WOKÓŁ BEZPIECZEŃSTWA EGZYSTENCJALNEGO, CZYLI NOWOŻYTNA RECEPCJA ŚMIERCI W FILOZOFII

Abstract

The authors continue their discussion on transience as an existential security problem in philosophy, understood differently in particular historical periods. The third article on a subject presents modern philosophical positions on the temporality of man, with transience continually understood as the criterion of existential danger. The end of existence is treated as a source of anxiety, but this time free from earlier (i.e. medieval) inspirations based on expiation and hope for salvation, considered now, however, as a barrier to the unquestionable life rewards within the materialistically imagined world. Modern life concepts that were released, not without difficulty, from religious intellectual domination, foretold visions of not afterlife but temporal existence. Hence, the existential security born of this was sometimes distant from theology, despite the fact that it did not question the two-dimensional interpretation of being, and advocated the concept of life explained by the process of scientific (and philosophical) inquiries, suggested by studies in mechanics or medicine. Despite the significance of intellectual change that followed the separation of philosophy from theology (XVI century), and later the science from philosophy (XVI century), positions related to transience (death) were rather limited in number compared to, for example, the ancient period, and quite trivially commenting on this, after all, the most important life episode, in view of the life purposefulness, as was visible in the medieval period. Nevertheless, the weight of existential views is heavy in modern times, and even fascinating, as was the case, for example, with the thought of Soren Kirkegaard. Considering this circumstance of conscious utterance of fear of death, and the attendance to the material aspects of life, presents rather meaningful issues in reference to dying, as the authors sketch out. Because of those, the connection between perceptible existential appearance of life, and its security context, will be visible in the emancipating European modern philosophy.