Confronting Finality: Cognitive and Cultural Perspectives on Death Pro Life

Abstract

Finality suggests an unchangeable conclusion. It also raises the idea of a goal towards which a reality is directed. This is the sense in which one finds the final cause in Aristotle and other philosophers. Nearly everyone feels helpless before finality. This is because it evokes the spectrum of finitude as it appears to occur in the dead. No one in the prime of life and at the peak of health, wealth, pleasure and hopeful optimism actively desires death. Yet like a shadow, the awareness of a possible sudden end stalks at everyone. It is not the most comfortable feeling. This raises a situation where both the idea and the reality of death must be confronted in order to make sense of life. Has it meaning? Is it destined or free floating? How and when will life end or does it even have an absolute termination at all? Is death life’s last unassailable barrier or just a simple demarcation from other forms of conscious existence in some way? Though often never put into words, failure to engage these questions raises conundrum. Attempts to answer them form and inform cultures, nourish customs, create traditions, inspire inventions, and generally stimulate the human spirit. They keep religions alive, engage thinkers, inspire fidelity to cultural roots and symbols and fire up the spirit of research. It is the position of this paper that confronting human finality is at the service of valorizing human life further. It is like an unseen engine that keeps the vehicle alive. Thus, life approaches death while death serves life. It (death) forbids anyone at the level of the intellect, experience and knowledge from making any absolute positive claims regarding the termination of life. Confronting death psychologically, physically and spiritually requires specific perspectives since each man must face it inevitably in his person and each culture and religion must make sense of it in its own way. That is what this study examines.