People's views of death, at least in Europe, and many times even the same person's view of death oscillate between one view of death as absolute destruction, and the other as immortality, even retaining the original hair and appearance. Both views are equally wrong, but we need to find not so much a correct middle point between these two ends as we need to get a higher perspective on the issue – and once viewed from this higher perspective, the above erroneous views disintegrate on their own.
I would like to examine it first from a purely empirical standpoint. Thus, the first undeniable fact before our eyes is that, according to the degree of their natural consciousness, people are correspondingly not only more afraid of their own death than everything else, but also that the death of relatives and friends will make them weep bitterly; and people obviously do so not because of their own loss, not because of their own reasons, but from a sympathy for the great misfortunes suffered by these relatives and friends. Therefore, those who do not shed tears and do not show sadness in this situation will be dismissed as hard-hearted and ruthless.
As in this case, the strongest desire for revenge is to put the enemy to death – the greatest misfortune that the retaliator thinks can be done. Human opinions and opinions will vary from time to time and place, but the voice of nature is the same at all times and everywhere, so it should be taken seriously. Here, the voice of nature seems to be making it clear that death is a great misfortune. In the language of nature, death means destruction, and it can already be judged that life is not a pleasure – everyone knows it. Perhaps, we do not deserve anything better than life and death.
In fact, the fear of death is not based on cognition, because animals also fear death, although animals do not know death. Once all living beings are born in this world, they already have the fear of death. This transcendental fear of death is the other side of the desire to live, and we and all living things are. Therefore, for every animal, the fear of self-destruction is as innate as the concern for self-preservation. Therefore, in order to prevent the attack of dangerous creatures, animals place themselves, especially their young children, and the caution and caution they show are afraid of their own destruction, not just to escape suffering. Why do animals run away, tremble and try to hide? Because this is the intention to survive, the animals that are the intention to survive are to suffer death, and what they want is to fight for a little more time to survive.
The same is true of human nature. The greatest misfortune and worst thing that threatens people is death, wherever it is; man's greatest fear is the fear of death. Nothing arouses our strongest attention more than the danger to the lives of others; and nothing is more terrible than the betrayal of the death penalty. The infinite attachment to life that people show in these situations cannot come from people's cognition and thinking. For the intellectual and the contemplative, this attachment to life is actually rather foolish, because the objective value of life is rather erratic; whether this kind of survival is superior to non-survival is at least questionable. Indeed, if experience and contemplation can determine the matter, then non-survival will surely win.
If we ask the grave whether the dead would be willing to be human again, they will shake their heads and refuse, as Socrates held in Plato's Apology for Socrates. Even the cheerful and lovely Voltaire had to say, "We love this life, but nothingness and non-existence have their benefits." And then there's, "I don't know what eternal life looks like, but our life is no different from a prank." (Letter to count Dargendal of 27 July 1768) Besides, this life, in any case, would soon come to an end. We may still have a few years to live, but compared to the endless worlds that we will no longer exist, these are really a drop in the ocean. Therefore, for such a period of survival, so nervous and worried, once our own lives or others' lives are in danger, it is ridiculous that the tragedies we write are all terrible because of our introspective thinking.
This inseparability of being is therefore blind and irrational, and the explanation for this can only be that our whole essence of being is the will to live; for this will to live it must be the supreme benefit, though it is always so short, uncertain, and bitter; the very desire to live is cognitive, it is blind. In contrast, epistemology is far from the source of attachment to life, and the role of epistemicity is even against this attachment, because epistemicity exposes the worthlessness of existence and thus dispels the fear of death. When the power of cognition prevails and people are thus able to face death bravely and calmly, people will regard this attitude and behavior as great and noble. We thus celebrate the triumph of knowing over the blind desire to exist that forms the core of our essence. In the same way, we despise those whose cognitive abilities have lost the battle—those who, for this reason, unconditionally cling to this existence, fight with all their might against the approaching grim reaper and eventually die in despair. But what is expressed in this latter kind of person is the original essence of ourselves and nature.
Here, by the way, why is the infinite attachment to life, and the use of all means to prolong this life, be regarded as low-level and despicable? Why would such acts be dismissed by followers of all religions as if survival is a gift from the good gods that we need to be thankful for? Why does the contemptuous attitude of seeing death seem great and noble? This reflection also confirms to us:
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1) The desire to survive is the inner essence of man;
2) The intention to survive itself is unconscious and blind;
3) Cognition is inherently foreign to intention, something that is added;
4) Cognition and the intention to survive conflict with each other, and when we see that cognition triumphs over intention, we applaud it.
If death seems so terrible because we think of non-existence, then we should also shudder at the thought of our previous existence, for this conclusive fact is indisputable: non-existence after death is no more tragic than non-existence before death. An endless amount of time has passed since we did not exist— but it has not at all made us miserable or unbearable. So, is this desire to survive because we have tasted it and found it quite cute? As discussed briefly above, the answer is certainly not. The experience gained from life awakens the infinite desire for non-existence—a paradise that is simply lost. In addition to hoping for the immortality of the soul, people always hope for a "better world"; this shows that the present world is not so beautiful.
Leaving aside all this, our questions about the state behind us are a hundred times more frequent than those of our state before we were born, whether they remain verbal or appear in books. But in theory, both of these problems are as closely related to us as we are worth exploring; and if one of them is solved, the other is solved. We've heard a lot of touching arguments about how the mind of so-and-so once embraced the world, how rich and incomparable his mind was, but now it has to be buried in the grave together—it's shocking to think of. But we have never heard it said that before the birth of this thinker and his qualities, endless time has passed, and this world has been missing this thinker for an endless time, and has been struggling to support it.
But if knowledge has not yet been bought and influenced by intention, it is only natural for knowledge to face the question: Before I was born, an endless amount of time had passed; what was I during this time? From a metaphysical point of view, it may be possible to reply, "I have always been me, that is, everything that speaks roughly 'me' in this time is me." "But we're going to look at it from the point of view that we're adopting now, and assuming that I didn't exist before." In this way, after I die, I can console myself and say: Before I did not exist, everything was not all right. This is because the time when I will no longer exist is no more terrible than the endless time when I did not exist, and the reason is that what distinguishes the two is only a short-lived dream in between. All evidence that the person continued to exist after death can also be applied to the pre-life to indicate that there was a presence before the death.
The views of Hinduism and Buddhism on this show that the theories of the two religions in this regard are quite consistent. But only Kant's conception of time solves all these mysteries, but this is not part of the topic we are discussing now. From the foregoing, these inferences lead to the same absurdity of mourning that we will no longer exist, as sad as mourning that we did not exist before, because the relationship between the time we are absent and the time we are in is the same in the future or in the past.
Even leaving aside these considerations of time, it is absurd in itself to regard non-existence as unhappy, for every misfortune, like every good, is premised on existence, and indeed consciousness; but consciousness ceases with life, even during sleep and fainting. So, the absence of consciousness does not contain unhappiness – this fact is well known. The disappearance of consciousness is certainly a matter of moments. It was In this way that Epicurus thought about death and thus uttered the correct insight that "death has nothing to do with us"—his interpretation of this statement is that if we exist, there is no death; if death occurs, we cease to exist. It is obviously not an unfortunate thing to lose something that someone will no longer think about. Therefore, death is not unfortunate for consciousness. Moreover, it is true that the fear of death is not the cognitive part of the "I"; the "fuga mortis" (Latin for "escape from death") is simply a blind desire that all living things have.
However, as mentioned above, this escape from death is very important for every living being, precisely because these creatures are the will to live, and the whole essence of the desire to live is the desire for life and existence. Cognition does not originate in the will to survive, but only appears after the intention to survive is objectified into a single animal. Thus, when the intention sees, with the help of cognition, that death is the end of its own phenomenon—the intention to see itself as one with this phenomenon, and thus sees itself confined to this phenomenon—the whole nature of the will will rebel with all its might. As to whether death is really that terrible for the mind, we will explore it later; in doing so, we will revisit the true source of the fear of death, which has been pointed out here, and the precise distinction between the intention part of our essence and the part of cognition.
Corresponding to the above statement, death seems so terrible to us not so much because our life is over—in fact, it is not a particularly regrettable thing for anyone—but rather that the organism is destroyed by death, because this organism is the intention itself that manifests as a body. But this kind of physical destruction can only be felt by us only when we are sick and old, and death itself for the subject is only at the moment when consciousness disappears, that is, the brain marrow activity stops. The rest of the body then ceased to move, but this was after death. Therefore, death is only related to consciousness in terms of subjectivity.
As for what the disappearance of consciousness is, everyone can learn a little bit from their own sleep; and those who have experienced true fainting (Ohnmacht) know more about this disappearance of consciousness, because when fainting occurs, the process of disappearance of consciousness is not gradual, nor does it transition through sleep, but when we are still fully conscious, the visual function first disappears, and then we enter a deep unconscious state. The feeling at this time, if there is a feeling, is not unpleasant at all. There is no doubt that just as sleep is the brother of death, fainting is the twin brother of death. Death or death is not painful, because even severe physical injuries are generally only felt at a later time, and are often detected only after seeing external signs. If these blows are fatal in an instant, the consciousness disappears before it is discovered that the blow is severely damaged; if it is delayed for a while before it finally kills, then these traumas are no different from other diseases. Then there are those who lose consciousness by drowning, or by inhaling smoke, or by hanging, who speak of the well-known fact that there is no pain in the process of this happening.
In the end, even natural death, that is, premature death at the end of the day, or painless death to end the suffering of the incurable, fades out of existence in an unconscious way. In old age, passions and desires, and sensitivity to the objects of these passions and desires, are gradually extinguished; emotions are no longer difficult to find stimuli, because the ability to produce appearances in the mind of the old man has gradually weakened; the picture in the mind is becoming more and more dim and blurred, and the impressions caused by things no longer stay, but disappear without a trace; the days pass faster and faster, and what happens more and more loses its meaning. Everything became pale and faded. The elderly man staggered back and forth, or he cowered and rested. They have become a shadow and a ghost of their past. What is left for death to destroy? Somehow on the last day, he never woke up again, and his dream was.... What dreams he had was asked by Hamlet in his famous monologue. I believe we are dreaming these dreams right now.
Incidentally, it should be added that although the maintenance of the life procedure has a certain metaphysical basis, the maintenance is not unhindered and can therefore be carried out effortlessly. It is in order to maintain this life program that this organism has to do some rationing and replenishment work every night. Therefore, the body interrupts the operation of the brain marrow, secretion, breathing, pulsation and heat are partially reduced. It follows from this that the total cessation of the life program must be a relief to the life force that drives it. The serene expression on the faces of most dead people may be for this reason. In general, the moment of death is akin to waking up from a heavy nightmare.
So far, the result we have come to is that although death makes people shudder, death is not really a great misfortune. Many times, death seems even a good thing, something we have longed for for a long time, a long-lost friend.
Note: This article is excerpted from "Schopenhauer's Aesthetic Essays", pp. 204-211, by Schopenhauer, translated by Wei Qichang, Shanghai People's Publishing House, January 2009, 1st edition.