Name: Death
ISBN: 9781844651641

Todd May

Death

Sophie Shrimpton

This is my first attempt at reading myself out of death anxiety. Todd's approach was well-structured but ultimately unenlightening. It operates as a clear roadmap of approaches to coping with death without providing any new insight into that process. His conclusion is that we must live simultaneously in the present and the future; we must appreciate the present for what it is while still committing to long-term projects we care about. This is because of death's function as the final negation of your experience of the world, as well as its inevitability and uncertainty. In these calculations May assumes there is no afterlife (he takes an atheist approach) and that death truly is unstoppable. He goes as far as arguing that immortality is undesirable because it takes all meaning from our lives; if we had the time to do anything, the meaning of doing those things would wane and disappear. Death provides both meaning and the end of meaning. Therefore, the perfect time to die would be just before living becomes boring. Because we can't perfectly implement the perfect timing of death the better approach is to accept the features of death through the simultaneous present-future living mentioned above. If we face our death we can use it to make something of ourselves that we will not regret. To fashion our vulnerability into something worth having lived. To "cast a light within that darkness that ultimately engulfs us."

My coping mechanisms map onto each of these features of death. I want to turn to buddhism to save me from the end of experience in the event I do die. Before reaching that point I want to minimise death's inevitability by pursuing longevity and immortality. I counter uncertainty through a mix of denial and rationalisation - I am young, I am healthy, I go to the doctor when I am sick, I try not to drive or cycle, I don't do exceedingly dangerous things. None of these things seem unreasonable, and none of them are properly accounted for by May. Surely a full philosophical reckoning with death must turn to theology? Since when did philosophers escape that rigour by saying theology is not philosophy therefore does not need to be considered (and it is reasonable to assume a lack of afterlife)? And mustn't it also turn to biology and technology to consider the full possibilities of longevity and immortality? May merely dismisses the possibility, treating our life spans as fixed. He has created a short guide to death for the passive atheist. What about the rest of us?

Another aspect I don't agree with is May's dismissal of immortality. As many others have, he frames it as a curse. Immortality erodes passion because you have enough time to do anything. You can explore the extent of your passion and then you are left with nothing; life becomes shapeless. Or you never have an impetus to engage in the passion so you become a spectator. I don't agree with this on three counts. First, it discounts the pleasure of experiencing something in the moment - not all passions are things people would prefer to procrastinate and only engage in because they have limited time. Spontaneous engagement, or even the momentum of movement and learning, could sustain passion. Second, it assumes a human is either static, or not very dynamic. It underestimates how much one entity could transform over time - either naturally or through enhancement. Second, even if you reached the end of passion, surely you could choose to die. I highly doubt a solution for immortality could be found yet a return to mortality would be impossible. 

Similarly, I don't entirely agree with Aurelius' approach, or, it needs to be updated. We must be concerned only with what we control, but in this world we may be able to control death, even if in Aurelius' world he could not. The tension between present and future may be able to be resolved to create a future where life is certain, if not its content.

A brief final note, May often sacrifices narrative for comprehensiveness. At times this was repetitive. I think it would have helped if May was more thoughtful about whether this was an introductory read or closer to a textbook.

References to read next:
- "Death" Thomas Nagel
- "The Immortals" Jorge Luis Borges (from Labyrinths)
- "The Makropoulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality" by Bernard Williams
- "The Immortal" Homer
- "Basic Writings" by Chuang Tzu (Taoist)
- "Meditations" Marcus Aurelius 
- "On the Nature of Things" Lucretius
- "The Therapy of Desire" Martha Nussbaum (ch 6)
- "Being and Time" Martin Heidigger
- "The Death of Ivan Illyich" Tolstoy
- "Immortality" by Milan Kundera
- "Being Dead" by Jim Crace

Other interesting ideas:
- Martin Heidigger - the singularity of your own death. The experience of the silencing of your own experience is intimately your own in a way that cannot be understand by others. 
- Death provides meaning because we are aware of its possibility. Regardless, I miss the invincibility of youth. I wish death was just another snippet of knowledge that did not affect me. 
- Epicurus - death doesn't matter because you can't miss life or regret death because you have ceased to exist.
- Thomas Nagel - experiencing living is positive, whether or not there are other positive aspects to it like being involved in projects you care about
- Friedrich Nietzsche - religious afterlife denigrates our world in the name of some superior transcendent one - they diminish our temporal lives. 
- Martin Heidigger - most of us live in the mode of fleeing death and its angst/anguish
- Religion's inability to be proved provides a back-and-forth of faith and doubt that continuously fights death then cedes to it
- Martha Nussbaum - virtues like courage, moderation and justice would disappear with immortality because they would no longer be necessary 
- Borges and Williams - pure speculation or platonic introjection is unattractive because thought is only interesting inasmuch as it interacts with your lived experience
- Events become compressed because they become relative to infinity
- Williams - there is a proper time for each life. 
- Taoism - each of us is a wave on the sea of being. There is no self; we arise, then we return to the larger something. One is born, one dies, one returns to their cosmic source. Death does not confer meaning or place to a life. It is the place of life and death in the process that confers meaning.
- Lucretius - grapple with the fragility of life by emphasising the unimportance of death as we do not experience it. Also, we have had our "turn" and should allow others to as well. This is other-regarding instead of self-regarding. This helps us reduce attachment to our own lives by viewing them in a larger context, similar to Taoism. 
- Aurelius' Meditations are his attempt to live in accordance with belief. They are spiritual exercises; "repetitive exhortations about what one ought to do and how one ought to live and why one is never doing these things." Aurelius does not want to be driven by other people's behaviours but be at peace with himself. 
- Aurelius uses death to try and get himself to live as he ought to. It also is in accordance with the Stoic belief that only the present exists; we cannot live in the future as it does not exist yet. "All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike." Death reminds him of the contingency of the future and forces him to live in the present. Therefore, you should not be concerned with material success, good reputation or long remembrance. Instead you should be at peace, treat others well and recognise who you are. 
- "One can live engaged in the present and yet also engaged by one's projects that extend into the future." "We live towards the future in the present."
- Death separates life's wheat from its chaff. It focusses us on what is important and discards the petty. It helps us choose projects that are significant and that we want to be within.

Death

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