DE Weekly: Life, Death, & Certainty
Below is an archived email originally sent on May 12, 2025.
Life, Death, & Certainty
“Life and death are two sides of a coin. But which of the two is more certain?” The answer to that question, as we know, is death.
That question came from Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India. I included some quotes of his from his appearance on an episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast in my newsletter a few weeks ago, and there’s some more insight from Modi I’d like to include this week, too.
“We know for a fact that life itself is a whispered promise of death,” Modi continued, “And yet, life is also destined to flourish. So again, in the dance of life and death, only death is certain.”
Why am I bringing up this interview again? Well, what Modi is saying is very prescient.
What he’s saying here echoes the views of the existentialists on the topic of life and death.
For the existentialists, death is a fundamental aspect of the human condition––indeed, of existence itself. It’s as unavoidable and as inherent to our existence as life itself is; thus, it is perhaps the utmost motivator in shaping our choices in the way we choose to live.
For something so fundamental, inherent, unavoidable… Why run from it? If we acknowledge death––embrace it, even––we can use it as a catalyst in our quest for a meaningful life.
“So why fear what is certain?” Modi continued, “That’s why you must embrace life, instead of fretting over death.”
Existentialists like Albert Camus and Martin Heidegger, who I wrote about last week, are in lockstep with this sort of acceptance of death.
Heidegger described us as “Beings-toward-death,” meaning we all exist ultimately to end up in the same place; our lives all culminate in the same ending. For Heidegger, death is a huge experience, an important experience, and absolutely central to our existence.
Understanding our own death and accepting the certainty of our mortality could lead us to live more authentically in life.
Camus arrived at the same argument, albeit in his own way: through the realization of the absurd.
Camus’s slogan of the “absurdity of life” was a way for him to stand up in the face of death and say, “I’m not afraid.”
It is absurd that we are born, and it is absurd that we die.
That knowledge––that we eventually die––is reason enough to embrace the finitude of our existence and find meaning and value in the present lives we lead.
Even Jean-Paul Sartre, who did not himself believe that death was a particularly convincing source of meaning for life, at least agreed that it was as natural a part of life as life itself.
He saw it as an aspect of our facticity which was inescapable, given, and something we must contend with in our own search for meaning.
“That’s why you must let go [of] the fear of death; after all, death is inevitable,” Modi continued. “And there’s no use worrying about when it will arrive. It will arrive when it’s meant to.”
I know that death as a recurring theme in existentialist literature can be difficult to sit with, that a philosophy with such a central focus on something so supposedly depressing can take a toll and be daunting.
But such honest discussion and such brave rebellion against the absurdity of death, with a steadfast focus on cherishing the life we do have, is exactly what I find so inspiring about it.
The answer is not to cower from death, but to stand up to it––to embrace it––so that we might not live our lives in quiet unending despair, leading a moribund existence on a march down the somber road to the end of it all, but in jubilant celebration of our being…of our existing at all.
To accept death is to live.
“He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence––they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all. And death was a kind of gesture, forever withholding water from the traveler vainly seeking to slake his thirst. But for the others, it was the fatal and tender gesture that erases and denies, smiling at gratitude as at rebellion.” –– Albert Camus, A Happy Death
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
I highly recommend checking out the podcast episode I mentioned in this newsletter. It was a philosophy-heavy episode and worth the listen for that alone.
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