 Philo café Victor Schoelcher Logo source: 🔗 https://www.alderan-philo.org/cafe-philo-de-toulouse/ | ||
| Theme | Can the fear of death be overcome? | |
| Animation | Eric Lowen, from the ALDERAN association | |
| Place | The brasserie Le Déli’s in Toulouse | |
| Date and times | Tuesday, November 6, 2012 from 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. | |
| Keywords | café, debate, emotion, death, fear, philosophy, representation, suicide | |
| Information |  I am a member of the ALDERAN association in Toulouse. For more details, see the page on the café philo Victor Schoelcher. | |
In every paragraph of this article, I share ideas that came during or after my participation in this philosophy café. Enjoy!
1. Play on words▲
I want to shake up the words and write them upside down (or right side up, a matter of point of view 🙂 )… This gives me the following: is the audacity of life enough ? We quite often associate the couple fear / death and why not fear / life or audacity / death, just as we also talk about the risk of dying and not the risk of living / the chance to live or the chance to die?
2. An obscure clarity?▲
When we are born, a light turns on. When we die, it turns off. Our life seems dependent on the intensity of this light. When this light is on, it seems that we have to live, make one’s life, make a life while sometimes having the feeling of being lost, of not understanding as if someone had forgotten to give us instructions via an user manual for enlighten us on what we are supposed to do…
3. Representations of death▲
The fear of death is more or less intense in our lives according to the representation we have of it. The darker it is, the more fear there is. The more calming this representation is, the more fear is removed from our hearts (and our heads) and we feel free. Is it enough to touch this representation to no longer be afraid? This is tricky because no representation can guarantee staying alive. Like, death is just a view of the human mind which has a very limited vision, so no point in living.
One idea would be to know as many representations of Death (or life) as possible in order to have the most complete vision and above all not to stop on a particular point of view. Have a holistic notion of Death. It’s free as an affirmation but get closer to the opinion (lol the play on words in French, avis/vie # opinion/life): “Life is worth living because it’s about living a life” or “Life is worth nothing but nothing is worth a life”.
We are given an opportunity to complete something without understanding because of our limited sight: some will take this opportunity (or chance), others will not. Some will also get tired of having to fill it… In other words, some will prefer to experience Death rather than experiencing Life.
4. Death experiences▲
It should be noted that people who have been confronted with Death (coma, bereavement, trauma, etc.) very often seem to emerge with a rather incredible joy of living precisely because they have “experienced Death”. This is an interesting fact: should we conclude that to embrace life to the fullest, it is enough to see a death?
5. Lifespan, origin, end: a question of time▲
A human Life seems to have an origin: birth (we turn on a light) and an end: death (we turn off the same light that was turned on at birth). Some people want to know if this life continues after death. I am interested in knowing if it exists before birth. Is it less relevant? I therefore wonder about the construction of being (…human?), its appearance.
When I look at a mountain, a lake or the ocean, I feel peaceful. I feel fullness. When I see sick people condemned by illness (and therefore by death), I feel nervous and anxious whereas we are all going to die or disappear one day. Geological lifespans are longer than that of human life. The mountains therefore seem immortal to us, but they also die, disappearing after a few hundred thousand years due to erosion… The feeling of peace can perhaps be explained by the fact that these elements of Nature survive us for so long.
Geological history shows us that life is only a short episode between two eternities of death, and that, even in this episode, conscious thought has lasted and will last only a moment. Thought is only a flash in the middle of a long night. But this flash means everything.
Henri Poincaré, The Value of Science.
6. For information▲
- For this philosophical debate, the room was full.
- I spoke once to talk about the importance of the representation of death that we have in our lives; to consider the plural: several representations…
- In most of the participants’ interventions, suicide (often of a loved one) was mentioned… A little aside on this subject with one of the participants, somewhat irritated by the systematic “disorientation” of the debate:
From memory:
– Excuse me, Madam: reassure me, the subject is the fear of death and not suicide?
– Yes indeed. All these people end up off-topic but that’s precisely what’s interesting…
Sonia Kanclerski, Pause-café chez Sonia, Café philo Can the fear of death be overcome?, November 6, 2012.