Mortals, Money, and Masters of Thought

by Giorgio Baruchello

Thanks to the interest of Northwest Passage Books, I combine together in this volume my past articles and book chapters on the subjects of mortality and death.

The first part of the book, “Mortals”, offers a broad set of reflections on death and mortality as experiences functioning qua potential intellectual cum emotional means, by which we can better grasp the fundamental structures of value and meaning of human life. Specifically, I offer a synoptic account of positive appraisals of death and mortality in the history of Western philosophy, plus some references to Eastern thought too, as well as of representative cases of philosophical pessimism in general, and highlight how a more fundamental philosophy of life can emerge thereof (chapter 1). A related study of the original split in ancient philosophy between the world of everyday experience and a seemingly deeper, truer world revealed by reason alone is then offered, in order to cast further light on some of the most influential forms of just such positive appraisals, i.e. Socrates’ and Plato’s (chapter 2). Additionally, I tackle the philosophical assumptions of the modern scientific worldview, born with Descartes and Galileo in the 17th century, and flesh out their bearings upon the notions of death, mortality and, once more, life (chapter 3).

The second part, “Money”, comprises reflections on the most powerful and widespread cause of avoidable death in the world today, namely the misconceived and misdirected structure of value operating at the very heart of the global economy. In this connection, much of the text expounded in the second part is based upon prolonged exchanges that I had with Valerio Lintner, professor of economics at London’s American Business School, leading to co-authored contributions to the 2009 and 2010 volumes of the Death and Anti-Death book series of Ria University Press. Precisely, I begin by continuing the reflections on modern science’s fundamentally lifeless worldview begun in chapter 3 and apply them to the modern social science of economics (chapter 4). An imaginary dialogue follows between Athena B., a philosopher, and Hermes L., an economist, in order to highlight, in a lighter tone, the core problems with contemporary economics and, above all, with the world’s economies, so as to make the lifelessness discussed in the previous chapter more tangible in its everyday, but nonetheless deadly character (chapter 5). Additional reflections on contemporary economic woes and their lethal aspects ensue, suggesting remedies and showing implicitly how philosophy can function as a lifeline of fundamental criteria (e.g. good and bad) for other disciplines’ self-assessment and amelioration (chapter 6). In essence, philosophy is the unique and uniquely valuable discipline that can allow the specialists of all the other disciplines to pause and ponder upon why they are doing whatever they may be doing, and whether it may be wise to keep doing it or, instead, refrain from it and redirect their efforts. After all, while the focus of the other disciplines is firmly and valiantly set upon knowledge as such, philosophy’s traditional and peculiar focus is wisdom. Being knowledgeable is not the same thing as being wise. This non-identity has been amply and frequently exemplified in human affairs. There have been talented physicists and hardworking engineers designing newer and deadlier weapons of mass destruction. Top-notch psychologists and gifted marketing experts concocting effective new ways to sell more fat- and sugar-laden addictive junk food to children and teenagers. Committed managers and capable software programmers who have been replacing human beings with machines that accrue to shareholder value and yet make high unemployment rates unswerving. Not to mention high finance’s ‘best and brightest’ bringing about yet another economic collapse by means of mathematically complex tokens of highly paid technical wizardry and wildly celebrated financial genius, adding then, on top of it all, the wrong expert advice for recovery, as tragically and cruelly exemplified by the recent case of Greek austerity (chapter 7).

The third and last part, “Masters of Thought”, contains explorations of past reflections on mortality and death by five great minds in the philosophical canon of the West: Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) and Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997). They are five masters of philosophical thought from five different European countries of origin (i.e. France, Italy, Germany, Greece and Hungary), who wrote in remarkably different styles (e.g. first-person memoires and essays, lengthy treatises, collected aphorisms, scholarly articles, books and interviews) in different historical periods (i.e. the Renaissance, the early Enlightenment, the peak of European imperialism, the two World Wars and the Cold War) and personal contexts. For example, Vico led a private existence as a minor Neapolitan academic and a provincial tutor for patrician youngsters, fighting against severe bouts of depression throughout his life. Conversely, Castoriadis was an energetic and self-confident man, who fought as a Trotskyist partisan in the 1940s, worked until 1970 as an economist for the OECD, and then started practicing as a psychoanalyst in 1973. Yet, jointly, these five thinkers show how philosophy can be the place where our questions about mortality and death are verily taken seriously and pursued most thoroughly, whatever the results may be, and whether we agree or disagree upon such results. In particular, Montaigne and Nietzsche are compared and contrasted in their deeply personal, self-centered, this-worldly philosophical understanding of human mortality (chapter 8). Then, in chronological order, further insights on the same subject are retrieved and discussed vis-à-vis the philosophies of Vico (chapter 9), Castoriadis (chapter 10) and Polanyi (chapter 11). All three of them cast light on the existentially pivotal given of mortality, yet via conspicuously different areas of emphasis and cultural entry points, which are, respectively, literature and anthropology for Vico, politics and psychoanalysis for Castoriadis, and epistemology and religion for Polanyi.

Taken together with the other thinkers cited and discussed in the preceding chapters of this volume, albeit to inevitably uneven degrees of depth and breadth, the concluding four chapters allow this book to offer itself as a fairly comprehensive account of the many philosophies of death and mortality available in the history of, primarily, Western thought. As such, this book should be of interest to any reader who wishes to explore this history and/or the topics of death and mortality under the perspective of intellectual history. Above all, this book should extend an opportunity for meditating upon such topics, in the hope of helping the reader to cope with our quintessential finitude.