APQ - APPON PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

The natural principle of change is inevitable in human existence. In itself, this principle embodies continuity and discontinuity. As to what end man's being transcends to, is an interrogative of important discourse in this paper. Does Man flux from life to death; in nothingness, and from death, in nothingness, to life in somethingness? What does it mean to be human, to die and to experience change and human transcendence? The frequent nature of death, the death of loved ones, colleagues and friends elicit lamentations and sorrows, but more importantly, it expresses human incapacity, fear of the unknown, lack of knowledge of death, and of what it means to die. The book of Job (14:14) interrogates this phenomenon of man thus: If man dies shall he come back to life?. Atriad may be further agitated; if a man lives to die, does he die to live? If God is life, is God death also? If life is a means to an end, is death the end? These interrogatives exemplify the character and paradox of human existence; the more the knowledge of man about man, the more Man understands that he knows little about himself. The paper argues further that man by his very essence encapsulates change, discontinuity and continuity in his/her dissolution through death. That death is not an external and public fact that creates a sense of loss and sadness to humanity, but an internal possibility of his being. It is the fulfillment of the Man project of self-liberation, self-transcendence, and a process of surpassing his/her existential condition. In death, man ceases to be the impersonal social being among beings and has been freed from the servitude of the anonymous “they” to his/her own most potentiality for being. A conclusion is argued that, in death, Man further becomes the most vitalizing fact of life and the cardinal indicator of authentic selfhood.

Open Full Text (PDF)