9 - Schopenhauer on Death

Summary

We abhor death, and as nature does not lie and the fear of death is the voice of nature, there must yet be some reason for this.

Schopenhauer

ON DEATH AND LIFE AS DYING

The concept of death is a fundamental adjunct of Schopenhauer's metaphysics of appearance and Will. Schopenhauer interprets death as the aim and purpose of life. He maintains that to live is to suffer, that the triumph of death is inevitable, and that existence is a constant dying. Yet Schopenhauer also insists that death is the denial of the individual will or will-to-live; that birth and death as events in the phenomenal world are alike unreal; that death is not complete annihilation; and that suicide, though not morally objectionable, is philosophically pointless because it affirms the will-to-live. The paradoxes in Schopenhauer's reflections on the nature of death must be understood in order to appreciate what he means by the empirical will in its relation to Will as thing-in-itself in his unique brand of post-Kantian idealism.