Table of contents for Issue 25 - No.3/2019 in New Philosopher

“Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life, Cuts off so many years of fearing death.”William Shakespeare Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers believed that we had no reason to fear death. Socrates viewed it as a dreamless sleep, while Lucretius saw no difference between two stretches of non-existence: the time before we were born and the eternity after we die. He thought we should fear both equally; that is, not at all. Yet Shakespeare understood the human condition much better: we most certainly do fear death. Most humans are terrified of the prospect of existing no more, of taking that one final breath. Our fear of death is the ultimate fear of missing out – on all the events, the people, the progress, the battles. When we die, the…

On September 10, 1945, Lloyd Olsen was slaughtering chickens on his farm in Fruita, Colorado. Among his unfortunate victims that day was a Wyandotte rooster named Mike. Like many chickens, Mike’s headless body kept running around for a few moments after decapitation. Unlike other chickens, however, Mike kept going. And scratching. And trying to eat. When Mike was still on his feet the next morning, showing no intention of behaving like a corpse, Lloyd saw an opportunity. ‘Miracle Mike’ the headless chicken soon became a sensation on the sideshow circuit. On some estimates Mike was pulling in the equivalent of $50,000 a month in today’s money; Lloyd was able to buy new farm equipment and treated himself to a new Chevy pickup. Like most celebrities, Mike relied pretty heavily on…

I thought I was ready for my father’s death. I thought philosophy had prepared me for it. As the Roman politician and philosopher, Cicero, wrote: “to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare oneself to die”. Sixteen centuries later, the French essayist, Michel de Montaigne, added that the study of philosophy is “a kind of apprenticeship and a resemblance of death; or, else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to fear to die”. I vainly prided myself on internalising this view that death ought to be accepted rather than resisted, and vainly believed it would serve as a palliative as my own father entered palliative care. But the experience of witnessing his passing proved to…

Earlier this year an older friend, a philosopher, call him M, decided to end his life. He had been very ill for many months, and the prognosis was bad – only further decline and then death. Worse perhaps, he had become depressed, could no longer concentrate enough to read, and had even stopped listening to jazz, which had been his lifelong passion. For those who knew him, the idea of M, who read foreign novels in the original language for fun, and devoured philosophical essays and books, not reading or discussing philosophy or listening and talking about jazz was scarcely imaginable. M had been a gentle, modest, sociable, generous, and witty friend and teacher to many – I can still hear him chuckling at a joke, his warmth when meeting,…

When the British Museum in London was in the process of acquiring its spectacular wave-form roof in the late 1990s, I contemplated donating a single triangular pane to sit among some 3,000 other non-identical panes making up the Museum’s iconic ceiling. I was tickled that my name would be engraved on a singular piece of strengthened glass and that all it would cost to bind myself into the fabric of this magnificent building was a couple of hundred pounds – the price of a pair of Eurostar tickets or a splash-out family meal. What motivated me was a feeling that I wanted to give something back to the old British Library, with its cartwheel seating and sky-blue leather chairs, where I spent many a year reading and researching. I wonder…

noun: 1. The action or fact of dying or being killed; the end of the life of a person or organism; 2. The state of being dead; 3. The permanent ending of vital processes in a cell or tissue; 4. The personification of the power that destroys life, often represented in art and literature as a skeleton or an old man holding a scythe (also called the Grim Reaper); 5. The destruction or permanent end of something; 6. A damaging or destructive state of affairs. Origin: Old Englishdeath, of Germanic origin; related to Dutchdood and GermanTod, alsoto die. Source: Oxford English Dictionary…

Soon after I became a father, at some point into the first few months of sleepless nights and earlier-than-early mornings, I found myself thinking that my son – my tiny exquisite implacable son, who so often I couldn’t soothe through his hours of tears – was larger than me. I felt insubstantial, old, starting to break apart; while he had so much time and potential coiled inside him, waiting to become and to keep on becoming, to continue seeing long after I had closed my eyes. It was an odd, vertiginous sensation, and also a restatement of the crushingly obvious. There was nothing here I hadn’t known for my entire adult life. Birth and death are as universal as it gets in terms of the human experience. Yet, when the…

At this year’s Venice Biennale, Swiss-Icelandic artist Christoph Büchel’s installation Barca Nostra (Our Boat) is the talking point. The wreckage of the fishing boat departing from Libya on its way to Europe, which sank in the Mediterranean in 2015, drowning most of its passengers – up to 1,100 migrants – has been turned into a public work of art. The wreckage of the boat, with an irreparable split on the port side offering a window into the hollowed hold, will sit in the Arsenale, Venice’s historic shipyard, from May until the exhibition ends. “The project facilitates a symbolic transfer of the status of the shipwreck,” explains the press release issued by the artist. “[It] changes its legal status from a former object of court evidence to an artefact, [from being]…

it’s 8.47am and i’ve already broken my mother’s heart. i listened yesterday,as intelligent people spoke about the factthat without anything else happening,but the growing up that is inevitable, all parents will have their hearts broken by their children it didn’t make me feel any betteras i heard cracks splinter and grow and break into so many tiny fragments it’s 8.47 and it’s already timeto lay eggshells on the floor,arranging them delicately in shapessturdy enough to step on as itread around this wounded vital organ i cradle the pieces in my handsas the time ticks over to 8.55 like the king’s horses and men,i will never be able to put back togetherthat which i have broken no bandages nor backtracking can rejoin tissue fissuredby the ambiguous loss ofprogeny turned person…

A POOR feeble old Man, who had crawled out into a neighbouring wood to gather a few sticks, had made up his bundle, and laying it over his shoulders, was trudging homeward with it; but, what with age, and the length of the way, and the weight of his burden, he grew so faint and weak, that he sunk under it; and, as he sat on the ground, called upon Death to come, once for all, and ease him of his troubles. Death no sooner heard him, but he came and demanded of him what he wanted. The poor old creature, who little thought Death had been so near, and frighted almost out of his senses with his terrible aspect, answered him trembling, that having by chance let his bundle…

Last year my 92-year-old grandmother, April, wrote a letter to The Times of London: “Sir, Why do we have to announce, in death notices, that all our loved ones have died ‘peacefully’? Why can’t we be a little more realistic and honest? Why not die gratefully, reluctantly, joyfully, dreamily, gently, lingeringly, longingly, lovingly, defiantly, furiously, humorously, enigmatically, cheerfully, jauntily, hopefully, or bravely? At least more meaningfully.” April – a former actress turned author, with a nipped-in waist and dark hair who, to this day, remains upbeat and glamorous – has seen a fair amount of death. She survived World War II in England, feeling a pang of guilt as Jews like her were murdered in Europe. More recently, her friends and loved ones have started to pass away. They include…

O men, when some day you read these words, reflect that you did me wrong and let the unfortunate one comfort himself and find one of his kind who despite all obstacles of nature yet did all that was in his power to be accepted among worthy artists and men. You my brothers Carl and _____* as soon as I am dead if Dr. Schmid is still alive ask him in my name to describe my malady and attach this document to the history of my illness so that so far as possible at least the world may become reconciled with me after my death. At the same time I declare you two to be the heirs to my small fortune (if so it can be called), divide it fairly,…

I often go to a friend’s farm in South West England. It is a thrumming, singing place. I like to lie under a tree and look up through the canopy. The air is gritty with the carapaces of flying, flailing things. Breathing is risky, for them and for me. I inhale them and feel them bounce off my windpipe. Life hums and throbs – it’s a loud, wild cabaret. Sometimes, if I’m feeling brave, I climb over the barbed wire fence into the neighbouring farm. There are no trees here, just oil-seed rape that smells of the air freshener in a factory toilet. If I wade twenty yards from the border the only sound is the growl of a GPS-controlled harvester half a mile away. Nothing flounders through the air,…

Your sorrow is most to be feared when you have retired to your own home: for as long as your divinity is before your eyes, it can find no means of access to you, but Caesar will possess your entire being; when you have left his presence, grief, as though it then had an opportunity of attack, will lie in ambush for you in your loneliness, and creep by degrees over your mind as it rests from its labours. You ought not, therefore, to allow any moment to be unoccupied by literary pursuits: at such times let literature repay to you the debt which your long and faithful love has laid upon it, let it claim you for its high priest and worshipper: at such times let Homer and Virgil…

Body Worlds London, UK All year Dr Gunther von Hagens’s renowned exhibition of real human bodies has sparked curiosity and awe around the world with over 48 million visitors globally. It now has a permanent museum at Piccadilly Circus in London. All anatomical specimens in the exhibition are real and it is the only exhibition of real human bodies with its own established donor programme. Currently, there are over 17,000 donors worldwide who approved to donate their body for public display and educational purposes. bodyworlds.co.uk Day of the Dead parade Throughout Mexico & Guatemala November 1 – 2, annually The Day of the Dead, El Dia de los Muertos, is a 4,000-year-old tradition celebrated in Mexico on the 1st and 2nd of November each year. Altars are built in homes…

Sue Black Professor Dame Sue Black is a leading anatomist and forensic anthropologist, and is currently the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University. Black was the lead forensic anthropologist for the UK response to war crimes investigations in Kosovo and has also served in Sierra Leone, Grenada, and Iraq, and in Thailand following the Asian tsunami. She is the author of the bestselling book All That Remains and was awarded a DBE in 2016 for her services to education and forensic anthropology. Mariana Alessandri Mariana Alessandri is Assistant Professor of Continental Philosophy, Existentialism, Philosophy of Religion, and Spanish-language Philosophy at UTRGV. She has written for The New York Times, Philosophy Today, Womankind magazine, Times Higher Education, Chronicle of Higher Education, and many academic journals. Her teaching interests include Existentialism and…

“I think with sadness of all the books I’ve read, all the places I’ve seen, all the knowledge I’ve amassed and that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places: and suddenly nothing. They made no honey, those things, they can provide no one with any nourishment. At the most, if my books are still read, the reader will think: There wasn’t much she didn’t see! But that unique sum of things, the experience that I lived, with all its order and its randomness – the Opera of Peking, the arena of Huelva, the candomblé in Bahía, the dunes of El-Oued, Wabansia Avenue, the dawns in Provence, Tiryns, Castro talking to five hundred thousand Cubans, a sulphur sky over a sea of…

A few years ago, I opened the calculator app on my phone and figured out that the standard human lifespan is only about four thousand weeks long. To be honest, I’ve never quite been the same since. Four thousand weeks! Later, when I asked a friend to guess, without doing any mental arithmetic, how many weeks the average person could expect to live, she named a number in six figures. But as I felt obliged to inform her, a fairly modest six-figure number – 270,000 weeks – is the approximate duration of all human civilisation since the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia. Life is short – and thanks to the troubling way that the experience of time speeds up as you age, it feels even shorter. So if you were offered…

Cause of death: Tuberculosis (C) Annual deaths: 1.3 million Death rate per 100k: 17 Cause of death: Road injury (I) Annual deaths: 1.4 million Death rate per 100k: 19 Cause of death: Diarrhoea (C) Annual deaths: 1.4 million Death rate per 100k: 19 Cause of death: Diabetes (N/C) Annual deaths: 1.6 million Death rate per 100k: 21 Cause of death: Lung cancer (N/C) Annual deaths: 1.7 million Death rate per 100k: 23 Cause of death: Alzheimer’s/dementia (N/C) Annual deaths: 2.0 million Death rate per 100k: 27 Cause of death: Respiratory infections (C) Annual deaths: 2.9 million Death rate per 100k: 40 Cause of death: Chronic lung disease (N/C) Annual deaths: 3.0 million Death rate per 100k: 41 Cause of death: Stroke (N/C) Annual deaths: 5.7 million Death rate per 100k:…

A leading anatomist and forensic anthropologist, Professor Dame Sue Black is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University. She was the lead forensic anthropologist for the UK response to war crimes investigations in Kosovo and has also served in Sierra Leone, Grenada, Iraq, and in Thailand following the Asian tsunami. Black has been awarded two police commendations for her work in disaster victim identification training and also for helping to secure convictions against perpetrators of child sexual abuse. She was awarded an OBE in 2001 and a DBE in 2016 for her services to education and forensic anthropology. Black is a Fellow and President of the Royal Anthropological Institute, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of Biology, and the lifetime professor of anatomy for the…

The Epistemologist Thomas Nagel 1937-present A negative evil The fear of death is very puzzling, in a way that regret about the end of life is not. It’s easy to understand that we might want to have more life, more of the things it contains, so that we see death as a negative evil. But how can the prospect of your own non-existence be alarming in a positive way? If we really cease to exist at death, there’s nothing to look forward to, so how can there be anything to be afraid of? If one thinks about it logically, it seems as though death should be something to be afraid of only if we will survive it, and perhaps undergo some terrifying transformation. But that doesn’t prevent many people…

The American Way of Death Jessica Mitford No hazard To my question, “Are undertakers, in their capacity of embalmers, guardians of the public health?”, Dr. Carr’s answer was short and to the point: “They are not guardians of anything except their pocketbooks. Public-health virtues of embalming? You can write it off as inapplicable to our present-day conditions.” Discussing possible injury to health caused by the presence of a dead body, Dr. Carr explained that in cases of communicable disease a dead body is considerably less of a hazard than a live one. “There are several advantages to being dead,” he said cheerfully. “You don’t excrete, inhale, exhale, or perspire.”The body of a person who has died of a non-communicable illness, such as heart disease or cancer, presents no hazard whatsoever,…

As a philosopher I have read reason’s response to death, and my mind is convinced by the Epicurean rationale that says death is nothing before it happens and we are nothing while it happens. It’s too bad that philosophers are also made of carne y hueso (flesh and bone), as Miguel de Unamuno liked to point out, because it’s not my mind but my intestines that kink up when I imagine watching my father die. He’s 85 and healthy, but the elderly are susceptible to small infections that younger folk easily fight off. Epicurus’s brain is no match for my eyes, which will likely watch one or both of my parents give up the ghost, and soon. I’ve seen two human dead bodies, but only remember one. There was my…

What is your demon? My ego. A Tantric Yogi who stays with us periodically to escape adoring crowds in India instructed my wife Jo to demolish it. She’s doing a good job but it’s not complete. Which thinker has had the greatest influence on your life? 17th century philosopher Francis Bacon. He stirred my first interest in nature. If you could change one thing about the world, what would that be? I wrote a cover story for Simply Living magazine in 1987 entitled “Is the Earth Dying?”, warning of the dangers of global warming. I doubt if we can stop it now. What is happiness? Sitting on the veranda in the morning sun, eating porridge and listening to the symphony of birds in our forest. What does it mean to…