I may have this jumbled in my head, but I have a problem with Heidegger's position on death being the only singular experience humans have. How do we know it's singular? We cannot relate our experience to others after it happens, so it seems a bit weird to assume that we die in a way no other person has died. Take plane crashes, for example. Every person in the crash dies the same way; their thoughts will probably differ (from "I should have lived more fully" to "Now I can never have sex again") they all physically die in the same way. Another point is that every single person dies, so how does that make it a singular experience if we all have the same end? It seems silly to say everyone lives the same way yet dies individually.
I would like to believe that the thing that makes me different from anyone else are my particular experiences. There are definite times in everyone's life where the person realizes that this is life, or that this is living, whether it be in a hospital awaiting news or driving through a countryside. When these shocking moments happen, it seems like you consciously recognize You- your life, your thought-process; you being You. This kind of lead my thought-process to Jimi Hendrix's song "If 6 Was 9," when he says "I'm the one who decides when it's time for me to die/ so let me live my life the way I want to".
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ReplyDeleteI kind of see both sides of your story but one I relate to a little bit more...I can see where you are coming from in a general sense of if a plane crashes everyone inside of the plane has died "in the crash." However, and I assume that if the plane crashed then it was falling out of the sky and crashed to the ground or the water or whatever...what if someone within the plane was so scared by the experience that they actually died of a heart attack seconds before the plane hits? They had a different death from everyone else. Basically I can still see how death can be singular in a sense to where yes, everyone may have died in the actual plane crash but physically (not to be vulgar) someone may have had a pipe go through their heart from the seat in front of them, the pilots may have been burned to death from the collision, and someone towards the back by the engine was sucked into it and chopped into little itty bitty pieces - each having their own singular death.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I believe that each person has a singular death, I do agree with you that I still have a side of me that also believes that things that we do in life are also singularly ours as well. For instance, just from the thought of nihilation (i think), we can only have singular experiences. When I walk, for every single spot that I step on and for every second of my body being in a posture while walking I nihilate, not only the possibility of me being anywhere else in the world at that time, but also the possibility of ANYONE else in the world standing in that exact same spot at that exact same time PERIOD as I just have! So, because of this, this experience must very well be mine and mine only and only I can remember, recognizing myself as me, "BEING" in that exact position for that one moment ever!
I understand where you’re coming from but I think I agree with Heidegger’s position on death. Although, we are able to sympathize with someone who is experiencing death, we are not actually the being dying; as such, the death experience is not upon us, we are more viewers looking through a looking glass, instead of participants.
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