And I think death is no big deal -- or, rather, one's own death is no big deal, since the dead don't know they are dead. The death of others, not our own death, is painful. The complaint of Achilles in the _odyssey_ is not really about being dead but about being dead _and knowing it_! Otherwise "Homer" (or at least the Iliad poet) sees death as what makes human action meaningful, in contrast to the meaningless activity of the immortals (gods). (Note: I speak of the meaning of human actions, not the meaning of human life, which seems to me a nonsense question.)
I don't comment on Heidegger since I am mostly unacquainted with his work, but the claim that the question of death is of more or less central importance in his work is not, for me, much of a recommendation. And as I understand Sartre, the most objectionable part of his thought, the total responsibility of the isolated individual, apparently was grounded in his (Heideggerian?) concept of the 'meaning' of death.
[A bit more below.]
andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> [CLIP]
> >
> I really take H's main point about death, to put
> it in plain English, to be that the fact of our
> mortality is the central issue in the life of a human
> being -- not merely . . ., but as the fundamental
> structuring fact about the lives of mortal beings that
> influences, or ought to influence, everything in our
> lives. [CLIP]
Two different claims: Death (a) _is_ the fundmental structuring fact or (b) _ought_ to be the fundamental structuring fact.
The first is an empirical claim, and I don't see much evidence for it.
The second just hangs there in the air as an unsupported whopping proposition. To make it sensible one would indeed have to wrap it in some first-rate poetry. And then the significance of that poetry (as opposed to its meaning) would be that we live in a world in which some very profound thinkers and powerful poets have very silly thoughts sometimes.
Carrol
P.S. I think it was on this listserv that a week or two or three ago someone made a very stupid dismissal of Mozart. In an aricle on Mozart in the curren NLRB the writer (Charles Rosen) observes, "Bernard Shaw protested acutely that people did not realize how powerful Mozart was because his music was so beautiful." And this evokes the following from Pound:
La Beaute', "Beauty is difficult, Yeats" said Aubrey Beardsley
when Yeats asked why he drew horrors
or at least not Burne-Jones
and Beardsley knew he was dying and had to
make his hit quickly
hence no more B-J in his product.
So very difficult, Yeats, beauty is so difficult.
Canto 80