Philosphy of Man

Man and Death

“You know what they say: ‘It takes nine months to create a man, and only a single
day to destroy him.’ We both of us have known the truth of this as well as anyone could
ever know it… Listen, May: it does not take nine months to create a man; it takes fifty years
fifty years of sacrifice, of determination, of so many things! And when that man has been
achieved, when there is no childishness left in him, nor any adolescence, when he is truly,
utterly, a man the only thing he is good for is to die.’”
This bitter remark, taken from the last page of André Malraux’s Man’s Estate, was
intended by the author of the novel to be an expression of the futility of life. For, if human
death has no meaning, then the whole of life is nothing but emptiness. If, on the other hand,
there is in death a fullness of being which life does not possess, then life itself must be
subjected to a thoroughgoing reinterpretation and re-evaluation. It is a strange thing that the
search for some content in life and some continuity of human existence should have to start
off as an enquiry into the meaning of death!
It is not easy for us to do this nowadays. The violent, primitive process of death is
becoming so obscured by our general forgetfulness of the meaning of all natural processes
that we are no longer disturbed by it. There are few happenings to which we have grown
so blind as we are to death. But to be forgetful of death is to be forgetful of life, whereas
thinking of one’s death is an act in which life begins once more to appear as a source of light.
A man who knows death also knows life. The converse is true, too: the man who is forgetful
of death is forgetful of life also.

Ladislaus Boros SJ
THE MYSTERY OF DEATH

There are two parts to this section: Life from the point of view of death (Heidegger),
and death from the point of view of life (Roger Troisfontaines).
“Martin Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Death” differentiates the inauthentic mode of
being-towards death (evasion) and the authentic being-towards-death (anticipation).
Roger Troisfontaines’s “Death, the Test of Love, and the Condition of Liberty” argues
two points. First, depending on how we view the union broken by death as the only kind of
union possible or as a union subordinated to a higher kind of union, death is a test of love for
the survivor. Second, death is a condition of freedom. Death is an act, a final option, a yes or
no to our fundamental option of love or egoism. In death, we surrender our limitations that
go with our imposed body and become truly free to love or to be egoistic.

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MARTIN HEIDEGGER’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEATH

by Manuel B. Dy Jr.

According to Heidegger, the being of man is a being-in-the-world. Man is primordially

directed towards the world and has the power-to-be in the world. His being in the world
consists in being alongside with things, the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand, what
Heidegger calls “concern;” and in being with others, “solicitude.” The being of man is
Dasein, “There-being.” “There-being is the There of Being among beings it lets beings be
(manifest), thereby rendering all encounter with them possible.”1
By being in the world, by being involved in it, Dasein has the power to be. Once thrown
into the world, Dasein realizes its own possibilities, it constantly actualizes its potentialities
of existence. As such, man is always ahead of himself; in his being he is always ahead of
himself, ahead of what he actually is. Being thrown into the world, he discovers himself
there absorbed in things and people, and constantly realizing his own possibilities for being.
This is what Heidegger calls “Care,” the fundamental structure of Dasein.
The primary item in care, therefore, is the ahead-of-itself of Dasein. Dasein as project
always comports itself towards its potentiality for being. There is always something still
‘outstanding’ in man. As long as man exists in the world, his potentiality for being is never
exhausted. According to Heidegger, there is always something to be settled yet in man. Man,
as long as he IS, has never reached his “wholeness.” Man always has an unfinished character.
Man reaches his wholeness in death. In death, man loses his potentiality for being,
he loses his “there.” There is no more outstanding in man, everything is finished, settled for
him. He is no longer being there.2
What is death for Heidegger? How is death related to the being of man, and what is
man’s attitude towards death? Since death is the transition of man from Dasein to no-longer-
Dasein, there is therefore the impossibility of experiencing this transition. No one has ever
come out alive from death to tell us about death. How then are we going to describe death?
What is Heidegger’s phenomenology of death?
Our first experience of death is the death of others. We see, hear people die. If man
is a being with others, will the death of others then give us the objective knowledge about
death? But the death of another person, Heidegger argues, makes him no longer a person but
a thing, a corpse, although he may be the object of concern for those who remain behind.
However, we have no way of knowing the loss of being that the dying man “suffers.” We
never experience the death of another as he himself has experienced it. Even if, granted that
it is possible for us to analyze the dying of others, we can substitute and represent the dying
of any Dasein for another, will our representation be valid and justified? True, representation
is one of the possibilities of man as a being with others, but representation is always a
representation in something, with something. But in death, the totality of man is involved; it
is Dasein coming to an end. Dasein’s dying is therefore not representable. “No one can take
the other’s dying away from him.”3 Death is always mine. It is a peculiar possibility of my
being in which my own being is an issue. Mineness and existence are constitutive of death.

1 W.J. Richardson. Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague, 1963), p. 40.

2 Sein and Zeit. English translation, Being and Time (SCM Press Ltd., 1962), p. 237 (of Heidegger’s original).
3 Ibid., p. 240.

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Death is therefore the possibility of man, a “not-yet” which will be. And what is
peculiar in this possibility is that it has the character of no-longer-Dasein, of no-longer-
being-there, and belongs to the particular man, his very own, non-representable.
We have said that as long as man exists, he lacks a totality, wholeness; and this lack
comes to its end with death. This lack of totality of man is not the lack of togetherness
of a thing which can be completed by piecing together entities or parts. This totality and
wholeness of man is a “not-yet” of man which has to be. This “not-yet” of man, moreover,
is something that is already accessible to him. Dasein, as long as it is, is already its ‘not-yet.’
This “not-yet” of Dasein is like the “not-yet” of the unripeness of the fruit. The ripeness of
the fruit is the end of its lack-of-ripeness, the end of the “not-yet” of the fruit. As long as the
fruit is not ripe, it is already its ‘not-yet.’ There is, however, a difference between the ripeness
of the fruit and the death of man. With the fruit, the ripeness is the fulfillment of its being.
In the case of man, on the other hand, in death, man may or may not arrive at his fulfillment.
And here Heidegger throws a striking remark: What is unfortunate is that “so little is it the
case that Dasein comes to its ripeness only with death, that Dasein may will have passed its
ripeness before the end. For the most part, Dasein ends in unfulfillment . . . ”4
Dasein, therefore, as long as it exists, is already, its end. The end of Dasein is not to be
understood as being-at-an-end but as being-towards-the end. Heidegger’s phenomenology of
death therefore is not a description of death and an after life, but of man as a being-towards-
his-end, a being-towards-death. If man is being-towards-death, and his being in the world
has the fundamental structure of care, then the end of man must be clarified in terms of care,
his basic state.

Being-towards-Death and Care

Heidegger defines care as “ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in (the world) as Being-
alongside entities which we encounter (within-the-world).”5 Care, in other words, has the
following characteristics of Dasein’s being: existence, in the “ahead-of-itself;” facticity, in
the “Being-already-in;” and falling, in the “Being-alongside.” Being-towards-death must be
understood in these terms.
Man, in being ahead of himself, as project, comes to the disclosure of his extreme
possibility, the possibility that he will no longer be “there.” Death is the uttermost “not-
yet” of man, something towards which he comports himself. Death is not just something
that happens to man; it is something impending. The impending is not that of the coming
storm, or the arrival of a friend, or a journey one is going to undertake. The impending of
death is distinctive, because it is the possibility which is ownmost; death is mine, something
that I have to take over myself. In death, I stand before myself in my ownmost potentiality
for being, because the issue in death is no other than my being in the world. Death is the
possibility of my no-longer-possible, of no-longer-being-able-to-be-there; the possibility of
being cut off from others and from things. And this possibility is the possibility that must be,
something that I cannot outstrip. My being ahead of myself in my project towards the world
with all its possibilities reveals to me my uttermost possibility, distinctively impending,
because this possibility is my ownmost which cuts me off from others (non-relational) and
which I cannot outstrip.

4 Ibid., p. 244.
5 Ibid., p. 249.

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This possibility of my absolute impossibility is not just obtained in my rare moments.

As soon as I am born into the world, I am already thrown into this possibility. I may not be
aware of it, but the fact that I exist in the world, I exist with the possibility of death. This
possibility is revealed only in the basic mood of man, anxiety, in the experience of dread
wherein man comes face to face with his potentiality for being. Anxiety is not fear, because
fear is concerned with something determinate which threatens my immediate involvement
of things. Anxiety is of something indeterminate; what I dread is not an entity, but the world
itself, my being-in-the-world.
Many are indeed ignorant of death as the possibility which is ownmost, non-relational,
and cannot be outstripped. They are engrossed in immediate concern with things, thus
covering up their ownmost being-towards-death, fleeing in the face of it. But the fact remains
that they are being-towards-death, that man is dying even in his “fallenness,” in his being
absorbed in the everyday world of concern. Let us describe further this fallenness of man in
being-towards-death.

Everyday Being-towards-Death-Inauthenticity
In the publicness of everyday concern, death is known as a mishap that frequently
occurs. The self of the public, the impersonal ‘they,’ talks of death as a “case of death,” an
event that happens constantly. The “they” hides death by saying, “People die . . . one of
these days one will die too, in the end; but right now it has nothing to do with us.”6 The they
realizes that death is something indefinite that must arrive ultimately, but for the moment, the
‘they’ says, it has nothing to do with us. It is something not yet present-at-hand, and therefore
offers no threat. The “they” “says,” “one dies,” but the one is nobody, no one will claim that
it is I. In this way, the “they” levels off death, makes it ambiguous, and hides the true aspects
of this possibility, the mineness, non-relational, and that which cannot be outstripped.
This is the inauthentic mode of man of being-towards-death. He loses himself in the
‘they’ and forgets his distinctive potentiality for being. The “they” has a very nice way of
hiding the true nature of man’s being-towards-the-end. When a person is dying, the “they”
talks to him into the belief that he will not die, that he will recover his normal state of
tranquilized everydayness. By tranquilizing death, the neighbors console the dying person and
of course themselves. The normal carefreeness of everyday concern must not be disturbed.
To start thinking about death is considered by the “‘they’ as a sign of cowardice, of fear,
of insecurity. The “they” does not permit us the courage for anxiety in the face of death.”7
Instead, the anxiety in the face of death is taken as a sign of weakness. According to the
“they,” the attitude to the fact that one dies is that of indifferent tranquility. For Heidegger,
this indifferent tranquility means the alienation of man from his ownmost non-relational
potentiality for being-towards-death.
Everyday being-towards-death is therefore “falling,” a constant fleeing in the face of
death. The everyday man is constantly evading death, hiding it and giving new explanations
for it. Actually, the everyday man, even in his falling, attests to the fact that he is being-
towards-death, although he assures himself in the inauthentic, impersonal “they” that he is
still living. Even in the mode of tranquilized indifference towards his uttermost possibility of
existence, man still has his ownmost potentiality for being an issue.

6 Ibid., p. 253.
7 Ibid., p. 254.

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The impersonal “they” is also certain of death. The “they” says, “death certainly
comes, but not right away.” The “but . . . “ is at the same time a denial of certainty. This is
the ambiguous attitude of the ‘they’ with regards to the certainty of death. However, this
certainty of the “they” seems to be only an empirical certainty derived from several cases of
other people’s death. As long as man remains on this level of certainty, death can never really
become certain for him.
But, though man may seem to talk only of this empirical certainty of death in the
public, he is really at the bottom aware of another higher certainty than that of the empirical,
and this is the certainty of one’s own death. The inauthentic man, however, evades this
higher certainty in carefreeness, in an air of superior indifference. He stops worrying about
death and busies himself in the urgency of concern, deferring death as “sometime later.”
Thus, he covers up also the fact that death is possible at any moment, the indefiniteness of
death which goes with its certainty. The inauthentic man confers a kind of definiteness upon
this indefiniteness of death by intervening it with urgent matters of the everyday. However,
inasmuch as he flees from death, the everyday man actually derives his certainty of death
from the fact the being thrown into the world is being-towards-death. Death is ever present
in the very being of man.
What, on the other hand, is the authentic being-towards-death?

Authentic Being-towards-Death
The authentic response of man in his awareness of being-towards-death is not of
evasion, of covering up death’s true implications, nor of giving new explanations for it. Man
must face the possibility of death as his possibility, the possibility in which his very existence
is an issue. Facing this possibility is not actualizing it, that is, bringing it to happen. That
would be suicide, and suicide demolishes all the potentialities of man instead of bringing
them into a whole totality. Nor does it mean that man must brood over death, calculating it;
for death is not something one can have at one’s disposal.
The authentic being-towards-death is anticipation of this possibility. By anticipation,
man comes close to death, not by making it actual but by understanding it as the possibility
of impossibility of any existence at all for him. Anticipation reveals to man that death means
the measureless impossibility of existence. This projection of his utmost possibility will
provide him with a vision of his own present existence, the latent possibilities lying before
him.
In authentic being-towards-death, man realizes that death is his ownmost possibility,
and thus the awareness comes to him of his potentiality for being, for fulfilling himself, his
own being. He must therefore wrench himself away from the impersonal “they” and make
himself an individual, alone.
Death individualizes man, because death does not belong to everybody, but to one’s
own self. This individualizing by death reveals that “there” of man, his being-alongside-
things (concern) and his being-with-others (solicitude). It reveals to man that his concern
and solicitude is nothing when his ownmost potentiality for being is itself an issue in
death. Authentic being-towards-death does not mean, however, cutting oneself off from all
relationships; rather it means projecting oneself upon his ownmost potentiality for being
rather than upon the possibility of the “they” self. Death is known to the authentic man as non-
relational, and with this awareness, he as it were understands and chooses his possibilities of
relations in the light of the extreme possibility of death as non-relational.

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The authentic man does not outstrip death. His anticipation does not evade death;
rather it accepts this possibility. In accepting death as the possibility, man frees himself. This
is to mean that man, by anticipation, is free for his own death; he is delivered from becoming
lost in possibilities. While before, in the “they-self,” he was secure in the impersonal but
dictated by it, now, in anticipation, in accepting death as his extreme possibility, man for
the first time can understand and choose among the possibilities in the light of this extreme
possibility. In authenticity, man guards himself from falling into the ambiguous “they” and
he is now free to be himself, the person he himself wants to be. His possibilities are now open
before him, determined by his end and understood, thus, as finite. In anticipation of death
as non-relational, man gains an understanding of his potentiality-for-being of others. Since
anticipation of this possibility which is not to be outstripped opens to man all possibilities
for making himself, man now comes to grip of his wholeness in advance. He is now open to
the possibility of existing as a whole potentiality-for-being.
The certainty of death does not have the character of certainty, which is objective,
of the present-at-hand. The certainty of death corresponds to the certainty of being-in-the-
world. Thus, when the authentic man holds death for true, what is demanded from him is not
just one definite kind of behavior, but the full authenticity. In anticipation, man makes certain
first his ownmost being in its totality.
The indefiniteness which goes with the certainty of death call for authentic Dasein to
open itself to the constant threat arising out from its being “there,” a being in the world. The
state of mind that is open to this constant threat is anxiety. In anxiety, man comes face to face
with the “nothing” of possible impossibility of his existence. What he is anxious about is no
other than his potentiality for being. Anxiety individualizes man, and in individualizing him,
makes him become certain of the totality of his potentiality for being. Thus, authentic being-
towards-death is essentially anxiety.
Heidegger summarizes this authentic being-towards-death in the following words:
Anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in they self, and brings it face to
face with the possibility of being itself, primarily unsupported by concernful
solicitude, but of being itself, rather, in an impassioned FREEDOM TOWARDS
DEATH a freedom which has been released from the Illusions of the ‘they,’ and
which is factical, certain of itself, and anxious.8

Karl Rahner’s Notion of Death

Heidegger’s freedom towards death seems to reach a theological development in
Karl Rahner.9 For Rahner, death is not merely something that occurs to man, an event that
overtakes him, nor is it an evil that befalls him unexpectedly. Death, for Rahner, is an act of
man, an act of self-affirmation in regards to his acceptance or refusal to be his authentic self,
a self that is open to transcendence. Death, thus, constitutes the highest act of freedom of
man, the freedom to say yes or no to his openness to God.
If death constitutes the highest act of freedom of man, it is because death involves
the whole man. At death, there is no longer any concupiscence on the part of man. By
concupiscence Rahner means the evil that lessens the power of man to choose between good
and evil; it is the power that prevents man from making a total commitment either to good or
to evil. Because of concupiscence, man never makes a total final commitment to the good or

8 Ibid., p. 266.
9 Karl Rahner, On the Theology of Death (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965).

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to the evil in the course of his life. It is only at death, that his commitment reaches a climax.
Death brings a kind of finality, a definiteness to the life-long decision of man with regard to
his destiny.
Death should not be taken as an isolated point in the life of man. Rather, it is to be
taken as the culminating point of his life, the point where he finally reaches a fulfillment,
a totality. Death, in other words, is not to be isolated from the other free acts of man; it is
understood and it becomes significant only if it is considered against the background of the
totality of man’s life, because in death, the very issue is no other than man’s total being, his
total commitment.
As such, death should therefore be present in every free act of man. Every free act of
man should carry an awareness of his fulfillment to a commitment, a realization that this one
free act helps to build a total decision of his whole being to the good (or to the bad). The very
presence of death is in the very being of man. The anticipation of death brings man face to
face with the possibility of being itself in an impassioned freedom towards death, with the
possibility of making an active consummation from within of the totality of his own being.

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DEATH, THE TEST OF LOVE, AND THE CONDITION OF LIBERTY*

by Roger Troisfontaines, SJ

However enormously diversified may the course of human lives be, all without
exception begin through birth and end in death. But I bear not the slightest responsibility
for my birth, and I carry no memory of it. The temporal, local, racial, familial, and other
circumstances of my birth have greatly influenced the whole course of my destiny, but it was
entirely independent of me. Whether under a blessing or a curse, my birth took place and I
could not shape its pattern. It is eternally what is has been, for it belongs to the past.
It is entirely otherwise with my death. It lies inescapably before me, but it has not yet
come. It will be, and I may therefore expect it and prepare for it. My liberty, which could not
intervene in my birth, can now exercise itself, in this at least, that I may at this moment bring
about my own death, if I so wish. Suicide is a permanent possibility with man, and it often
suggests itself when life turns sour. Correlatively, the preservation of life can be regarded as
the result of a progressive acceptance.
In fact, however, rather than consent to life or refuse it, many attach themselves to
it with a frenzy that is full of anguish and willful blindness. We fear death, and we use all
our strength to forget it. “I too shall die;” and meantime there is no species of “diversion,”
ennobling, or vulgar, which we have not invented to dim the radiance of the evident truth.
Avoiding what reminds us of it, we cultivate the habit of thinking always of death as of
something that concerns others, only others, and we live more or less as the fools of our own
blind faith. But in this domain as in all others, repression and insincerity profoundly disturb
conscience and life. The world at large sees us as people immensely sure of ourselves, for
that is the face we show; but secretly we are ceaselessly measuring how near the abyss
has come towards us and we find ourselves sometimes more, sometimes less aghast at the
thought of it. Instead of lying to ourselves, instead of playing our part in the comedy or tragi-
comedy, would it not be more simple, more courageous, more human, to meditate serenely
on the mystery of death my death?
Yes, but how are we to get light on our subject? My death is absolutely certain, but its
modalities are wrapped in uncertainty and it has this unique character of being completely
“inexperienceable.” Those who break the seal of its secret do not return to tell us either how
the trial is offered, or how they have met it, or how we in our turn must face up to it. Being
strictly personal, death is an act in which the experience of others can give us but very feeble
help. On the other hand, whoever is willing to “contemplate” death, in order to discover its
significance, can do so only by integrating it in a metaphysical or religious world-outlook in
which it will constitute an integral element of the whole. For all that, a concrete philosophy
must explore all ways, and collect all the indications which, in different degrees, bring us
nearer to the heart of the mystery. We wish to point out some of them.
The greatest fear with which death shadows us, a fear which comes alive in us every
time we see a dear one depart from us, is the fear of separation. A far-reaching enquiry into
all the forms of pleasure, of satisfaction, of happiness, and of joy would show that, in spite
of apparent and explicable failures, the element of beatitude resides always in the birth or

* Reprinted with permission of the publisher from Dom Peter Flood (ed.), New Problems in Medical Ethics
(Ireland, The Mercier Press, Ltd., 1967), pp. 102–118.

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the deepening of a union, while separation, on the contrary, always connotes suffering, pain,
misfortune, sorrow. However one may explain it, death remains a rupture of a certain mode
of union with the world, with beloved person, with his own body. For this reason, it will be
always painful. Christ was not ashamed to weep before the tomb of Lazarus. But sorrow will
differ immensely from sorrow, according to whether the mode of union broken by death will
be considered concretely as the only mode which man can know, or as a particular mode
subordinated to other modes of union.
In the first case, death is a final misfortune, without issue or remedy. It is complete
annihilation. I identified myself with my riches, with my possessions, with my having, and
I shall have nothing anymore, which in this hypothesis means: I shall be nothing anymore.
I loved the body above all, and love seldom and with difficulty left the plane of sexual
relations and sensible caresses; now that the body lies there, ready to be bound in its sere-
cloth and put in the clay, I have nothing left of myself. A woman throws herself like a maniac
on the corpse of her lover, clings to it, howls her animal despair. No, nothing will remain
of possessions, of caresses, and for those who have known no other joys here below, death
comes as an absolute end, as a thing evil in itself.
But if the love is spiritualized; if it reaches the plane of friendship; if the objective fact
of being there and of outwardly manifesting one’s presence however precious this may be
is subordinated entirely or almost entirely to the intangible, indescribable fact of being with,
of fusing our existence in a common destiny, of being us rather than two juxtaposed egos, of
being together, open to all love rather than imprisoned in separate cocoons of egoism then
the wrench of death, though it tears and pains, will not reach the depths of this love, of this
friendship. As the Lettres a l’absent of Mireille Dupouey or the Liens immortels of Alice
Olle-Laprune bear witness, among others, the experience of a communion which lives on
after the death of one of the partners is far from rare among Christian people. Death, this
time, far from being experienced as a final absence, shows rather that I reach the beloved
person more intimately than I could know and above all express. The disappearance of the
apparent interpreters of our love shows me, as the cloudless fidelity at times of temporary
separation has already indicated, that our reciprocal presence can dispense with external
signs without being really altered.
After the first stupefication and wave of sorrow which follows the death of a spouse,
child, a dearly loved father or mother, a friend, there are many who sometimes feel, from the
moment when they recollect themselves beside the bed of state, that the dear one is still very
near to them, no longer in this laid-out-body, but with them through the inner language of the
heart. The keeping of communion with the departed now rests with the one who survives. If I
say he no longer exists, or at least that I can have no further intimacy with him, he no longer
holds anything for me, since I have, in effect, freely consummated his death, so that for me
he is now annihilated. But so far from considering his memory as a lifeless and silent relic,
I am inspired by his spirit, I keep myself in his brilliance, I consult him in the depths of my
heart, he does not die for me. Sheer illusion will be the answer of all spirits fed on positivism.
Experience, however, would have its word to say, but it is clear that the very postulate of
rationalism forbids its devotee to have recourse to this kind of experience. We enter, in fact,
into an order of things where, on a very sure objective base, reality nevertheless depends on
our liberty. Is it not always so, when love intervenes? Without my having a hand in it, the
other person certainly exists and I too exist but without him; but that we two should form a
united home, a couple of friends, depends on our own free will. The being of our communion
is really created by the oath explicit in marriage, most often implicit in friendship which
links us one to the other.

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It is for our fidelity to perpetuate this being, even beyond the hazard of death. Our
treason alone can annihilate it. He is numbered among those friends to whom I feel myself
nearer than to others who are separated from me by life alone or with whom I even rub
shoulders daily, in that the dead, because they are dead, can exercise a more profound actual
influence over me. I need only to recollect myself in order to find them again such as they
were and infinitely better, so understanding and so good that before them every mask, all
duplicity, falls away, and we live together in an intimacy unknown in this world where our
bodies separate us from one another. Love and friendship, says the proverb, are stronger than
death. For those who have had experience of it, the wound which the death of a dear one
causes does not harbour that incurable poison which envenoms the existence of those whose
life is bounded by the tangible. Death is faced up to with serenity because there is a sure hope
that it will not sever all relations. He who can say with St. Theresa of the Child Jesus: “I shall
pass my heaven in doing good on earth,” will not look on death as a hopeless rupture, and it
will cease to be the greatest of all suffering.
Inasmuch as the real love in which I participate already here on earth can reach its
fullness only in the after life, I can legitimately long for death, not as for itself but because
it conditions this full union. “I wish to be dissolved that I may be with Christ” (St. Paul);
“Come, Lord Jesus, do not tarry” (St. John); “Je me meurs de ne pas mourir” “I die because
I cannot die” (St. Teresa of Avila). The same invocation ceaselessly echoes through the
Christian centuries, “There is a man,” says Lacordaire, “whose love is ever mindful of the
tomb.” Although we have not that familiar contact with Him which the disciples enjoyed,
Jesus remains present among us. It is to Him that the amity, the fidelity is directed which
faces up to death and to the disappearance of the bodily presence. He himself foresaw it
when He said to his apostles: “I tell you the truth, it is good for you that I go. For if I go
not, the Paraclete will not come to you.” Spiritual presence infinitely surpasses mere visible
presence.
Such desires for death are certainly rare where only love intervenes. Very often, as my
friend Andre Godin has established, they correspond to a process of disengagement which
denotes rather a diminution or a deviation of affectivity. It would be a gross illusion to
attribute the least mystical value to declarations which reflect merely discouragement or
egoistical frustration. Finally, one sees that with authentic saints, the love of Christ can be so
intense that, without doing anything to hasten the moment of their death, they await it with
trembling joy.
How far removed we are, in the case, from the initial sorrow which constitutes our
lot! Death rises up as a criterion of our affections. How my reaction to it differs according to
whether my attachment is made heavy with the flesh or lifted to the spirit! Death is the great
test of love.
II
But is not fidelity beyond the tomb an illusion? In reality, does the departed one still
live, whether he lives for me or not? This is a crucial question to which, at all times, the
spontaneous faith of humanity, such as the religions and nearly all the systems of metaphysics
have expressed it, has answered in the affirmative. One postulate only, it must be remarked,
valid for certain special disciplines, entails the negative. This postulate is adopted and unduly
extended by those who cannot or do not wish to preserve that friendship with the dead of
which we have spoken. In this relation of fidelity, “experience” (if we may be permitted
to use this ambiguous word) recognizes the other person, not at all as the figment of an
overheated imagination, but as real, as active. And, experience weighed against experience, it

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is clear that we have no proof of annihilation how could we have? while a myriad of accounts
among all people maintain the belief in immortality and claim to relate communications of
interventions from beyond the grave.
Nearly two thousand years ago, a Man died, nailed naked to the gibbet of a slave, after
unspeakable physical and moral sufferings. In order to assure himself, though assurance
was not needed, that the Man was dead, a Roman soldier pierced His heart. With this Man
died the hope of a little group of friends who had hailed the Messiah in Him the Savior of
the world. All this came to a sad end on the evening of Good Friday. All His companions
had forsaken Him on the evening before, when the soldiers had taken Him. The chief of His
Apostles had denied Him with an oath: “I know not the man.” It was another of His friends
who had sold Him for thirty pieces of silver! Now that He is dead, nothing remains of His
work.
A few days later, however, see how this work came alive again and, after two very
chequered millenniums, continues more vigorous than ever: the Catholic Church.
The origin of this new life is the irrefutable, triumphant faith in the certain resurrection
of Christ. It was certainly not lightly admitted. No one, it is clear, expected it not after such
a death! Certain disciples, whom He joined on the road, were sadly discussing their dead
hopes, even while some women were announcing the visitation of angels and the apostles
were establishing the disappearance of his body. The empty sepulcher was not enough to
convince them, They must see Him, hear Him, eat with Him, feel Him, in order that their
doubts may be dispersed. But then, these poor men who had fled at the approach of a danger
which did not threaten them are to become vessels of strength. They will overcome all
sufferings. They will accept martyrdom to bear witness that He, Jesus, has conquered death
and that they have seen Him living beyond the tomb!
They now remember that He announced this glorious life to them, at a time when they
were not yet able to understand what He meant; they see how this new life threads itself
through the woof of His existence and of His message; they know that it is the promise of
our own resurrection. And in spite of the innumerable faults and failures of those who people
and direct her, the Church carries through the centuries the fidelity of her origin, and lives in
the Presence of her living Head, risen from the dead.
This fact, established by tradition, by documents and by the formidable consequences
which still continue into our own days, cannot be denied for purely historical reasons,
because no event in history rests on more solid proofs. Without entering into the discussion
of Apologetics on the subject of the Person of Christ, we shall rely, in order to elucidate
the mystery of which we are treating, on the lessons to be drawn from this fact: a man has
conquered death. Now, anguish grips us when we ask ourselves whether the deceased opens
a door on another life, or steps into the void. Through the example of Christ we know that
death is a path, not an ending.
Even after the resurrection of Christ, however, the characteristics of the life beyond
the tomb did not abundantly appear and undoubtedly the mystery must remain an essential
condition of the trial which death provides. At least let us ascertain what we can learn about
it.
Unique in His theandric personality, Christ remains our prototype, the “first-born
among the dead,” especially with regard to the life of glory. While remembering that He
differs from us in that He is Head of the Church of which we are members, we can legitimately
infer our own resurrection from His.

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It is incontestable that during his entire earthly existence, man is very limited in his
freedom. We say that he becomes free. Progressively he disengages himself from hereditary,
familial, social, etc., factors of determination, which he accepts or combats; he orients himself
as best he can among dark forces, and he attempts, if he really wishes to free himself, to draw
the best from them for his personal ends. But how far removed is this precarious liberty from
the divine liberty in the image of which it is, however, created!
In spite of the infinite distance which separates it from its model, it tends nevertheless
to resemble that model. Is not the rhythm of human existence determined by an increased
progressive possibility of the realization of self? Grafted at first in some sort on the life of
another that of the mother grafted too by an act in which it does not participate in any way,
since it did not exist before this conception, the embryo gradually puts forth movements
which are independent of the maternal influx. Birth breaks the primitive symbiosis, and
projects it into an existence which is biologically autonomous but still utterly dependent.
The child has chosen neither race, nor family, nor place, nor date of his birth; he has not
chosen his fatherland, his social milieu, language, rules of etiquette, aesthetic criteria, the
moral principles and religious practice which education brings him, physical temperament,
characters in fact, nothing; he has not even chosen to exist. But flung into the adventure of
life, he must gradually take it up on his own account, abandon, bend, modify all ‘given’
elements which characterize him. On the biological plane, as on the intellectual, moral,
social, religious, he gradually acquires his autonomy by a series of weanings, of crises, and
of undertakings, and he chooses the attitude which will define him.
This passage from the “imposed” to the “personal” is especially evident at the period
of puberty. The child is, in general, balanced, reasonable; he resembles more the adult than
the adolescent. In full crisis, the latter calls everything in question. We can certainly admire
in him the charm of promise and of generous impulses, but it must be recognized that there
is nearly always a disproportion between his body and his imagination, his intelligence and
his affectivity. The grace of childhood has disappeared with its equilibrium. But if the crisis
resolves itself properly, is there anything more beautiful than the young man and the young
woman in the harmonious development of a healthy body, a cultivated spirit, a solid moral
life? The difference and the progress consist in the fact that the equilibrium of the child is
received, is passive, is fixed by ignorance and immunity, while the adult, if he emerges victor
from the crisis of puberty, has an active equilibrium which he has himself, at least partly,
reconquered.
At the age of vocation and choice of a career, he himself more or less decides the
orientation of his life; he actively participates in the creation of his being. It rests with him,
during the crisis of 25 to 30 years, to maintain his ideal while adapting it concretely to the
hard conditions of real life of which the ardent enthusiasm of adolescence is often unaware.
When he reaches maturity, it is less his origin and extrinsic circumstances which define his
being than his personal value, his line of action, the family and the work he has founded.
Nevertheless, however profoundly he may correct himself, he works only on given
foundations: his body with its possibilities and its blemishes, his character, his condition of
life, the contingent state of the world at that moment. To be really ‘the son of his work,’ the
son of his will and of his liberty in short, to posit himself a man would need to be able to give
to himself a body fitted to himself and so formed as to determine the relations he will enter
into with others exactly according to his wishes. The abandoning of the received body would
therefore be an indispensable condition of auto-position in being, of full liberty. Now, is it not
just this abandoning which appears most clearly in every death? As the butterfly abandons
the cocoon where it has developed during its period of chrysalis, so too when we reach the

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definitive stage of our being, we leave aside the body which was the first and indispensable
condition of our growth to spiritual maturity. The body which is mine during the process of
“becoming” is, in some sort, only the womb where is being formed, the “being” which I shall
be, my spirit made flesh. Indispensable during embryonic life, the role of the womb ceases
at the moment of birth; thus, this body which I have not chosen, and which I cannot dispense
with during my period of becoming, will disappear to give a place to my being. Thus we see
that Christ keeps in His glorified body the stigmata of the Passion, the wound in His side and
the marks of the nails in His hands and feet, without being content to revive the bloodless,
torn, and disfigured appearances of the body which has laid in the sepulcher.
What is true of my relation to my body, will not the same be true of all the other
relations which define my being? At the moment of death, all is called in question (much
more radically than at the period of puberty) and I have myself to choose my definitive
attitude towards the universe, towards others, towards myself, and towards God. Here on
earth, I become master of this attitude in proportion as I attain to spiritual autonomy. Without
changing in any way the seity of other beings, it depends on me whether God for me is real or
inexistent according to which attitude I shall live as a religious man or as an atheist. It depends
on me whether I regard my fellow-beings as brothers or as strangers, according to which I
either engage myself with them in the adventure of existence or play my game all alone
with a somewhat disdainful air. It depends on me whether the universe has a magnificent
meaning in serving towards our own divination, or becomes for me absurd, nauseating,
heavy with despair according to which attitude I either unite myself to it in enthusiastic
offering and joyful service or I sever every relation which does not get its meaning from cold
scientific knowledge or from possessive egoism. It rests with me whether I shall construct
a sincere, affectionate, creative personality or whether I shall become desiccated in barren
“enlightenment” and wanton destruction according to which attitude I shall return to my
beginnings in fruitful meditation or I shall disperse myself in introspection and dissipation.
But here on earth, it must be realized, I can demonstrate only a certain orientation: I
am becoming free, I am not yet free in the full sense of the world. My earthly choices seem
to be, above all, preparatory exercises, “repetitions” (as one repeats a passage or a studied
course) of the definitive choice; they foster the birth of my liberty. Let us lift again to the
spiritual plane the biological comparison from embryonic life. In his prenatal existence,
the child learns practically all the acts which will be indispensable to him on the day of his
birth; his heart acquires a proper rhythm, he moves head, arms and legs, he even absorbs
and digests what he can. Similarly, if we may be permitted the expression, we are here
on earth as “embryos of the spirit.” In the course of our earthly “becoming,” we exercise
ourselves to posit the definitive act; and this, whatever may be the duration and the exterior
or interior condition of our human existence. The progressive initiation of life, and the
sudden revelation which crowns it in death, have scarcely anything in common. If the child
could remember, he would tell us of the abyss which separated his life in the maternal womb
from the existence into which birth has projected him, and how little the first, even while
preparing for it, allowed any forecasting of the second. Now, there is not one among us who
ever instruct children still in gestation, concerning the experience of birth through which we
have all passed. Without running the parallel too far and thus making it ridiculous, can we
not say that our earthly existence is, from the viewpoint of our spiritual being, what prenatal
existence was for our becoming? Death, according to the beautiful expression of the old
martyrologies, is the dies natalis, the day of authentic birth, when this time I shall myself
choose what I wish to be for eternity. That is why even our deceased friends allow the veil of
mystery to cover the experience of ‘dying.’ The Platonic formula: “Life, the apprenticeship

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for death” acquires in this perspective a profound significance. The capital act of our earthly
existence is indeed that which ends it that in which becoming ceases in order to give place to
being. Such is the act of dying.
An act, certainly. The person who watches a death agony would be inclined to consider
death rather as a passivity, a decay. This is so because he sees only the end of a becoming, the
failure of a transitory body which, its role complete, effectively weakens into decay. But this
sad spectacle is but the reverse of reality. Breaking the chain which subjected it to a world of
determination and constraint, the real being escapes to choose freely the relations which will
constitute it. On a foundation of existence which my liberty can neither annihilate nor create
(the realitas-in-se of God, of others, of the world, of myself), it rests with me to create their
reality for me, my being with them or without them, communion or isolation, friendship or
hatred. And what counts for me, my being, as distinct from my brute existence, is precisely
this freely chosen attitude. We must not, however, go the length of imagining a creation “ex
nihilo” by an isolated being. With us, the act of liberty essentially answers an invitation. The
artist creates only as he is solicited by the beauty of the world or by inspiration. In the same
way, I create myself as a free “person” only in meeting another, only in corresponding with
the grace of God.
But it is I who makes this answer, and it can be a refusal or an acceptance a refusal
more or less radical, an acceptance more or less generous. Also, an infinite diversity will be
found among the being, each one choosing himself in the original, unpredictable, inimitable
manner.
If we wished to introduce a hierarchy into this diversity, it would be necessary, in
theological terms, to admit an infinity of “degrees” between the highest in Heaven and the
lowest in Hell. It is with this, indeed, that we are concerned. The choice posited in the act
of dying is per se definitive, immutable. Eternity, it is well-known, has nothing in common
with time; it cannot be thought of as a very long time nor as an instant. Every time we
succeed if we ever do so here blow in seizing on totality as such (in poets, love, or mystical
ecstasy, for instance) eternity becomes a reality in us. But we return, alas, to temporality;
apprehending only in part things in themselves particular, we are obliged to multiply our
imperfect apprehensions, and this ‘discourse’ is at the root of our temporal “becoming.”
But in the act of dying, we shall have to invent our mode of immediate participation in the
totality of existing beings. The choice made, in full light, there will be no reason for us or
no possibility of calling it in question. Moreover, each of us will be, for eternity, exactly
what he wishes to be. God has placed this in the power of man’s own counsel. Each will
behave according to his own good pleasure, and no one will regret his choice. Regret would
suppose a second moment in relation to choice. But if a second moment were possible, why
not also a third moment for a new choice, a fourth for a new regret, etc.? Eternity would no
longer be immediate participation in the totality of the real, but a simple prolongation of the
inconstancy of becoming, a period of experiences and of renewals.
Each one being exactly as he wishes to be, no one will regret his choice. Still, this does
not mean that all will participate equally in beatitude. As we have briefly indicated at the
beginning of this study, happiness is measured by union, suffering by rupture. Consequently,
the highest degree of Heaven (we use evidently inadequate spatial configuration) will be that
in which the being wills itself wholly with the others, in a communion of love with all reality.
The lowest depth of Hell will be that in which the being, centered on himself in isolation,
will wholly exclude the others and wish himself without them.

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With or without the alternative between these two propositions summarizes the whole
matter. A choice between these two attitudes is at the heart of all our free actions, and the
attitude gives the action its character. The metaphysicians will say, of course, that liberty
does not necessarily imply choice. We admit that this is so in the case of infinite being. But
limited being will always have to choose between that in which he participates with all the
others, and the limit to which it is lawful to shut himself within himself. The distinction
between the “closed” and the “open” rules all moral and religious order, where it defines the
two contradictory poles of egoism and charity.
At the moment of dying, the being takes his measure. He chooses his degree of
intimacy with the others (God, the world of spirits, the entire universe), or on the contrary
his centering on self which seems preferable to him. He adopts for eternity the attitude which
pleases him. It is in this plenary significance that the aphorism must be understood: ‘All
men are equal when faced with death.’ This is so not only because all pass through the same
trial, but above all because no one among them is set at a disadvantage by the circumstances
imposed by his terrestrial becoming. The materiality of acts or the merits “acquired” (as a
treasure) will scarcely count at this moment. The fundamental orientation of the soul towards
communion or towards isolation, will alone have significance. Every man, whatever his state
in life, his heredity or the conditions of his existence, has gradually adopted this orientation
for himself.
Everything is called in question at death, and the sudden revelation does not prolong
homogeneously the progressive initiation; whence it follows, therefore, that the acts or at
the very least the attitudes of our life do not in any way diminish in value. Experience, in its
many positive and negative forms, educates our liberty. Sin which always coincides with an
egoistic or conceited centering on self can, through the disgust which it inspires, open the
communion, just as the normal development of the virtuous life does. But the latter is an
infinitely better way on condition, let it be well understood, that it is not vitiated by pharisaism
which is also a form of self-conceit. The person orientated towards charity, who all his life
has sought a more profound union with God and with others, will open with fully spontaneity
the moment this communion is proposed to him. Scarcely any hesitation is possible about the
eternal destiny of a genuinely charitable man; and the Church, which forbids any statement
that any particular soul is damned, lists countless saints whose beatitude it certifies.
It is for the soul centered on itself that the final choice will have an especially tragic
character. In acceding to the final plane of being, it is absolutely possible for a soul to be
completely converted. But this volte-face will be all the more difficult because of ingrained
habits as the egoism is more inveterate. And this exactly proportioned difficulty constitutes
the Christian “Purgatory” in which hypothesis, this latter need not necessarily be considered
under a temporal mode. Finally, it can happen that, in spite of the entirely new conditions of
choice, the completed and egoistic person remains obstinate in refusing charity, and elects to
be separated for eternity in hell.
Have we not the shadow of the experience of this choice and of this double possibility
in the profound reaction which the belief that death is very near provokes us? The imminence
of danger frees us for our attachments, and occasions at the same time a strong release of
affectivity. Now, very often, one of two phenomena is noticed in the person thus roused:
either a conversion from mediocrity to a better life, or on the contrary an exacerbation of
wanton egoism. The intrusion of the absolute into human life consecrates and fixes the
generally accepted orientation rather than overthrows it The Sparkenbroke of Morgan, if he
remains forever marked by the precocious experience which he has in the family crypt, will

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become neither more altruistic nor more religious. On the contrary, the Annick whose story
Jacqueline Vincent tells us in Comme par me garde will achieve a fundamental generosity
only on the threshold of death. Far from literary allusions, on the plane of daily existence,
have we not all met with people, some of whom give to charity all that they consider to
be surplus to precarious living, while others rush with increased frenzy to pleasure and
ambitious competition? The thought of death alone acts like a catalysis and forces us to take
a position. Hence meditation on death is always imposed in ascetics, and will always find its
normal place in the conduct of a retreat. Death calls forth liberty, and reveals the depths of
hearts.
The two themes developed rejoin. Death is at once the test of love and the condition
of liberty, because liberty has no other deep significance than that it permits love. The Divine
Trinity Academy who created us invites us to participate in His intimate life which is the
communion of Charity between the Three Divine Persons. Invites us; for of what interest
of God would be the person who would not have accepted freely and chosen freely to love
Him a person, therefore, who would not have freely overcome the temptation to refuse or to
betray? This helps us to understand the meaning of our creation.
Every man is born here into a community which imposes itself on him as a fact anterior
to his free will. But the more he becomes aware of his personal autonomy, the more it rests
with him either to sever the relations which would unite him with others, or, on the contrary,
to accept and deepen them. According to his choice, he will either imprison himself in the
isolation of egoism or pride, he will live without others, or he will open himself to communion
with God and with men, whom he goes out of himself to meet in faith and in love. Just as in
the order of knowledge, we begin with a rich but confused primitive complex, the analysis
of which gives elements which re group to form the synthesis, so too the dialeatic of love
is completed in the order of love only when, disengaged from the imposed community, we
freely accede to communion. But to speak of liberty is to imply the possibility of branching
off on the way. Just as the analysis is indispensable in order to pass from the confusion of
the complex to the harmony of the synthesis, but implies the danger of falling short (as is the
case with highly scientific but one-tracked minds) and failing with both the complex and the
synthesis, so liberty alone permits the passage from community to communion, but implies
the risks of individualist isolation which tears from the community without introducing into
the communion.
Whoever, then, wishes his life to be a success will aspire simultaneously to the highest
liberty and will orient firmly that liberty in the direction of charity. Only on that condition
will death lose for him its sinister character of absolute rupture. It has often been noticed that
the primitive or the little child accepts death with much greater ease than do the majority
of civilized adults. This is because the child and the primitive are scarcely free from the
community. The strictly personal problem of their destiny and their survival troubles them
very little. But it is especially the highly civilized person resting at an intermediate stage
between community and communion, who is racked with anguish. “Disintegrated,” as the
sociologist says, uprooted from the group into which he was born, he has not yet engaged
in a new union, he has not yet fashioned anew a superior set of surroundings where he can
open himself to love. And when, in addition, he has chosen isolation, death must seem to him
the worst of catastrophes, because it seems to threaten the annihilation of that ego to which
alone he grapples his being. On the contrary, we have seen when reading the witness of the
saints that those who lift themselves to authentic communion have no fear of death. Death
will merely change the form of their love; it will not destroy anything.

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The fanaticism of certain young Nazis who flung themselves into the carnage, in the
intoxication of the first battles of 1940, resulted in their being integrated in the community.
One cannot help being reminded of those animals who sacrifice themselves for the good of
the species. Such death is unworthy of a man.
But the attitude of the deserter through egoism is scarcely better. Without a care for
other or for superior interests at stake in the conflict, he thinks only of his own well-being. If
he uses liberty, it is directed towards isolation. And again it is he who, unable to endure the
wounds of life, will commit suicide when disillusionment becomes too raw, when life from
his individual point of view “is no longer worth the trouble of being lived.”
The Christian, on the contrary, knows that, according to the word and the example
of Christ. There is no greater love than to give one’s life for those one loves, but to give it
oneself, freely through love.
Submission to death through instinct, refusal of death through self, love, suicide
dictated by egoism, are all crimes. But when generously accepted, death brings the supreme
completion to him who inclines himself towards charity. If one wishes to measure the
chasm which separates the community which precedes or excludes personal liberty from
the communion which follows and crowns it, one should weigh the difference that exists
between the gregarious madness of death for the race and the sacrifice of his life offered
by the soldier who exposes himself to danger to save a companion or to fulfilled a mission.
But when the community denies liberty, voluntary isolation perverts it and this is a much
more serious matter. Hence is justified the general reprobation which brands the deserter or
the suicide. (Still, the act of suicide, even when followed immediately by death, is only the
second last act of existence, the last being that of dying which can radically transform the
moral orientation.)
In every hypothesis, the most human and the most Christian attitude towardslife, and
in the perspective of death, is the progressive opening up to the totality of the real, the
apprenticeship of ever increasing intimacy with God, with others, with the deep self and with
universe. And when, in charity, we shall participate profoundly in all that is, we shall, like
Francis of Assisi, finish our canticle of the creatures with praise of our sister Death.
“Laudate sii, mi Signore, per sora nostra morte corporale de la quale nulu omo vinente
po’scampare.”
“Guia a quilli che morrano in le peccata mortali.”
“Beati quilli che si trovarano in le tue santissime voluntati, ca la morte secunda non li
potera far mal.”
O day of the Encounter, I await you in peace because I trust in thy immense Goodness,
O Lord.

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QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. How does Heidegger see human existence from the viewpoint of its end?
2. What are the different attitudes towards death? Explicitate the view of life implicit in
each of them.
3. How does Troisfontaines view death from the viewpoint of life? In what sense is death
a test of love? In what way is it a condition of freedom?
4. How does Troisfontaines’s view of death differ from the traditional view of death as
the separation of body and soul?

FOR FURTHER READINGS

Boros, Ladislaus. The Moment of Truth. London: Burns and Oates, 1965.
Choron, Jacques (ed.). Death and Western Thought. New York: Collier Books,1963.
Continuum, Vol. V, No. 3 (Autum 1967). Issue on Death.
Heidegger, Martin. “Dasein’s Possibility of Being-A-Whole, and Being-Towards-Death,” Being and Time. New
York: SCM Press, 1962. pp. 279–311.
Kavanaugh, John. “The Unfolding of Open Potentialities, The Human Soul,” Human Realization: An Introduction
to the Philosophy of Man. New York: Corpus Books, 1970. pp. 123–148.
Rahner, Karl. On the Theology of Death. New York: Herder and Herder, 1965.
Troisfontaines, Roger. I Do Not Die. New York: Desclee Company, 1963.

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