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July 2, 2004
Trevor,
I'm at a disadvantage in the discussion on death as I have not read Adorno's article, ‘On Dying Today’, from his lecture series Metaphysics: Concept And Problems.
You said in an earlier post that according to Adorno:
"Death has been used as a way to break into metaphysics but the impotence of the metaphysics of death is neither to do with the fruitlessness of brooding nor with the belief that in the face of death a posture of readiness is seemly. The problem with this metaphysics is that it ‘necessarily degenerates into a kind of propaganda for death, elevating it to something meaningful, … in the end, preparing people to receive the death intended for them by their societies and states as joyfully as possible’. Reflections on death tend to be of ‘such a necessarily general and formal kind that they amount to tautologies’."
Adorno's remarks about brooding do not apply given the account I gave about Heidegger. Adorno's remarks "the belief that in the face of death a posture of readiness is seemly" do apply of we re-interpret a posture of readiness with a comportment of resoluteness.
The question: Does Adorno's claim that the problem with this metaphysics is that it ‘necessarily degenerates into a kind of propaganda for death, elevating it to something meaningful' apply?
What I want to highlight do in this brief post is to make clear that the shift from inauthentic mode of being to an authentic one in Heidegger. The problem here is posed clearly in the film A Japanese Story: how do you shift to an authentic mode of life from within an inauthentic one of everydayness. The film suggested that confronting the very real possibility of death from being stranded in the Pilbara desert opened up a way to overcome being ensnarred in a “metaphysics of the present.”
That situation does not strike me as a degeneration into a kind of propaganda for death, elevating it to something meaningful by preparing people to receive the death intended for them by their societies and states as joyfully as possible. Nor does it seem that Heidegger's reflections on death tend to be of ‘such a necessarily general and formal kind that they amount to tautologies’. It has more to do with the "problems of living" than the positivist interpretation of metaphysics as a tautology.
The second point I wish to raise is:Could not that situation be interpreted as a metaphysical experience that transcends rational discourse of instrumental reason?
The film shows that the two people become different and better people as a result of their experience of being stranded in the desert. In the film they became more humane if you like.
In that earlier post you said that, according to Adorno:
"The metaphysics of death is more than merely solace because humans lost that which in earlier times made death bearable, ‘the unity of experience’. Resurrected metaphysical systems act as a kind of substitute for this, conveying the message that things are not so bad and trying to ‘reassure people about certain essentialities which … have become problematic’, above all time. People’s awareness of time, the possibility of their continuous experience of time, ‘has been deeply disrupted’. In response, ‘the current metaphysical systems are now attempting to rescue this conception of time, which is no longer accessible to experience, and to present temporality as a constituent of existence itself’. There is a tendency in such systems to conjure up that which is no longer experienced, and this is the reason why this kind of thinking is in sympathy with archaic conditions, especially ‘agrarian conditions or those of a simple, small-town barter economy’. Epic deaths are not possible because life no longer has any wholeness. In such circumstances, ‘the notion of wholeness is a kind of ersatz metaphysics’, attempting to underline notions of meaningful existence with ‘the positivist credentials of something immediately given’. It is this idea of completeness and meaningfulness that must be abandoned."
You can read this as Adorno having Heidegger in his sights---especially the phrase, "Resurrected metaphysical systems act as a kind of substitute for this, conveying the message that things are not so bad and trying to ‘reassure people about certain essentialities which … have become problematic’"
The question is: does Heidegger's discourse on death do this? Is it about reassurance? Is it attempting to underline notions of meaningful existence? Is it a substitute the unity of experience’. This article is relevant and it shows that Heidegger is concerned about meaningful existence. I read it as part of a response to the standard Western rationality (eg., Medlin's universal and permanent rationality based on logic, evidence, and formal proofs) that develops an ethical concept of reasonableness – a series of humane judgments based on personal experience and practice.
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