The Event of Death: a Phenomenological Enquiry

Building upon the "preliminary conception of Phenomenology" introduced by Heidegger in section II of the Introduction to Sein und zeit,l one may say that a phenomenology of death would mean: "to let death, as that which shows itself, be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. " Does this mean then, that a properly phenomenological d- cription of death may reveal to us what death as a factical event is like "in the very way in which it shows itself from itself"? Although I cannot experience my death in order to describe it, may some kind of phenomenologica'l inference or "extrapolation"2 be the condition for a unique and privileged revelation of what it is like to be dead? There is an important element of phenomenological descr- tion which renders such an extrapolation implausible, and it involves what Husserl originally called the reduction to signi- cance or meaning. It can never be true for the phenomenologist, 1 Heidegger, Martin, Sein und zeit, p. 34. e. t. page 58. 2 Henry W. Johnstone Jr. thinks that while one cannot extrapo­ late from the experience of sleep to the experience of death, it may be possible to extrapolate from the phenomeno­ lQgy of sleep to the phenomenology of death. Cf. H. W. John­ stone Jr. , "Toward a Phenomenology of Death", in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. XXXV, No. 3, 1975, pages 396-7. Cf.