Chapter 10

MAN AND DEATH

I don’t my mind dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Woody Allen
Introduction:

IS THERE SUCH THING AS FOREVER?

By Edgar Montales Apolinar

I guess I have the best words

To say…
I guess I have enough thoughts
To convey…
I guess I have all dreams
To share…
I guess I have enough courage
To see you…
I guess I have everything that until the end
You have me and I have you…
I guess I have all the moments…
To stay with you FOREVER!
 - “I guess I have enough courage to see you.”
After all the hardships and sorrows caused by pleonasm, its now time
to think of the best remedy that would compensate all sufferings.

- “I guess I have everything that until the end…”

Having everything in life is the most renowned absurdity in human
existence.
- When the unexpected time is near, “I guess I have the best words to say.”

- “I guess I have enough thoughts to convey,”

If one have few days or few hours to live, for sure the more you would take
advantage of being together with your loved ones.

- “I guess I have all the dreams to share.”

Congruent dreams to share, always depends on the subject as per the
intelligibility of the interpreter.

Sparing the best dream that you can have and sharing it for sake of
the one you really love is above all the noblest thing to do, I could say that
“emptiness of good dreams is a sign of life in vanity.”
- What about forever?
Is there such thing as forever? Is forever different from death? There’s
a saying which go goes something like this, “man is born in order to die.” This
is synonymous to say that, “man is born to live forever!” the thing is to be born
and live forever in a different stage, were we don’t see those physical entities of
those who “died” unlike the way they were living before. It’s not some kind of a
deterioration or death but instead a different form of transformations.

It could be a different kind of “dress-up” because they have to exist

into a different condition that is “life after transformation” or the “life after death.”
This kind of world is the “world of foreverness.” That forever is synonymous
to death.

Hence, man as a rational human being will always find his way to perfection.
Man is Hanssamm! Man has always the edge towards perfection!
Hanssamm towards his ultimate happiness… That everything is possible, if
and only if man will go beyond his weaknesses.
 MARTIN HEIDEGERR’S
PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEATH

Metaphysics is an enquiry over and above what-is with a view to winning it

back again as such and in totality for our understanding.
Heidegerr
 According to Heidegger, the being of man is a being-in-the-world. Man
is primordially directed towards the world and has the power-to-be in the world.
His being in the world consists in the being alongside with things, the ready-to-
hand and the present at hand, with Heidegerr calls “concern”, and in being witth
others, “solicitude”. The being of man is Dasein, “There-being”. “There-being is
the There of Being among beings-it lets beings be (manifest), thereby rendering
all encounter with them possibley.” (Dy.1986:253)

What is death?
For Heidegerr death is oftentimes associated for being a man. But
what is the attitude of man towards death?
Death is a transformation of man from Dasein to no-longer-Dasein,
and so there is impossibility of experiencing this transformation. Nobody has
risen from the death to tell us everything about death. And so, how can we then
explicate death? What is Heidegerr’s phenomenology of death?
 The “not-yet” of death is therefore a possibility of being
man but will be. And what is strange in this possibility is
that, one is no-longer-Dasein, one is no-longer-being-
there, but still belongs to the particular man and this is
non-representable, that is, his very own.
 Being-towards-death and care

Care was interpreted by Heidegerr as “ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in (the

world) as Being-alongside entities which we encounter (within-thhe-world).
Care in the other words, has the following characteristics of Dasein’s being:
existence, “ahead-of-itself”; facticity, in the “Being-already-in”, and falling, in
the “Being-alongside”. Being-towards-death must be understood in these
terms. (Ibid:225)

Being ahead of himself, man as projection, comes to the revelation of his

utmost possibility, the possibility that he will no longer be “there”. Death is
the greatest possible degree the “not-yet” of man, something towards which
he carries himself.

Death is not something that just takes place to man; it is something imminent.
The imminence is not like the coming storm, or the arrival of afriend, or a
journey that one has to undertake.
 Everyday Being-Towards-Death

Publicly in everyday concern, death is known as an unpredictable outcome

of misfortune that oftentimes happens. The public’s consciousness, the
neutral “they” utters of death as a “causa of death,” an event that happens
constantly. The “they” conceals death by saying, “People die… one of
these days one will die too, in the end; but right now it has nothing to
do with us.” (Ibid:256) The “they” is fully aware or cognizant that death is
something vague that must arrive finally, but for the moment, the “they” says,
it has nothing to do with us.
It’s a fact that all men will die, but what’s important is enjoy life while alive.
Just like a famous quotation which says that, “I’ll just cross the bridge when I
get there.” And so death is something not yet present-at-hand, hence offers
no threat. The “they” says, “one dies”, but it’s not me! I can’t claim for others.
In this way, the “they” dismantles off death, makes it uncertain, and conceals
the real facets of his possibility, the uniqueness, non-relational, and that
which cannot be surmounted.
 Authentic Being-towards-death
The authentic being-towards-death, man actualizes that death is the own
most possibility, and hence the cognizance derives in him the potentiality for
being, for gratification of his own being.
Death reveals the individualizing “there” of man, his being-alongside-things
(concern) and his being with others (solicitousness).

The authentic man cannot surmount death. Man’s anticipation and

expectation cannot escape death; instead react favorably and accepts this
possibility. By accepting death as possibility, he frees himself. This means
that man, by anticipation, is free for his own death; he is relinquished from
becoming lost in possibilities.

The indefiniteness which leads to the certainty of death is called the

authentic Dasein which opens itself to the incessant threat originating from
its being “there”, being in the world. The condition of the mind that is open to
this incessant threat is known as anxiety. In this anxiety, man falls face to
face to the “nothing” of possible impossibility of his subsistence. Hence, the
authentic being-towards-death is essentially anxiety.
 “GOD IS DEAD”
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) – penned in a way of acting carefully to
enkindle unplayful thought than to give normal answers to questions. In this
respect he agreed with Socrates and Plato more than Spinoza, Kant, or Hegel.

Nietzsche developed no conventional arrangement because system building,

his persuasion, presumes that one has at hand axiomatic truths upon which to
establish. It was his judgment of conviction that constructing a system was to
be deficient in moral soundness, since honest thought must dispute precisely
these self-evident truths upon which most systems are established.
 While others noticed in the 19th-century in Europe as the symbols of
power and security, Nietzsche apprehended with prophetical insight the
impending collapse of the traditional patronages of the values to which
modernistic men had entrusted themselves.
Germany had great power on the Continent because of the Prussian
army, and the modality of optimism was further inspired by the astounding
advancements of science and technology, yet Nietzsche boldly predicted and
revealed that the power politics and savage wars were in store for the future.
What he projected was the forthcoming of nihilism, the seeds of which had
already been inseminated. The greatest realism for him was neither the military
power of Germany nor the developmental process and advances of science but
rather the irrefutable fact that belief in the Christian Good had forcefully
rejected the point where he could say that “God is dead.”
 Though Nietzsche was by disposition an atheist, he meditated the
“death” of God with amalgamated reactions. He was offended at the outcomes
that would follow once everyone had become fully aware of all the implications
of the death of God, cultural effect that he said has not yet turn evident to
modernistic man.
Meditating simultaneously the collapse of religious faith and the launching
impression in the Darwinian notion of the unrelenting evolution of the species,
Nietzsche could ascertain in this combination the eminence of any basic
differentiation between man and animal. If this is what people will believe, then
nobody should be unaware if in the future, there will be wars on earth.
Consequently, the death of God according to Nietzsche will be the beginning of
a new day, a day when the essence of life-denying ethics of Christianity could
be substituted with a life-affirming philosophy.
EVALUATION OF ALL MORALS

Nietzsche believed that morality was clearly dying. Nietzsche said

that reappraisal implies that all the “stronger motives are still extant, but that
now they appear under false names and false valuations, and have not yet
become conscious of them”.

He showed that what modernistic man called “good” was not all
morally excellent.

In the analysis the moral values must be built on the true nature of
humanity and its environment. Darwin who imposed great emphasis on the
external circumstances when depicting the evolution of the species, Nietzsche
centered on the intrinsic power within an individual, which is capable of
shaping and creating effects, “a power which uses and exploits the
environment.” “Nietzsche’s grand hypothesis was that everywhere and in
everything the Will to Power is seeking to express itself.
THE POWER OF ETHICS

If life is really full of conflict that one needs to struggle for existence,
besides only the fittest survive, it follows that the highest and the ultimate virtue
is no other than strength, and the only fault is weaknesses. Only good
contributes to survival and victory, while the bad is something that contributes
and ends in defeat.

This power of ethics attempted to reappraise the traditional Christian

ideal of forgiveness and acceptance of despair, humbleness as well
delineated by Nietzsche in his famous book, entitled: Thus Spake
Zarathustra.
 In relation to the theory of struggle for existence, Nietzsche
recommended the excision of the weaker ones in the society for the
development and evolution of the fittest, the supermen of the earth. In these
reasons, the end justifies the means. Person who are physically weak and
ineffectual are only means to an end.

As soon as the evolution of the superman is achieved through the

liquidation of the weaker ones in the society, the fittest will live in a powerful
aristocracy, which will forever maintain mastery over the masses. The
superman can use any means if necessary so as to preserve the influence,
unity, and power.
 Minsan Pa’y Iduyan Mo Ako
By: Edgar Montales Apolinar
Ilang taon ding hindi naranasan
ang magbalik sa nakaraan.
Kaya naman ng ika’y masulyapan
hindi pa man…
Ay ganon na lang ang pagkaasam
talo pang paslit sa takam.
Para bang tumanda ng hindi naranasan
Ang kamusmusan.
Ngunit kung bakit,
ay hindi ang siyang nakamit
Kundi labis na hinagpis at pasakit.
Sa aking pagduyan,
nadama ko ang lupit ng bayan!
Kasakiman ng lipunan,
ang siyang kong nasumpungan!
Kabataan pag-asa ka ba ng bayan?
O suliranin ka ng lipunan?
Wag kang pasaway, itigil ang kamusmusan!
Sa nakikita kong suliranin ng ina mong
Mahal!
Wag ikibit balikat, bagkus ay lunasan.
Ikaw na maalam!
Nagpakadalubhasa kung saan-saan.
Wag maging sakim! Sa pansamantalang
kapangyarihan,
pagkat di lang para sayo ang grasya ng Maykapal.
Hamak man sa paningin ay wag po sanang
linlangin!
Puso’y busilak at may mabuti ring hangarin.
Aking lang Dalangin
nawa’y dinggin ng Poong mahal,
na sana ang bayan ko wag pong mabuhay sa
kamusmusan!
Sa mga nakita kong sumakay ay ganon na lang ang kaligayahan,
sa kabila ng lupit ng kapalaran.
Buhay kong aandap-andap talo pa ang ang lampara ni Rizal
pinagdamutan ng tunay na liwanag ng mga pulitikong gahaman
at pusakal!
Marahil nga’y tama sa mga pagkakataon ang mga nakaupo,
Ay kailangan ilakas pa, ng malakas ang pagduyan!
Upang ang labis na kahirapan ay maibsan,
hanggang sa ang kapakanan ng bayan ay makalimutan.
At kung sakaling ang tunay na kapayapaan ay hindi na
magisnan,
at talagang wala ng kalunasan!?
Sana po’y minsan pa’y iduyan mo ako…
Paalam! sa napakaikling buhay ng kamusmusan…