Re: near death



On Wed, 10 Apr 1996, Tom Blancato wrote:

> The "doesn't count" is interesting. Who's counting? Heidegger calls fear
> an "inauthentic emotion", presumably because when that which is feared
> passes by, Dasein "regains its head" out of the bewilderment of
> fear/terror.

Whos counting?

Those who face death, and those left to mourn. Have they any right to
keep score? Perhaps not, but some will always try to beat the odds and
hope for a better deal.

> Still in all, I would have to say, try telling that to someone who lives
> under threat of death in political oppression, who has been tortured to
> within inches of his/her life, etc. Do we say, de facto or de jure, that
> only that element of the event of turture and/or threat which results in
> some kind of "physical" trauma is "authentic" and "counts"?
>

My comments were not about the threat of death, nor was it my intent to
qualify or quantify the various modes and motives that might hasten it.

I was thinking of the so-called near death experiences--those accounts of
long tunnels with white light at the end. My scepticism is that it bring
us any closer to an understanding of death in either its physical,
psychological, or even spiritual manifestations.

At the risk of being both too anecdotal, and of straying much too far
>from Heidegger:

Some years ago I found myself in an emergency room, standing at the side
of a friend. Suddenly, the heart monitor went absolutely flat. Alarms
went off... a blur of activity... A fortnight later my friend and I
toasted that evening with a celebratory dinner.

Three years later, a different country, another hospital. The sequence
of events were somewhat similar, but this time there would be no dinner
afterwards.

I've come to suspect that near death and death are entirely different,
both for the subject and for the observer. Those who examine near death
as a means towards understanding death, may be led further rather than
closer to an understanding of the issue.

Arsinoe












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Re: near death, Tom Blancato
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