Definition of Death
In death, orientation ends. It is an end of all standpoints and perspectives: if we are dead, we can no longer say that death is here. It is also the horizon of all temporal (and spatial) horizons: an absolute temporal horizon and thus, at the same time, no longer a horizon. As a sign of absolute finality, death affects most of our routines but can also function as a final calming of orientation. It is as certain as nothing else is and thus orientation’s strongest and firmest foothold and the yardstick of all its certainties. However, it is also uncertain, because one does not know when or how death will occur. Also, death does not refer to other footholds, and thus is not a foothold that one can hold onto.
In everyday orientation, one can thus forget about death for the most part – not by anxious repression, but because it usually does not help orientation to gain further footholds. The one clue the certainty of death may give us, though, is that we live life to the fullest (chap. 18).
Note:
The chapters and the page numbers refer to the book by Werner Stegmaier, What is Orientation? A Philosophical Investigation, translated by Reinhard G. Mueller (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019).
275-285
Click for more Philosophy of Orientation glossary terms.