Being 97 has been an
interesting experience. I'll say that. It's very difficult for people who
have not reached a state of old age, whatever that is. Very difficult for
them to understand the psychology of it. What is going on in the person? How are you feeling? Oh feeling okay, thank you. Prety good. That's good. No grogginess? No groginess. I think I'd wake
up for all this excitement! It's a loss of ability that
you have had all your life. And there's a tendency to act as if
you still had it and then fail. Or be embarrassed. Or you have to accept that finally that you can't do that anymore. That's the rational thing to do. And it
would be very nice if we just all did the rational thing to do, but we don't. You can't just decide rationally. Well, this is the way it's got to be now,
even though it was the other way then. You can say that to yourself, but
that doesn't mean you can do it. These are lifelong habits. I can do a lot of the
usual things of life. But now they are, most of them,
done with effort and special care. And often enough with
help of somebody else. And that's one of the challenges I have
had is to come to terms with the need for help. I was born in Brooklyn in 1921. -Here's your coffee
-Thank you. I am 97 which is a big surprise to me. At this age, naturally I think about death. I taught philosophy in the University
of California, about 40 years, I guess. As a young philosopher I started
out going deeply into psychoanalysis. I have published books on
self-deception and Chinese philosophy. And I also was working in the
theory of ethics and the law. Problems of responsibility, in particular
in connection with alcoholism and drug addiction. and I also wrote a book about death. That was about 20 years ago. Breakfast! -Thank you!
-You're welcome. Looks beautiful. In the book about death What I said was, in a nutshell, is there's
no reason to be afraid or concerned or anything about death because
when you die, there's nothing. You're not going to suffer. You're not going to be unhappy. You're not going to... Well, you just... you are not going to be. -The bacon is good.
-Hm? -The bacon.
-It is good. -I like this kind...
-That's your favorite, right? -Yeah!
-It's good. I mean, at a certain point, there's nothing. So it's not rational
to be afraid of death. I now think that is not a good statement. Because... I think it's important to figure out why it is then that people
are afraid of death. Why am I concerned about it? My argument was there's
no good reason for it. My sense of realism tells me
well, no good reason or not, it is something that haunts
me, the idea of dying soon. I often walk around the house
and I ask myself, often out loud, What is the point of it all? There must be something I'm
missing in this argument. I wish I knew. So here I am, trying to
work out where I am. I still find that I am in many
ways a puzzle to myself. I do find it very interesting
to try to figure it out. What's going on? And I've spent a lot of my life
thinking about such issues. But it's hard. I don't know. I just, usually, just drop the subject. What is the point of it all? I think I ask the question
with the sense that there isn't any good answer. It's a kind of ironic question. I think the answer may be... The silent answer may be there is no point. It's a foolish question. If I had to say... if I had to say something... I would say that loneliness and
absence is an absolute part of my life. And that has to do with my wife. We were very close. We were married for
probably around 70 years. And that is another dimension of this whole
situation that I am preoccupied with at times. Because she's gone and she has been for several years. And I feel that a part of me is gone. We worked together and traveled together. We were happy together. I know how fortunate I have
been to have had a happy life. But half of me is gone. Her absence has been to me for a number of years now, has been a presence. An absence which was present to me. I don't know, call it emptiness. There's something missing. and of course I realize right
away that she is what's missing. That's a very lonely thing. I was with her even when she was dying. That was a difficult experience. At least we got to embrace at that time. That's something I used to
listen to with Leslie, righ here. And we held hands. Death. it's a frightening thought. It's something I don't want to happen. Much as I think our
life in this world is. often a pretty messy affair,
I still would like to hang around. I don't know the basic
reason why I should want to, or the basic reason why
I should be afraid of it. What does it means that
I'm going to leave? As I sit out now on
my deck of the house. I look at the trees blowing
a little in the breeze. And I've seen them innumerable times. But somehow seeing the trees this
time is a transcendent experience. I see how marvelous
it is and I think to myself I've had these here all along. But have I really appreciated them? And the fact is that I have not. Until now. And in a way, it makes the fact of
death even more difficult to accept. It just brings tears to my eyes. I've written books on a
number of other topics. And in each case I felt that
I had solved the problem. But this is not resolvable. It's not just a theoretical question for
me, which so many things can be. It's the one thing that is
central to my existence that I have tried to come to terms with... and have failed. So I just go on existing, that's
the truth of it is existing. And waiting. Waiting until I have to say goodbye.
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Abstract:
97-year-old philosopher Herbert Fingarette (1921-2018) once argued that death is nothing to be afraid of, but as he grew older he reconsidered that approach.
He lived a happy life, but as his wife died several years back, in a way he now finds half of himself missing. Her absence is a sort of presence weighing on his thoughts. He now asks himself often "what's the point?". "I think the answer - the silent answer - may be: there is no point; it's a foolish question."
That was an experience. I've thought about this a lot. Would you rather exist and suffer, or not exist and feel nothing and experience nothing. I'd almost rather when I die go to hell despite the eternal suffering. Not that I believe in it but I might rather suffer for eternity rather than not be.
Though I'm reconsidering this now because I've had a headache all morning and crying at this video made it so much worse. And I'd rather sleep than suffer now, and sleep is almost like a mini death. So maybe I'd rather not exist than suffer for eternity.
the stoic approach to death is among the most practical i've come across
Thanks. It was good to have Herbert around me for that time.
In cognitive behavioural therapy, there is an idea called the Acceptance Paradox: if you have a strong emotion and try to force yourself to stop having that motion, then it becomes stronger. For instance, with the fear of death, trying to convince yourself that you shouldn't be afraid of it won't help at all. You don't want to die, so your unconscious mind will resist any efforts to persuade yourself otherwise.
Instead, accepting your feelings as part of your nature will paradoxically make them weaker and easier to manage. It will direct you back to your healthy preference for the good things of life, to be balanced against your healthy preference against the bad things, and enable you to feel sorrow, be sensibly cautious, and to value the time that you have. The fear of death becomes a motivating force for wise behaviour rather than an anxiety-provoking burden.
This is similar in some ways to Stoicism (accepting death) but with more emphasis on accepting the feelings, and distinguishing between a preference for the good things in life vs. a perplexing demand that you MUST live or else... ???
Fingarette's efforts to argue his way out the fear of death are admirably intellectual but not a good path towards managing the feeling.
As Fingarette lightly touched on when enjoying the flowers in his garden, perhaps the fear of dying does not rest in death itself, but in the worry that one had not fully lived.
This video is so moving. It is a great example of capturing the lived experience, something that I am trying to achieve of people living with type 1 diabetes as part of PhD dissertation.
This life is a dream. A play of sorts. A game. That was depressing.