Human Person Towards

Impending Death
Introduction to the Philosophy
of the Human Person

RANIEL JOHN A. SAMPIANO

Learning Standards
Content Standards
The learner understands human beings as
oriented towards their impending death.
Performance Standards
The learner writes a philosophical
reflection on the meaning of his/her own
life.

Learning Competencies
8.1. Recognize the meaning of his/her own life
8.2. Enumerate the objectives he/she really wants to achieve
and to define the projects he/she really wants to do in his/her life
8.3. Explain the meaning of life (where will all these lead to)
8.4. Reflect on the meaning of his/her own life.
Lesson Name:
Heidegger’s Being-Unto-Death
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, students can:
a. explain the meaning of the human person as a being-
unto-death;

b. make a personal “Bucket List” of what he/she wish to

do or accomplish in life; and
c. reflect on the meaning of their own lives.
 Holistic Perspective
The breadth and comprehension of
this perspective is paved by an
attitude of openness towards
uncertainty.
What is the meaning
of your life?
Philosophizing is not just about
“knowing” things.
Wisdom includes the humble
acceptance of things we don’t
readily understand,
and our “yes” to the invitation
to dwell on it.
 The most overriding uncertainty
for all human beings is the lack of knowledge
about our deaths and what happens after it.
What is the meaning of
life?
Imagine that it has been proven
that there is no life after death,
that there is no heaven, and
that the soul is not immortal.
What are the things that you’re
going to do as soon as the
discovery is announced?
Suppose, the opposite has been proven, there is
life after death. There is heaven, and the soul is
immortal. How would you live your life?
 Basing on the answers, do you
think there is a significant
difference between the life that
certainly knows there is nothing
after death, and
a life that is not certain?
 If yes, try to explain the difference.
Why is it that when we indeed become
sure that there is nothing after death,
we will live our lives much differently
than we do now?
What effect does the uncertainty of
what happens after death have in our
everyday lives?
 A ten-year-old child once asked his mother a
question: “Mom, what if years after we die, no
one will remember us, what we said, or what we
did, what is the point of doing what we are doing
today?”

If you are an honest mother, what would you tell

this little boy?
If you are a member of the Catholic Church,
you would say that the meaning of life lies
in our resurrection from the dead.
As Catholics, you believe that there is life
after death, and that the soul is immortal.
Whatever you sow in your earthly life,
you will reap in heaven.
 If you were a Hindu,
you would say that the meaning of
your life follows the law of Karma.
When you die,
your soul will be reincarnated
into a different form – depending
on what you did
in your previous life.
If you were a pure materialist, such
as Democritus, you would say that
there is no meaning to what we are
doing apart from what we are doing
now. When we die, the body (and
the soul which Democritus also
believed to be made up of atoms)
will one day disintegrate in thin air.
[ Ifpassed
an answer has not yet fully
the test of justification,
for as long as it is not proven to
be true, it will still remain to be
an opinion.
]
 In this case, the answers are
about what happens to us
after we die remain a matter of
belief.
The bottom line is that all human
persons are equal in ignorance in
the face of death. As someone
once said, death is the great
equalizer.
The task of philosophy is not to
provide another answer to the
question of what happens after
death, but to ask the question
what is the meaning of our
lives in the face of the
uncertainty of what happens
after death.
 The philosophical reflection on
death is, ultimately, the same
philosophical question about the
meaning of life. Is there meaning to
all our striving, our wanting to be
the best that we can be, if we are
not sure of what happens to us
after death?
Heidegger and
Being-Unto-Death
 Heidegger found it important to reflect on death
because it is the most fundamental question that
a human being must learn to face. If we do not
reflect our deaths, chances are, we are not
living an authentic life.
 It is a fact (facticity, according to Heidegger) that
the human person dies. There is nothing that can
be done about it.
 Some people try to appease anxiety
(angst) by the beliefs about the afterlife.
But no one has ever had experience of
life after death. No one has come back
from the dead to tell us of their story. Life
after death at most is only a matter of
belief. This “not knowing” brings about a
feeling of dread.
 Those who do not have the “courage to be” as
Paul Tillich put it, meaning those who do not have
the courage to face death, end up living the
inauthentic life of denial manifested in their ‘idle
talk’, ‘curiosity’, and ‘ambiguity’.
 Those who have the courage to face the fact of
inevitable death live an authentic existence, a life
of achieving meaningful visions before death
takes them, going through the “miles to go before
I sleep.”
We are all, however, always in danger of being
submerged in the world of objects, everyday
routine, and the conventional, behavior of the
crowd. This is what Heidegger terms as
inauthentic existence, a form of running away
from the face of death, from the reality of one’s
finitude, from one’s fallenness.
 The angst drowned away by
senseless obsessions over things, or
by greed or want for power.
 Some people find themselves obsessing about
looking young, refusing to face the inevitability of
the slow disintegration of the body.
 Others obsess about securing their
wealth and property, running away
from the fact that all these will one day
be gone.
 Some people focus on gossiping on
other people’s lives as if the meaning of
their own lives is not as important as the
lives of others.
 Heidegger refers to all these as inauthentic
chatter which never quite succeeds in putting the
angst away.
It is this angst that leads us towards
an existential reflection on death. As
soon as we come squarely with the
truth of the possibility of our death
and the uncertainty that surrounds it,
we are made to be aware of how we
have been living our lives
inauthentically.
 The person who finally comes to see this can
follow two possibilities: either she continues
running away and takes up an attitude of denial,
or she reconciles with the possibility that she, like
the others, will die one day.
 As soon as the person accepts this possibility
with full openness, she can now begin to live life
more deliberately.
No one wants to die. Even people who want
to go to heaven don’t want to die to get
there. And yet death is the destination we all
share. No one has ever escaped it. And that
is as it should be, because Death is very
likely the single best invention of Life. It is
Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to
make way for the new. Right now the new is
you, but someday not too long from now,
you will gradually become the old and be
cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it
is quite true.
 Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone
else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living
with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the
noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.
And most important, have the courage to follow your
heart and intuition. They somehow already know what
you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary
(Standford: 2005).
People like Steve Jobs who died of a
terminal disease are, in a way,
blessed because they are awakened
from the inauthentic chatter of
everyday life before their deaths. Not
many of us have that “fortune” of
somehow knowing when you are
going to die. To many, death comes
as the biggest traitor, astonishing us
and our loved ones in the least
expected ways.
 Thus, as a student of
philosophy, we are tasked to
take up the challenge of
constantly reawakening
ourselves from idle chatter.
Every human person is finite; we are beings-unto-death.
The angst brought about by our inescapable death
makes us live life inauthentically. Until we have the
courage to face the fact of our inevitable death, we can
never live an authentic existence; a life lived according
to what it has clearly decided as its meaning and
purpose.
Questions?
Assignment
 In a one whole sheet of yellow paper, write a
philosophical reflection about the meaning of your own
life.

Rubrics:
Comprehensiveness - 30%
Logic - 30%
Depth of Insight - 30 %
Grammar - 10%
Total - 100%