On Fear of Death

Many people are afraid of dying, not only when their life and health actually are under serious threat, but in general: Their fear is due to the incertitude they experience when confronted with the question:

“How will it be like, how will it feel to be dead?”

Most people don’t believe in an afterlife anymore (and they are right). Still, they are plagued by a certain kind of disquietude when they ask themselves what will happen to them and their bodies after their death, how it will be like when consciousness ends and the body decomposes, whether it will be like sleeping without dreams, or whatever. They cannot imagine the world going on without them, and without them being aware of it. They shrink away from the idea that they might be consigned to a black void, or however it might feel like. They feel uncertain and frightened, because they don’t know the answer to that probing question: “How will it be like to be dead?”–a question that actually can never be answered due to reasons I am going to expose later on in this post.

I think that Ayn Rand gave a good solution to the issue of fear of death as expressed in her well-known statement: “It’s not I who will die, it’s the world that will end.” This statement expresses a fundamental truth and gives an important hint to the origin of that unpleasant emotion connected with fear of death.

But what kind of truth? Obviously, the truth of Ayn Rand’s statement cannot be of a metaphysical nature, since that would contradict the primacy of existence: If reality exists independently from consciousness, then the withering away of my consciousness won’t put an end to existence.

I think that the truth conveyed by Rand’s statement is a basic epistemological truth:

There is no “what” of cognition without a “how” of cognition; no content of cognition without an instrument of cognition. Without consciousness, there exists nothing you could be consciouss of. If I die, i.e. if my consciousness ends, then the world, too, will end for me. And this also means that, for me, there will be no such thing as death or a state of being dead. As Ayn Rand remarked: Per definitionem, I won’t be there when it happens. One cannot live to see death.

The question of how death will be like is not only unanswerable–it is invalid. And it is unanswerable precisely because it is invalid. The mistake involved consists of assuming or projecting a “what” of cognition–the state of death–although there won’t be a “how” of cognition left in that state. Since there is no content of cognition possible outside of conscious awareness, asking for the quality of awareness of a non-conscious state is a vain endeavor.

Specifically, the mistake consists in the reification of the content of cognition as being independent from the instrument of cognition. This is an instance of disregard for the fact that objectivity always is a certain kind of relationship between existence and consciousness for which both sides are equally constitutive. In this case, both the “how” and the “what” are constitutive for the cognitive act. If you take away the “how”, there won’t be a “what” left, either. (Please remember that I am talking about the epistemological level; of course the withering away of consciousness does not put an end to existence. It merely puts an end to our access to existence, to our personal perspective on existence, to our sense that something exists, i.e. it puts an end to us.)

Thus, the mistake involved is a manifestation of intrinsicism.

What, then, would be a proper attitude towards death?

Our awareness of reality and of ourselves is conditionally based on the existence of our consciousness–an existence limited in time. Beyond that range of time, there exists nothing for us. We are dependend upon our consciousness, its range and cognitive capacity. That which is outside of its boundaries set by its eventual end is of no concern to us. This also applies to death. I won’t live to see death, that state in which my consciousness has finally ended. For me, who exists primarily through his conscious awareness, death is inexistent, for there cannot be an awareness of death per definitionem. And more: Death is not only inexistent by the standard of conscious awareness–it is also insignificant.

It is a moot point to reflect upon the quality of the state of death, for death does not have such a quality for us. My death is real only for those who are not me, because they will be confronted with my corpse–I won’t be. Therefore, instead of wasting time thinking about death, we should concern ourselves with life. We should reflect on how we should live and what we want from life. We will never live to see death; however, we experience life all the time. Epistemologically, for us there exists only our own life, and nothing else, neither prior to it, nor after it.

Life is what really matters, and what deserves our fullest attention. The proper attitude towards death, thus, is in truth the proper attitude towards life.