Fantastic question by Bill Vallicella about death bed reading. That is, what will you read in your last days. Most of these sort of replicated blog questions end up somewhat silly. Although it is interesting to look at the blogs and see what people answer. (At least I find it interesting) But this one really makes you think. It reminds me of my lower division philosophy class in college where the teacher, who clearly had been somewhat influenced by the existentialists, felt that being-towards-death entailed planning for death. That is keeping death always somewhat in the forefront of your planning. It seemed a tad odd at the time but I could see the logic of it: planning for your life in a more holistic fashion than we typically do.
So what would be my death bed reading?
Unlike the Maverick Philosopher I'd probably take Quine over Aquinas. I'd definitely take Plato over Putnam and frankly most philosophers. Would I, like Bill, read the scriptures? I don't know. Some Psalms are nice, but if I was going to go I'd probably pick a few other poets. Probably some Tennyson, some Donne, some Robert Service, and some Alfred Noyes. I suspect I'd read more poetry than philosophy there at the end.
Of course probably what I'd really do is study some physics that would get me ready for all the interesting experiments to try after I'm dead to figure things out. (grin) Come on, you're as curious about what death is like as me. Best to be prepared with the good questions which means turning more to science than philosophy...
Anyway, here's my list of tomes on my bedside as I await the big event. (Of course by the time I get to that point, hopefully a long ways off, my list may have changed somewhat)
Tennyson, The Idylls of the King. Not just because I've never actually read every verse but because it has the most eloquent poem about death ever. I'd put up some selections from "The Passing of Arthur" on a short lived poetry blog I had a few years back. Someone tell me that shouldn't be #1 on the list.
Donne, The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose. Of course there are so many different editions. The big ones are his Meditation XVII that has both "no man is an island" and has that nice section of "for whom the bell tolls" and then some of his poems towards his wife.
Robert Service, Collected Poems of Robert Service. I've loved this as a boy and used to rock my son to sleep reading the poems. (He's a bit too antsy for poems at the moment) "Ballad of an Ice Worm Cocktail" and "The Men Who Can't Sit Still" and of course "The Cremation of Sam McGee" are all poems I'd love to hear again before I die.
Alfred Noyes, Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes. Everyone knows "The Highwayman" but that's one of my least favorite of his poems. While it is inconsistent in greatness, "Sherwood" is always worth a read. And "The Loom of Years" is probably a fitting death bed read.
Plato, Plato Complete Works This is a nice translation I use a lot myself. While it's hardly my favorite dialog, one probably has to read The Apology before dying.
Actually, now that I think of it, I might throw Derrida's The Gift of Death in there even though I simply don't read Derrida like I used to.
There is an amazing movie called "Wit" starring Emma Thompson about a university professor, a specialist in Donne, who is dying of cancer and does *not* want to read Donne in her last days.
Orginally filmed for the big screen, it finally aired on HBO or something but is available on video. It's required viewing for many health care trainees.
Not to be too serious or mordid.
Relevant post, Clark. Thanks.
Naismith, I watched "Wit" at one time in the past. Interesting movie.
I have read at other death beds all sorts of stuff.
Personally, give me Ephesians, Romans 8, John's Gospel, I John, and ample portions of the Psalms. And just let me feast on the message over and over and over again till I go.
So why doesn't she want to read Donne? Because she's been teaching it all her life? I have to confess than since graduation I've only read Donne occasionally.
"So why doesn't she want to read Donne?"
It's such a complicated film that any answer would be incomplete. I think there are many reasons. Yes, she is tired of it. But also, Donne represents competence, which she had given up long ago. The visitor ends up reading a children's book to her.
Also because of the subject matter, which she had quoted earlier when pondering her mortality and possible death, which was now imminent at that later time.
So no death bed reading lists from anyone else? I figured I'd get a few. For those interested (if any) I put my death bed listens up at Kulturblog.
Personally, on my deathbed I would go for some of the hard drugs, or maybe the hallucinogens. I don't think I will be able to concentrate on a book when the time comes, and even if I could, I don't think I would get much benefit from it. Books are for the living and for living.
On a related note, there's something suspiciously inauthentic about the whole business of a 'death-bed reading list': it reeks of the they.
I think I would read some of the books that inspired appreciation for things in my life I hadn't realized before. It seems like a good way to have your life flash before your eyes. The English Patient, On The Road, Road to Wigan Pier and Malcolm X seem likely although I would hope to die in my sleep after a life of activity.
Why do you think death bed reading is inauthentic? It seems like it could be or might not be depending upon how it is done.
Oh, there's nothing about death bed reading itself that's inauthentic -- it's whether or not talking about it is inauthentic that worries me. Because, in a sense, one is planning out one's own death. One is treating one's death as another event or as a kind of object, perhaps?
I don't think that necessarily follows. For instance I don't treat my wife as an object yet I make plans regarding my relationship with her. (Such as planning a date, planning Valentine's day, etc.) Are those plans and their fulfillments just "events"? They can be, but needn't be. (And indeed hopefully aren't)
As modes of being authenticity and inauthenticity can be found in quite similar guises. Contra Sartre I don't think there is necessarily an easy way from the outside to tell them apart. Kind of like the old debate about minds and zombies in that way. (grin)
Clark,
Thinking more about this, I'm not sure -- well I don't know what I think, but I'm not sure what someone like Heidegger would think. To the extent that we plan out the events in our lives, he might argue, we're getting swept up in our plans and our experience of things as being at-hand (is that right?). Now death might happen at any time, but as long as I consider my death as something that is a part of the future, something that is associated with certain rituals, perhaps, etc., I'm not really present to my death.
Maybe you get the idea.
I mean, you could plan out a reading list for your death-day, but for all you know, you could die at any time -- and you could be in horrible pain, etc. Yes, I have a ton of intuitions about this I'm trying to lay out: there's something about thinking another person's thoughts while your dead, or thinking about the world in the way that reading requires you to think about it -- the kind of intentionality of an activity that finds its fulfillment in the future -- that just seems wrong for death.
For instance, there's something absurd about doing math problems on your death bed, because of the kind of things about one's experience doing a math-problem presupposes -- the sorts of things which are no longer true about our experience when we're about to die at any moment.
There's something about the process of dying that would seem to me to demand one's entire attention. You would have to think *about* death, about not-being.
But that will be a difference between you and I, because I don't believe life continues after death.
Amend 'you and I' to 'you and me' or 'us'. Grr.
Death and dying are two different things, however. Certainly what you say about death is right. But preparing to die ought take this angst about death - that it is something that can't be brought into our notions of either practice or object - and deal with it.
You point about possibly dying at any time is a good one though. Indeed in one sense any plan for death ought take into consideration that uncertainty. I could die tomorrow. I'd argue that this is the basis of eschatological thinking: the idea that the end times are just around the corner. Of course the way it often appears within religion can be unhelpful. But sometimes it leads to the life transforming rethinking. This is one of those places where I think Heidegger and eastern thought meet.
Death is part of many aspects of eastern aesthetic. My favorite example is the Japanese idea of beauty. We tend, following the Greeks, to think of beauty in a kind of repeated fashion. What is being rather than becoming - or what is permanent and exemplified in art. The Japanese have this wonderful metaphor of the cherry blossom where the idea is beauty as the fleeting and transitory. That moment of beauty will never be recaptured in exactly that same way again. (Obviously I'm not doing justice to either Greek or Japanese thought here - I just want to illuminate one aspect)
If we live every moment as if it were our last then that is taking that notion of death up.
As to the last line, about life after death. That's an important point. Some have critiqued religious use of Heidegger precisely on this point. I think this incorrect since I think even if we do live after death the phenomena still is largely the same. But I also think that Heidegger's analytic of death is but one of many, many ways the same kind of thing can be discovered. (The idea of a moment of absolute irreducible "mineness.")
The question then becomes, what are the moments of "mineness" where that encounter takes place.
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