In the thinking-philosophizing of Schopenhauer, death is central because it is linked together with the “will-to-live”. Death is the fragility pervading our existence; a fragility necessarily delivering into philosophizing. This article, Schopenhauer on death and philosophy, shows and explains this relation and this delivering.
Schopenhauer’s thinking-philosophizing is different from many other philosophical endeavors because it turns toward both the philosophical and the religious in order to think the space that only death can open up. This bringing of death into the center of thinking and philosophizing means that philosophy is not a detached and disengaged observing of the nature of things, the nature of reality. Philosophy now belongs to living and must arise when there is life.
Schopenhauer on the “will-to-live”, death, and knowledge
Schopenhauer starts from the opposition controlling and governing any thinking of death or dying and then says that both views are false; that is, death is either a complete annihilation of that which dies or an opening through which we pass into immortality.
Schopenhauer links together the dread surrounding death and dying with the “will-to-live” dwelling in us. Death arouses dread in us because it shows itself to our “will-to-live” as a complete destruction and annihilation. The “will-to-live” is the origin from out of which the negativity directed toward death arises and is first made possible.
We are attached to life because of the “will-to-live” circulating through our being. Schopenhauer sees this attachment as both blind and unreasonable and opposes it to knowledge. Knowledge, for Schopenhauer, shows how worthless life is. Knowledge shows the pointlessness of living and the meaninglessness of life.
After death and before birth
Schopenhauer says that the idea of what might be happening after death has been discussed “ten thousand times”; it has been discussed more than what might be happening before birth, before coming into existence.
Both times, both thoughts, after death and before birth, are problematic, for Schopenhauer, because there should be no difference between both states. Why should there be any difference between the non-existing that occurs after dying and the non-existing that precedes existence, the non-existing that is before birth? That toward which Schopenhauer is turning now is the suggestion that there might be something in us that has always been and will always be, something preceding birth and surviving death.
Schopenhauer turns to ancient thinking-philosophizing in order to show that the dread surrounding death does not arise from out of knowledge, but rather only from the “will-to-live” residing in us. Schopenhauer repeats Epicurus’s view that death is not evil and confirms and agrees with Epicurus’s argument that “when we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not. To have lost what cannot be missed is no evil”.
That is, it is absurd and unreasonable to think of death as evil. Thus, fearing death is not grounded in knowledge or in the intellect, but rather in the “will-to-live” that pervades and governs us. This will is always turned toward the continuation of our existing and therefore fears death.
Death, on the other hand, is not the complete destruction of that which dies and ceases to exist. There is something that escapes and survives dying and continues existing after the happening of death. Schopenhauer says that there is something that circulates through everything that exists, that is, there is something that pervades existence itself and therefore does not disappear with the death of any specific existent.
In other words, this circulating means that even if someone or something dies, that which permeates everything that exists does not stop circulating, for it continues circulating through the totality of the things that are still existing, the things that have not encountered death yet. That which pervades everything and circulates through existence is the “will-to-live”. The “will-to-live” is indestructible and death cannot reach it or negate it.
Hence, death is not the complete destruction of any existent because the will, the “will-to-live”, that was residing in this specific existent continues existing and circulating through everything that has not yet encountered death. There is something belonging to the individual that has encountered death survives dying and continues existing, yet in other forms, ways, shapes, and paths.
Nature, according to Schopenhauer, is indifferent toward the existing or the stopping of existing of a specific individual, of a certain existent. That toward which nature is turned is the continuation and preservation of the species in general, and not a specific individual.
“since nature abandons without reserve her organisms constructed with such inexpressible skill, not only to predatory instinct of the stronger, but also to the blindest chance, . . . she expresses that the annihilation of these individuals is a matter of indifference to her, does her no harm… With man she does not act otherwise than she does with animals”
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
That which is suggested here is that there is a will, the “will-to-live”, circulating through and pervading the species. This will survives death and continues circulating through everything that still exists. Any observing of nature makes clear that the will is only concerned with the continuation of the species, and not with the survival of this or that specific individual.
That which circulates through everything that exists can be clearly noticed if we turn our gaze toward animals. Schopenhauer says that the way in which animals exist, or the way of the existing of animals, as soon as they come into existence, or as soon as they start existing in the world, proves that they could never have been nothing before their coming into existence. There is something in existence that always escapes death and precedes coming into existence.
“Thus everything lingers only for a moment, and hurries on to death. The plant and the insect die at the end of the summer, the animal and man after a few years; death reaps unweariedly. But despite all this, in fact as if this were not the case at all, everything is always there and in its place, just as if everything was imperishable . . . Death is for the species, what sleep is for the individual, or winking for the eye”
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
The “will-to-live” survives and escapes death, the death of the individual, because it circulates through the species. Schopenhauer says that all living things are confident and serene in the face of death because they know that there is something in them that is indestructible.
All living things carry within themselves that which escapes and survives death. There is something in life that death cannot reach or touch. Schopenhauer calls this thing the continuation of the species as the “will-to-live”.
The will knows that it will always survive death and remain there in its circulating through the species. The will knows that it is indestructible and imperishable; it knows that it is beyond what death can reach, touch, or destruct.
For more articles on Schopenhauer‘s philosophy, read Schopenhauer on Suffering: “All life is suffering”.