The Book of Dead Philsophers by Simon Critchley
	Last Words Creatureliness Death is the last great taboo. We cannot look it in the face for fear of seeing the skull beneath the skin. Various surveys show that when it comes to attitudes towards death what most people want is to die quickly, painlessly and, as the saying goes, “without being a burden to anyone.” What this last platitude conceals, I think, is the fact that people don’t want to be a burden because they ultimately don’t trust their children or their loved ones to care for them. Fear of death is a fear of feebleness in an infirm state, stuck in a degrading nursing home, ignored by embarrassed friends, and busy, distant family members. The fact of finitude unpicks many of the truisms by which we live. A detailed national survey by the “Opinion Dynamics Corporation” from 2003 claimed that fully 92 percent of Americans believe in God, 85 percent believe in heaven and 82 percent believe in miracles. But the deeper truth is that such religious belief, complete with a heavenly afterlife, brings believers little solace in relation to death. The only priesthood in which people really believe is the medical profession and the purpose of their sacramental drugs and technology is to support longevity, the sole unquestioned good of contemporary Western life. If proof were needed that many religious believers actually do not practise what they preach, then it can be found in the ignorance of religious teachings on death, particularly Christian teaching, which is why I have emphasized this in some of the entries in this book. Christianity is about nothing other than getting ready to die.[*] It is a rigorous training for death, a kind of death in life that places little value on longevity. Christianity, in the hands of a Paul, an Augustine or a Luther, is a way of becoming reconciled to the brevity of human life and giving up the desire for wealth, worldly goods and temporal power. Nothing is more inimical to most people who call themselves Christians than true Christianity. This is because they are actually leading quietly desperate atheist lives bounded by a desire for longevity and a terror of annihilation. This is where the ideal of the philosophical death has such persuasive power in undermining the death-denying shibboleths of our age. Mortality is that in relation to which we can be said to shape our selfhood. It is in relation to the reality of death, both my death and the deaths of others, that the self becomes most truly itself. It is only in relation to the acceptance of self-loss that there might be a self to gain. That is to say, and of course this is stupidly obvious, death is the limit in relation to which life is lived. Accepting one’s mortality, then, means accepting one’s limitation. This is crucial in my view, for it means accepting what we might call our creatureliness. To be a creature, in traditional theology, is to be in a position of dependence with respect to God. I want to propose a less theistic variant of this thought. Namely, that human existence is limited. It is shaped by evolutionary forces beyond our control and by the movement of a desire that threatens to suffocate us in the clutches of its family romance. We cannot return the unasked-for gifts of nature and culture. Nor can we jump over the shadow of our mortality. But we can transform the manner in which we accept those gifts and we can stand more fully in the light that casts that shadow. It is my wager that if we can begin to accept our limitedness, then we might be able to give up certain of the fantasies of infantile omnipotence, worldly wealth and puffed-up power that culminate in both aggressive personal conflicts and bloody wars between opposed and exclusive gods. To be a creature is to accept our dependence and limitedness in a way that does not result in disaffection and despair. It is rather the condition for courage and endurance. Returning to the quote from Montaigne with which I began my introduction[**], to philosophize is to learn the habit of having death continually present within one’s mouth. In this way, we can begin to confront the terror of annihilation that enslaves us and leads us into either escape or evasion. In speaking of death and even laughing at our frailty and mortality, one accepts the creaturely limitation that is the very condition for human freedom. Such freedom is not a passive state of being or the simple absence of necessity or constraint. On the contrary, it is an ongoing activity that requires the acceptance of necessity and the affirmation of the moving constraint of our mortality. This is not easy, I know. To philosophize is to learn to love that difficulty. [** “If I were a maker of books, I would make a register, with comments, of various deaths. He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.” Montaigne, That to Philosophiize Is to Learn How to Die] [* Added December 31, 2009. “Be in the world like a traveler, or like a passer on, and reckon yourself as of the dead.” – Mohammed (peace be upon him). My most profound apologies for my blindness and judgment of you then, L’s John in LA, my brother. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. I see things differently now. We are truly One, you and I. My life given to you.]
	December 21, 2009 n