Static and genetic phenomenology of death

Abstract

"If the aim of phenomenology is ‘to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself’, or, to state the same thing, to get ‘to the things themselves’,1 then death presents a unique problem for the phenomenologist. For how can we let death show itself as it is in itself? As Epicurus realized, “while we are, death is not; when death is come, we are not.”2 Heidegger, too, recognizes this problem: “When Dasein reaches its wholeness in death, it simultaneously loses the being of its “there.” By its transition to no-longer-Dasein, it gets lifted right out of the possibility of experiencing this transition and of understanding it as something experienced.”3 However, I am not the only one who dies; others die too, and in the death of the other, the phenomenon of death becomes ‘objectively’ accessible to the phenomenologist. But if we give a phenomenological interpretation of the death of the other, have we got to the thing itself? Heidegger thinks not—for even if I attend to the death of the other, I am still alive. Therefore, according to Heidegger, ‘the dying of others is not something that we experience in a genuine sense; at most we are always just “there alongside.”4 If, in the death of the other, we do not experience death in a genuine sense, and we cannot go through our own death, then are we, as phenomenologists, forced to conclude with Epicurus that death is nothing to us