ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER E O MEDO DA MORTE

Abstract

All that is known in the phenomenal world are forms of objectification of the Will. The Will is treated by Schopenhauer as blind, arbitrary, tyrannical, and brutal, being responsible for all the suffering of life. Among the various existential fears and consternations, death is the greatest among them, the idea of finitude is what terrifies the human being the most. Knowing this, Arthur Schopenhauer developed a philosophical thought about death that provides a possible answer to the aforementioned common affliction of humanity. Death and life would be partitions of the same cycle in which there are two extremes of non-being: before life and after death. If life and death form a unity, what makes the individual fear death, but not fear life (in the same intensity)? Schopenhauerian thought shows that life should be equally feared since it can be even worse. Death for the subject is only a cessation of consciousness, which is solely the result of organic life and not the cause of it. The lack of awareness of death and the mere awareness of the present (nunc stans) results in the anguish and frustration of not being able to reach eternity. Therefore, the present work problematizes the “philosophy of death” in Schopenhauer and the relationship with the indestructibility of our being-in-itself. It seeks to indicate possibilities for alleviating the fear of death through two ways: that of self-knowledge as Will (metaphysical/knowledge) and that of the search for a more bearable and less unhappy life as possible (eudemonological). Thus, perceiving himself as a constituent of a being-in- itself that is impossible to be annihilated with death, or accepting the impossibility of a life without pain, Schopenhauer shows direct ways for the possibility of overcoming and alleviating the fear of dying – and various other existential fears.