Abstract
That the presence of others, after their death, continues to resonate within our own lives, that, in other words, death does not rob the other of their meaning for us, as if the meaning of their lives for us would suddenly become extinguished upon their death, is revealing of who we are, of how I am constituted in relation to others. The question of life after death is thus inseparable from the question of life before death, of what it is to have a life in concert, communication, and consort with others. How does the other, whose actual presence in the world is no longer, remain present to those who continue to exist in the world? In this paper, it is argued that the intimacy of disappearance attests to the singular quality of another’s existence in terms of the value, or meaningfulness, their existence had, and continues to have, for the value of my own life. In this manner, the intimacy of another’s disappearance for us is inseparable from an intimacy of our own disappearance from ourselves. We are touched, as never before, besides ourselves in grief for a disappearance from our lives that never lets us go.
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Notes
- 1.
Erika Abrams, the French translator of Patočka’s text, speaks of a “rumor” that Patočka drafted these reflections around 1967 after the death of his wife. In a letter to Walter Biemel in 1976, Patočka continues to ruminate on this topic and states his intention to explore his thinking on life after death further.
- 2.
The numbers within slashes refer to the page numbers of the printed Czech text, included within slashes in the above English translation.
- 3.
Such metaphysical qualities reveal what Ingarden also calls “essentialities” (Wesen-heiten). See Ingarden 1925.
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de Warren, N. (2024). The Intimacy of Disappearance. In: Strandberg, G., Strandberg, H. (eds) Jan Patočka and the Phenomenology of Life After Death. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 128. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49548-9_5
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