JCJBergman's Reviews > The Denial of Death

One of the most interesting philosophical books I've read, albeit with some underwhelming chapters. Watch my review of the book over on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1iWW...

2nd reading notes:

Absolutely profound. Here are my favourite quotes from the piece:

“The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which weakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”

“We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are imbedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all absorbing activity, passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own centre. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorance of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashion in order to live securely and serenely.”

“The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared of it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one’s dreams and even the most sun-filled days — that’s something else.”

“The terror of death is so overwhelming we conspire to keep it unconscious.”

“[Man] drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness, but madness all the same.”

“Everything cultural is fabricated and given meaning by the mind, a meaning that was not given by physical nature. Culture is in this sense “supernatural,” and all systematisations of culture have in their end the same goal: to raise men above nature to assure them that in some ways their lives count more than merely physical things count.”

“One of the ironies of the creative process is that it partly cripples itself in order to function.” // preface p21

“This is why it is so difficult to have sex without guilt; guilt is there because the body casts a shadow on the person’s inner freedom, his ‘real’ self that — through the act of sex — is being forced into a standardised mechanical, biological role.” // pg42

“Sartre has called man a “useless passion” because he is so hopelessly bungled, so deluded about his true condition. He wants to be a god with only the equipment of an animal, so he thrives on fantasies.” // pg59

“If we don’t have the omnipotence of gods, we can at least destroy like gods.” // pg85

“Early theorists of group psychology tried to explain why men were so sheeplike when they functioned in groups. They developed ideas like ‘mental contagion’ and ‘herd instinct’, which became very popular. But as Freud was quick to see, these ideas never really did explain what men did with their judgement and common sense when they got caught up in groups. Freud saw right away what they did with it: they simply became dependent children again, blindly following the inner voice of their parents, which now came to them under the hypnotic spell of the leader. They abandoned their egos to his, identified with his power, tried to function with him as an ideal. […] And so, as Freud argues, it is not that groups bring out anything new in people; it is just that they satisfy the deep-seated erotic longings that people constantly carry around unconsciously. […] participation in the group redistills everyday reality and gives it the aura of the sacred — just as, in childhood, play created a heightened reality.” // Pg.132

“The first motive — to merge and lose oneself in something larger — comes from man’s horror of isolation, of being thrust back upon his own feeble energies alone; he feels tremblingly small and impotent in the face of transcendent nature. If he gives in to his natural feeling of cosmic dependence, the desire to be part of something bigger, it puts him at peace and at oneness, gives him a sense of self-expansion in a larger beyond, and so heightens his being, giving him truly a feeling of transcendent value.” // Pg152

“People create the reality they need in order to discover themselves.” // Pg158

“As [Otto] Rank so wisely saw, projection is a necessary unburdening of the individual; man cannot live closed upon himself and for himself. He must project the meaning of his life outward, the reason for it, even the blame for it. We did not create ourselves, but we are stuck with ourselves. Technically we say that transference is a distortion of reality. But now we see that this distortion has two dimensions: distortion due to the fear of life and death and distortion due to the heroic attempt to assure self-expansion and the intimate connection of one’s inner self to surrounding nature. […] transference reflects the whole of the human condition and raises the largest philosophical question about that condition.” // Pg158

“Culture opposes nature and transcends it. Culture is in its most intimate intent a heroic denial of creatureliness.” // Pg.159

“Christianity took creature consciousness — the thing man most wanted to deny — and made it the very condition for his cosmic heroism.” // Pg160

“Nietzsche railed at the Judeo-Christian renunciatory morality; but as Rank said, he ‘overlooked the deep need in the human being for just that kind of morality’. Rank goes so far as to say that the ‘need for a truly religious ideology is inherent in human nature and its fulfilment is basic to any kind of a social life’. […] Man is a ‘theological being’, concludes Rank, and not a biological one.” // Pg175

“There is just no way for the living creature to avoid life and death, and so it is probably poetic justice that if he tries too hard to do so he destroys himself.” // pg181

“What we call a creative gift is merely the social licence to be obsessed. And what we call “cultural routine” is a similar licence: the proletariat demands the obsession of work in order to keep from going crazy. […] The daily madness of these jobs is a repeated vaccination against the madness of the asylum. Look at the joy and eagerness with which workers return from vacation to their compulsive routines. They plunge into their work with equanimity and lightheartedness because it drowns out something more ominous. Men have to be protected from reality.” // Pg186

“In religious terms, to ‘see God’ is to die, because the creature is too small and finite to be able to bear the higher meanings of creation. Religion takes one’s very creatureliness, one’s insignificance, and makes it a condition of hope. Full transcendence of the human condition means limitless possibility unimaginable to us.” // pg204

“The person is, after all, not his own creator; he is sustained at all times by the workings of his psychochemistry — and, beneath that, of his atomic and subatomic structure. These structures contain within themselves the immense powers of nature, and so it seems logical to say that we are being constantly ‘created and sustained’ out of the ‘invisible void’.” // pg274

“Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. As awareness calls for types of heroic dedication that his culture no longer provides for him, society contrives to help him forget.” // Pg284

Hope you like the quotes I've noted.
Cheers.