An Ontological Study of Death

An Ontological Study of Death
Author: Sean Moore Ireton
Publisher: Duquesne
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2007
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

Examines conceptions of death as manifested in German literature and philosophy expanding on thanatological theories that distinguish between a metaphysical and an ontological view of human finitude. This book addresses the French philosophical treatment of death by Blanchot, Kojeve, and others in the wake of their German predecessors.

Being, Man, and Death

Being, Man, and Death
Author: James M. Demske
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2014-07-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0813162785

Death, a perennial problem for philosophers and theologians, is especially crucial in the thought of Martin Heidegger. This penetrating commentary presents the concept of death as a unifying motif that illuminates many of the difficulties and obscurities of Heidegger's philosophy. Heidegger comes to see death as revealing the ultimate meaning not only of human existence, but of being itself. He thus confers upon the concept a force and sharpness, an ontological depth which is found in perhaps no other philosopher. This study corroborates the much-debated "turning" in Heidegger's philosophy. Demslce finds death to be the key not only to Heidegger's treatment of man and being, but also the key to his shift of focus from man to being. All Heidegger's various approaches to the theme of death are considered—his existential-phenomenological analysis of Dasein, his discussions of art, poetry, history, and language, and his new phenomenological approach to the ordinary things of life. The author approaches Heidegger on his own terms, allowing the philosopher to speak for himself. The present reading of Heidegger grows smoothly out of Heidegger's own intentions. The result is a revealing study of Heidegger's philosophy in its entirety, which answers some persistently perplexing questions about this difficult modern philosopher.

Tragedy, Recognition, and the Death of God

Tragedy, Recognition, and the Death of God
Author: Robert R. Williams
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2012-09-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199656053

Robert R. Williams offers a bold new account of divergences and convergences in the work of Hegel and Nietzsche. He explores four themes - the philosophy of tragedy; recognition and community; critique of Kant; and the death of God - and explicates both thinkers' critiques of traditional theology and metaphysics.

Death Before Dying

Death Before Dying
Author: Gary Stuart Belkin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2014
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0199898170

Brain death-the condition of a non-functioning brain, has been widely adopted around the world as a definition of death since it was detailed in a Report by an Ad Hoc Committee of Harvard Medical School faculty in 1968. It also remains a focus of controversy and debate, an early source of criticism and scrutiny of the bioethics movement. Death before Dying: History, Medicine, and Brain Death looks at the work of the Committee in a way that has not been attempted before in terms of tracing back the context of its own sources-the reasoning of it Chair, Henry K Beecher, and the care of patients in coma and knowledge about coma and consciousness at the time. That history requires re-thinking the debate over brain death that followed which has tended to cast the Committee's work in ways this book questions. This book, then, also questions common assumptions about the place of bioethics in medicine. This book discusses if the advent of bioethics has distorted and limited the possibilities for harnessing medicine for social progress. It challenges historical scholarship of medicine to be more curious about how medical knowledge can work as a potentially innovative source of values.

Natality and Finitude

Natality and Finitude
Author: Anne O'Byrne
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2010-09-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0253004772

Philosophers are accustomed to thinking about human existence as finite and deathbound. Anne O'Byrne focuses instead on birth as a way to make sense of being alive. Building on the work of Heidegger, Dilthey, Arendt, and Nancy, O'Byrne discusses how the world becomes ours and how meaning emerges from our relations to generations past and to come. Themes such as creation, time, inheritance, birth and action, embodiment, biological determinism, and cloning anchor this sensitive and powerful analysis. O'Byrne's thinking advances and deepens important discussions at the intersections of feminism, continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and social and political thought.

Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy

Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy
Author: Bernard N. Schumacher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2010-09-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1139493272

This book contributes to current bioethical debates by providing a critical analysis of the philosophy of human death. Bernard N. Schumacher discusses contemporary philosophical perspectives on death, creating a dialogue between phenomenology, existentialism and analytic philosophy. He also examines the ancient philosophies that have shaped our current ideas about death. His analysis focuses on three fundamental problems: (1) the definition of human death, (2) the knowledge of mortality and of human death as such, and (3) the question of whether death is 'nothing' to us or, on the contrary, whether it can be regarded as an absolute or relative evil. Drawing on scholarship published in four languages and from three distinct currents of thought, this volume represents a comprehensive and systematic study of the philosophy of death, one that provides a provocative basis for discussions of the bioethics of human mortality.

The Courage to Be

The Courage to Be
Author: Paul Tillich
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2023-11-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

The Courage to Be introduced issues of theology and culture to a general readership. The book examines ontic, moral, and spiritual anxieties across history and in modernity. The author defines courage as the self-affirmation of one's being in spite of a threat of nonbeing. He relates courage to anxiety, anxiety being the threat of non-being and the courage to be what we use to combat that threat. Tillich outlines three types of anxiety and thus three ways to display the courage to be. Tillich writes that the ultimate source of the courage to be is the "God above God," which transcends the theistic idea of God and is the content of absolute faith (defined as "the accepting of the acceptance without somebody or something that accepts").

Ontological Terror

Ontological Terror
Author: Calvin L. Warren
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2018-05-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822371847

In Ontological Terror Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with nonbeing—a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks—Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being.

Life, Death, and Meaning

Life, Death, and Meaning
Author: David Benatar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2016-03-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1442258322

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar’s distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses. While many philosophers in the "continental tradition"—those known as "existentialists"—have engaged these issues at length and often with great popular appeal, English-speaking philosophers have had relatively little to say on these important questions. Yet, the methodology they bring to philosophical questions can, and occasionally has, been applied usefully to "existential" questions. This volume draws together a representative sample of primarily English-speaking philosophers' reflections on life's big questions, divided into six sections, covering (1) the meaning of life, (2) creating people, (3) death, (4) suicide, (5) immortality, and (6) optimism and pessimism. These key readings are supplemented with helpful introductions, study questions, and suggestions for further reading, making the material accessible and interesting for students. In short, the book provides a singular introduction to the way that philosophy has dealt with the big questions of life that we are all tempted to ask.

Being and Time

Being and Time
Author: Martin Heidegger
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 520
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791426777

A new, definitive translation of Heidegger's most important work.