I begin by offering an account of two key strains in the history of philosophical dealings with death. Both strains initially seek to diminish fear of death by appealing to the idea that death is simply the separation of the soul from the body. According to the Platonic strain, death should not be feared since the soul will have a prolonged existence free from the bodily prison after death. With several dramatic modifications, this is the strain that is taken up (...) by much of the mainstream Christian tradition. According to the Epicurean strain, death should not be feared since the tiny pthesiss that make up the soul leave the body and are dispersed at the moment of death, leaving behind no subject to experience any evil that might be associated with death. Although informed by millennia of further scientific discovery, this is the strain picked up on by contemporary atheistic, technologically advanced mankind. My primary goal is to demonstrate that philosophy has an often-overlooked alternative to viewing death in terms of this ancient dichotomy. This is the alternative championed by Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. Although both thinkers arise from the Christian tradition, they clearly react to Epicurean insights about death in their work, thereby prescribing a peculiar way of living with death that the Christian tradition seems to have forgotten about. Despite the association of Kierkegaard and Heidegger, there is a fundamental difference between them on the subject of death. In Being and Time Heidegger seems to rely on the phenomenology of death that Kierkegaard provides in texts such as "At a Graveside." It is interesting to notice, however, that this discourse, especially when seen in the light of Kierkegaard's more obviously religious works, might only be compelling to the aspiring Christian. If so, then perhaps there is a tension in both Heidegger's "methodologically atheistic" appropriation of Kierkegaard's ideas about death, and Heidegger's attempt to make these ideas compelling to the aspiring human. My secondary goal is to determine whether Heidegger takes the "existential philosophy of death" too far when he incorporates it into his early ontological project. (shrink)

Prominent advocates of posthumanism such as Nick Bostrom and Ray Kurzweil make the case that a drastic increase in the human lifespan would be intrinsically good. This question of the value of an extended lifespan has perhaps become more pressing as medical and scientific advances are seemingly bringing us closer and closer to being able to extend our lives in the way posthumanists envision. In this paper I intend to use Martin Heidegger’s work on death and freedom to develop a (...) potential objection to the claim that an indefinite healthspan is intrinsically desirable. The basic plan will be to make the case that the structure of human agency is such that truly free action is possible only on the basis of the essential finitude of our existence. Assuming that we take this sort freedom to be an important good, we would lose something of crucial importance if we were to radically extend the human healthspan. I am not claiming to present an entirely conclusive argument against posthumanism, or even enhancing the human healthspan to posthuman proportions, but rather, I see my argument here as adding another currently valued dimension of human existence that could very well be lost if we move decisively in the posthumanist direction. (shrink)