Review article
https://doi.org/10.46640/imr.10.19.7
Fear of Death and Striving for Immortality – Eternal Paradygm of Man’s Confrontation With Death
Vesna Ivezić
; Center for Philosophy of Media Zagreb, Association for the Promotion of Human Rights, Freedom and Quality of Life IDIA
Abstract
Through history, man is followed by death, that despite of the fact that we are mortal, is not available to human experience, which has always caused various speculations on its nature, and the need for an explanation of what comes after. Fear of death is fear of the unknown, dissolution, disappearance. Relationship to death, as well as man’s conception of the world, is consistent with the state of society, from the profound connection between life and death in archaic times, to the increasing separation, which is consistent with the basic dichotomy that characterizes the human mind, and is growing. The individual is more and more losing a sense of historical time, continuity, and connection of existence, and is desperately clinging to life. The eternal striving for immortality, before in the domain of religion, now is transferred of the faith in the success of science. The new age is characterized by avoidance of disease and aging, the cult of ancestors has been replaced by the cult of being young, and as part of man’s focus on overcoming death, the need of self-development is highlighted, as the only chance of reconciliation with the fact of man’s own mortality.
Keywords
death; denial of death; fear of death; culture of being young; self-development; pandemic
Hrčak ID:
262471
URI
Publication date:
15.9.2021.
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