Almost all twentieth-century philosophy stresses the immanence of
death in human life-as drive (Freud), as the context of Being
(Heidegger), as the essence of our defining ethics (Levinas), or as
language (de Man, Blanchot). In Death's Following, John Limon makes
use of literary analysis (of Sebald, Bernhard, and Stoppard),
cultural analysis, and autobiography to argue that death is best
conceived as always transcendentally beyond ourselves, neither
immanent nor imminent. Adapting Kierkegaard's variations on the
theme of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac while refocusing the
emphasis onto Isaac, Limon argues that death should be imagined as
if hiding at the end of an inexplicable journey to Moriah. The
point is not to evade or ignore death but to conceive it more
truly, repulsively, and pervasively in its camouflage: for example,
in jokes, in logical puzzles, in bowdlerized folk songs. The first
of Limon's two key concepts is adulthood: the prolonged anti-ritual
for experiencing the full distance on the look of death. His second
is dirtiness, as theorized in a Jewish joke, a logical exemplum,
and T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday": In each case, unseen dirt on
foreheads suggests the invisibility of inferred death. Not
recognizing death immediately or admitting its immanence and
imminence is for Heidegger the defining characteristic of the
"they," humanity in its inauthentic social escapism. But Limon
vouches throughout for the mediocrity of the "they" in its dirty
and ludicrous adulthood. Mediocrity is the privileged position for
previewing death, in Limon's opinion: practice for being forgotten.
In refusing the call of twentieth-century philosophy to face death
courageously, Limon urges the ethical and aesthetic value of
mediocre anti-heroism.
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