In “Death? Why our brains tell us it only happens to other people” (19 October) Ian Sample describes fascinating research in Israel that investigates a biological reason built into our brains for our inability to think through our own deaths – a reason, moreover, that may have provided evolutionary advantages in the development of mankind.
Being of an age when I frequently think towards my own death, I have realised that there is also an ontological reason for my inability to follow this train of thought through – a reason, perhaps, even with theological implications for the belief in an immortal soul. For, unless such a soul survives my bodily existence (a belief I myself cannot hold), what entity is there left that can contemplate me at the moment of my extinction and thereafter? Or, indeed, to see the world around me? And that is, perhaps, even more terrifying. Will the world cease to exist at the moment of my death? George Berkeley – and Ronald Knox – would reply that an all-seeing God continues to exist and see; a way of combatting terror that I cannot share.
The philosophical aspect of this has, of course, been developed into the ontology of “living towards death” by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time – not, I imagine, the most popular philosopher in Israel because of his culturally racist and politically Nazi orientation, but an influential thinker nonetheless.
Michael Graubart
Former director of music, Morley College, and senior lecturer in academic studies, Royal Northern College of Music
• Reading this article reminded me of a conversation I had as a fortysomething with my dad, well into his 70s, about how he came to terms with his own mortality. He put it down to entering the “obituary belt”, where you are increasingly reading obituaries of your peers, and attending more funerals than weddings. Now into my 70s, I find the first page I turn to in the Guardian is the obituaries. I’m also developing a liking for egg sandwiches, a staple of a good funeral. And yes, now I’m comfortable with my own mortality.
Chris Seidel
Cochrane, Alberta, Canada
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