
pleas of these people meaningless
╺ The true meaning of having a sense of purpose in
life: “What all these victims need above all is to
know they are not alone; that we are not
forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled
we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom
depends on ours, the quality of our freedom
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depends on theirs.”
 THANK YOU
FOR A
WONDERFUL
SEMESTER!
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