Abstract
My presentation will focus on Jean Paul Sartre's philosophical reflections on death. Contrary to the usual approach, I will not test it in comparison to Heidegger's concept, but rather take it as a philosophical articulation of the dominant understanding of death in our age.
Sartre's reflections on the issue can be summed up in three theses: 1. The moment of death is indeterminate in principle, therefore our death falls outside all possibilities, which we can expect and into which we can project the meaning of our existence.
Death whose arrival we can merely count on, negates all the meaning we assign to our existence, as it deprives us of this existence. 2. The meaning of our death, and with it of our life as a whole are decided for us - and without us - by our survivors.
Death as the end of our subjective life reduces us to a mere object of the subjective lives of others. 3. Although the instant of death deprives us of our subjectivity, death itself is not part of the ontological structure of subjectivity as such.
While exercising the absolute power over the fact of our existence, death nonetheless remains an accidental fact. All in all, Sartre's concept of death unravels a non-dogmatic perception of death as an empirical event, which we encounter in the world.
In my presentation, I will further develop this notion, showing that even though we strictly follow the description of death as a mundane event, death is nevertheless categorically different from all that we experience in this world. The fact that Sartre's reflections already imply Levinas' grasp of death as the radically Other, will then emerge.
Finally, I will demonstrate what, according to Sartre, means to face our own death. I will then ask if facing death in the form of an accidental fact is even possible.