The Metaphysics of Death

Abstract

In this piece Simmel claims that in order to understand death we must detach ourselves from its common association with the idea of a final and irrevocable 'fate' and recognize that life and death are inherently conjoined. Simmel observes that in every single moment ol life we are those who must die. Each of life's moments is revealed only through a temporal approximation to death and life is shaped by death as a real element of life. To this extent life and death occupy one level of being as thesis and antithesis. Simmel concludes that. in opposition to conceptions of immortality found in religion, immortality is more appropriately understood as a separation of the self from the contingency of individual life contents.