“The name of the bow is life [βίος], its work, however, death” [the most extreme opposites of beyng together in one]. Heraclitus, fragment 48

Hegel, on page 26 of the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, his first major work, and at the same time his greatest work, which appeared in 1807, writes the following: “Death, if that is what we wish to call that non-actuality, is what is most terrifying, and to hold fast to what is dead requires the greatest strength. Beauty, lacking strength, hates the understanding for asking of her something she is unable to do. But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and preserves itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures death and maintains itself within it. Spirit wins its truth only when, within absolute dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive that closes its eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then, having done with it, turn away and move on to something else; on the contrary, Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face and tarrying with it. This tarrying is the magical force that converts the negative into beyng.”(cited in Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 181). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

This is my final post on Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin’s poem Germania, so let’s think a little about death.

Death, the great unknown, is a truth of the human condition but it is opaque to us.  Maybe there is a beyond (Near Death Experiences), or maybe just like chickens, mosquitos and plants have no afterlife, neither do we.  As noted 2 posts ago in response to the fact of death there is a spectrum of life strategies from the assertiveness of Carpe Diem to the restraint of Memento Mori.  

But death is ever-present and we live “as though” the next moment won’t be denied us in death – even though it could be.  The Greeks saw death as people stripped of life in the absolute tedium of the wandering restless shade.  This cast a pall over Greek life.  The first thing Socrates did was question the nature of death, and said “Those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.” (Phaedo 67e).  Holderlin said in ‘Beautiful Blue:’ “Son of Laios, poor stranger in Greece! Life is death, and death is also a life.”  The freedom of the individual is how they choose to exist in relation to the unknown of death, as is the freedom of a people,

Rather, community is through each individual’s being bound in advance to something that binds and determines every individual in exceeding them. Something must be manifest that is neither the individual taken alone nor community as such. The comradeship of soldiers on the front is based neither on the fact that people had to join together because other human beings, from whom one was removed, were absent; nor did it have its basis in people first agreeing to a shared enthusiasm. Rather, its most profound and sole basis lies in the fact that the nearness of death as a sacrifice placed everyone in advance into the same nothingness, so that the latter became the source of an unconditional belonging to one another. Precisely death—which each individual human being must die for him- or herself, and which individuates each individual upon themselves to the most extreme degree—precisely death and the readiness for its sacrifice first of all creates in advance the space of that community out of which comradeship emerges.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 112). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Willingly/unwillingly conscripted, or a volunteer, being a soldier means understanding you may have to sacrifice yourself for the mission, and so you exist according to that guiding perspective.

We see the similar presence of death in the “ground-perspectives” of religion. For example, the apostle Paul says our stance toward death governs immorality such as gluttony and drunkenness:

 If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” (1 Cor 15:32).

The Apostle Paul uses this statement as a rhetorical question to emphasize the importance of the resurrection of the dead in the Christian faith. If there is no afterlife, then there is no point in living a moral or sacrificial life, as there would be no reward for good deeds. For the Christian a righteous life is not done for its own sake, rather the Christian is like a donkey chasing the afterlife carrot.