CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter the researcher will give the topics that he will discuss. The topic of this chapter includes an introduction of the topic, statement of the problem, significance of the study, delimitation and methodology.
1. Introduction
The rise of modern science had created a great impact in the lives of each individual especially in the environment where human being lives. Inclusive of this great impact, innovations in every aspect was rapid. Looking at the different angles of innovations of modern science greatly affect individuals by putting man at the center of the world.
The growth of technical knowledge through application of scientific discoveries has brought human beings the luxury of spoiling their resources. Man focused more on the thing that can make him happy, feel comfortable, relax and even more have an easy life. Without all of these, he is being driven to do inhumane things like killing for the sake of having such. The absence of technology for man is misery.
In this time of modern age, man is being blinded from the effects of the innovations that the modern world had introduced. He does not have any idea of his termination in the world while exhausting his body to the luxury of technology. That’s why, at certain events, man’s close encounter of death confronts him. “How many of us, though, can succeed in feeling these truths as consolations? We are not good at coping with death, especially in our contemporary materialistic age, with its pretence that we live indefinitely and that the fountain of happiness is purchasing power. Few face the fact of death squarely, or consider its nature clearly” (Grayling 32).
It is always been a mystery for man to inquire about the beginning and the end of his life. His existence had created a conflict of meaning between his existence and its end.
As for the beginning of human life, the question of when does life begin always confronts individual into the reality of his being in the world. Man has different questions regarding the world he lives in. The unfamiliarity of his life tends to give birth to the questions about his existence in the world.
At some point, people find themselves wondering about the perplexity of life. They often fall into a certain kind of puzzlement, beyond those goals of everyday living asking if their life has meaning. Life as not worth living or wasting their time giving meaning to their life was somehow makes a person worry as he struggles to live in the world where uncertainty is always there. And to some, a certain absurdity in life was produced in their minds. And this profound sense of absurdity about life is often triggered by our concept of death. Death is an aspect of human life that we become familiar sooner or later.
To some people, death is an inevitable reality that human beings cannot escape. It gives a satisfying meaning to one’s life, that life is ends. And to some, without the concept of death life would be meaningless. “It is a common place, but an important one, that death and decay are the servants of life. Fallen leaves change into humus on which next year’s seedlings feed: so the death and transformation of autumn is essential to spring. Death is therefore a condition of life and constitutes half its rhythm” (Grayling 29).
Different definitions of death had evolved. From the perspective of religion, Catholic, death started in the time of Adam and Eve when they have eaten the forbidden fruit at the Garden of Eden. And throughout the ages, different views had spread concerning death. Different religions, culture, vision, perspectives and others had given color to the meaning of death. For others, it is the path that connects two different worlds called life and “afterlife”; it serves as a punishment for those who violated the law, a threat to one’s existence and a way to attain either heaven or hell. These are just some of the existing concepts of human beings about the future event they fear and refuse to talk about. “Most religions premise an afterlife. Some of them teach that it begins with a judgment bringing punishment or reward… some people find such notions psychologically supportive, others find that they make death more terrible- for them death becomes a strange country ruled by dangerous powers, into which we venture ill prepared” (Grayling 31).
Who is not afraid of death? “When I ask you what you are afraid of when I talk about death and dying, you will probably say you are afraid of pain, of suffering, of nothingness, or of leaving loved ones behind” (Wyschogrod 19). One of the inevitable realities which human beings cannot escape in his existence, from the moment of his birth, is the fact that he is bounded by termination, an impending doom, a death. Despite its inevitability, discussing the topic of death is often a difficult one. How one viewed death can be influenced by many factors such as personal experiences, personal beliefs and values and our upbringings that are derived from different understanding. Historical and cultural context of death in which one lives mainly influence one’s perception of these experiences. One does not have the idea of how what kind of death he will undergo, it may be painful or not. One does not have the idea about the ‘real’ nature of death. “What seems frightening is the prospect of dying. But dying is an act of living; it is something only the living do, and like most other such acts – eating, walking, feeling happy or ill - it might be pleasant or otherwise… we experience death only in losing others, and the experience is one of grief” (Grayling 30). “Dying and death are events that happen to each one of us. We can postpone, gain reprieves, but ultimately we all must die, hora incerta, mors certa. And with world events being what they are, life’s temporality tends to move even further into the foreground” (Feifel xi).
Death is not something new. It has been existing since the beginning. Everywhere one can find it from newspapers and television up to the first-hand of our experiences – close encounter. “A reaction to loss- that is, the breaking of an attachment to bond- is common to all peoples. In a world where televisions brings the tragedies of people of one culture into the living rooms of millions of people of another culture, the similarity of anguished faces of loss is apparent. The skin may be of a different color, the clothing may be unusual to the viewer, the funeral rites may be unfamiliar- but the walling lament of a mother holding a dead child looks and sounds the same everywhere” (Jeffreys 25). The truth that human beings cannot escape death brought them from fearing it. Human beings have already cultivated on their mind that death is fearful. Human beings fear death. Death usually connotes suffering, pain, sorrow, heartache – this is the moment that a person leaves behind his or her loved one. It marks a loss to all the possibilities.
All human beings who exist will be confronted by death sooner or later.
One cannot fully achieve a complete or meaningful life of existence unless one confronts his own mortality. Thus, Martin Heidegger calls an “authentic life” to be that of man’s realization of his own finitude and temporality. It is an awareness of a human being about death, that he is finite and temporal. The awareness of death is the beginning of an understanding of man’s temporality. “Naturally we have on hand for every eventuality one or two suitable banalities about life which we occasionally hand out to the other fellow, such as “everyone must die sometime,” “one doesn’t live forever,” etc.” (Feifel 4). Death would always mean or simply known to be the end, the inevitable ending of individual existence.
The critical question concerning death is the question of how each one of us relates on the knowledge of death itself, that death is certain. The certain of all uncertainty. “Throughout man’s history, the idea of death has posed the eternal mystery which is the core of our religious and philosophical system of thought. And it is quite possible that this idea is also the prototype of human anxiety” (Feifel xi). The distinctive capacity of human beings to grasp the concept of a future and inevitable death to which present behavior does not only depend on the past but also, possibly on the point of reference of human beings towards future events. Human beings encounter of death also reveals man’s hunger for immortality.
Thus, there are many thinkers from different fields from the position of psychiatry, religion and philosophy that placed their theoretical outlook on death towards a better understanding and an elucidation the role it plays in the life of human beings.
According to Ladislaus Boros, it is a strange thing that the search for some content in life and some continuity in human existence should have to start off as an enquiry into the meaning of death! This is difficult to do 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” (Boros vi). There is such time to which man had grown so blind to the fact that we are to die. When man forgets death, he also forgets life because death is part and parcel of human existence. The knowledge of man about one’s death would always be his striving force to see light and live. Thus, a man who is aware of death is also aware of his life.
Death is a natural event of human life that must be accepted. It is a part of life and it will always confront human existence. (Concluding to the thought of death being natural, what more can we say?) Human beings would always confer to the idea of its being natural, and they stop there. But the question is how can one really know death itself? The fact that there is no one who dies and at the same time lives then no one can really talk about it. What more can one say? There are a lot of things that one can look at death – a reviewed perspective. The way human beings would encounter death is an event where it unveils all the possibility of existence. Then, what is the problem of human beings about death? Why they fear death? Behind their knowledge of death as being natural, the problem is that when man was haunted by fear, he lacks the capacity to look at death as it is. Death in man’s ordinary view means “loss”. Death thus, means “end”. What is it in death that man was being haunted by it? The question that lies in it is, does man have really fear of death? Is it really a fear of death or a fear for someone?
“These problems of the nature and meaning of human existence become really acute when the issue is its end and finitude, that is, human death” (Thielicke 5).The question of the finitude and temporality of human existence affected by death would always be a sensitive part on human existence. Since death that eliminates all the works and existence of human beings, what is the point of human life then? Life arises to this very world where in fills itself with experience, knowledge, and understanding and to a sudden point it vanishes, it dissolves as if nothing happened. Life becomes, then, an unbearable absurdity. Spending a lot of time cultivating and filling oneself will be changed or rather will come to nothing. What is, then, the point of human life? Why should man still look for meaning and conquer the world if everything would just pop up and vanish in the process. “Why-we ask- was all this given to us if we are not eternal but the next moment will vanish into nonbeing without even dreams remaining? Is not this life that is extinguished in death a fantastic nightmare?”(Thielicke ). “Marcus Aurelius, the roman emperor who was also a stoic philosopher, said in his Meditations that when we die we lose only the present moment, for the past has ceased to be and the future has not yet come; so to comfort ourselves we have only to look around and ask, ‘is this present moment really worth keeping?’”(Grayling 30). Death is a mandatory thing. One could ever escape it no matter how he/she planned to escape it. Death will always find its way to confront man. No one can excuse himself from death no matter what status in life he has. Death is death. Death is the one man cannot escape. According to ladislaus boros, we shall not, however, limit ourselves to merely descriptive account of their thought. We too shall endeavor to be creative and to progress further along the lines they indicate, taking their insights to their final consequences. (Boros 20) “Death is one of these things that occur within the world; many people die every day; one day we shall die too; yet right now it has nothing to do with us yet. Secondly, one dies; death is an indefinite something which proximally is not yet present-at-hand” (Kockelmans 194).

2. Statement of the Problem
As human beings, it is already embedded in one’s existence that everyone will die. And this became a sensitive topic to talk about. In this paper, the researcher will expound more on the existence death. Death is a topic to which man had suppress his mind of talking about it while he is busy working on the rapid change of his living. Ever since, humanity had gained reprieve on the topic of death. The obscurity of his knowledge of death had brought him to conundrum. Despite its difficulty to discussed, death has something to tell to man. The call of death would always haunt man someday. Perhaps, this research may help each individual to have knowledge on the understanding of the concept of death.
The researcher is working on the topic of death mainly on the concept of death of Martin Heidegger. He will be using Heidegger’s magnum opus “Being and Time:” The researcher will work on the essential views of Martin Heidegger on death and look for a deeper understanding about it. The researcher wants to find out and explain the essential views of Martin Heidegger with regards to the death itself and the fear of people on death. The researcher also wants to find out on how human beings face death? How human beings face life in the face of death? The researcher will work mainly on the topic concerning: 1. Who is Martin Heidegger? 2. How is the concept of death evolved and discussed in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time? 3. What Martin Heidegger says about man’s fear of death?
3. Significance of the Study
As soon as man lives he is bound to die. It is already part of human nature to be terminated in the world he is into. A personal encounter of death had been already posed on our existence. We grieve the loss of a certain individual. Death is multi faceted concept that medium of experience can be of help in understanding its meaning. All the things existing in the world ceases to be so as man. But the death of man is different from the things around him. Our capacity to think brought us to knowledge and an awareness of the existence of death. Different gear such as media influences brought us to an encounter of death. It is very relevant topic to discuss death because of its facticity that all will experience death itself.
The study about on Heidegger’s views on death is very essential to which it discusses an inevitable truth human beings cannot escape. It is an everyday event where man has not talked about or rather feared to talk about. This research will show reasons and ideas that will give us a clearer view about death.
The researcher finds the research very significant because of his interest and curiosity of death especially in the realm where man had gained knowledge for self-preservation by the use of technology and the massive issues on crimes that individual’s committed. The researcher wants to find out the answers to the questions he had in mind upon doing this study that would help him and encourage him searching for a clearer and deeper understanding about death.
The researcher also found the study significant to those people who do not have a deeper understanding on death.
The research is also significant to those people who fears death and all people who are not exempted to experience death by providing knowledge that will give them the understanding on how to interpret the human experience of death. This research will try also to answer the questions about death such as what it is in death that man’s fear? What really death is?
4. Delimitation
The main focus of the research is to philosophically explain and analyze the essential views of Martin Heidegger regarding death. The researcher will present a deeper knowledge on death using Heidegger’s concept.
5. Methodology
The researcher will use the expository method as a tool on his research. The researcher will expose and reveal the essential views of Martin Heidegger regarding death and how these views can be used to elucidate and have a better understanding on the reality of death. This method is of great help for the researcher discussing and exposing Heidegger’s view on death. The researcher will also use different philosophical views through different books published regarding death. The researcher will use Heidegger’s philosophical book Being and Time to which Heidegger mentioned ideas about death which will provide ideas about death.