Philosophy - Death

"Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind" - Immanuel Kant, German Enlightenment philosopher

Let us first discuss the meaning of Death in this section because I believe doing so will tie in the concepts from the previous sections. The best way to do this is to refer back to a scene from the Lord of the Rings – the speech given by Theoden right before the Ride of the Rohirrim in the Pelennor Fields. I will simply use the version from the film.

Rohan was about to face head-on a dreadful Mordor army and any ordinary person would feel a sense of fear. The reason why this speech was so spectacular is because Theoden literally removed the fear from the army with three simple chants: Death. The acceptance of Death allowed the Rohirrim Riders to alleviate themselves from fear because that fear was of Death. Acceptance removed this fear and increased the morale of the army before the fight began.

In the movie, Eowyn was present to hear her Father’s speech. During the first Death chant, she had to close her eyes to contemplate the meaning of Death. By the time the third Death was chanted out, she managed to join in, which indicated her acceptance of Death as well. This was significant because whilst the other Rohirrim Riders had many battle experiences and able to accept Death quite easily, Eowyn did not participate in as many battles and so it made sense that she needed time to accept it.

The sun rises after the army had chanted Death three times. I believe this was symbolizing that the Divine was with Rohan because Death could not be accepted as a group concept – Death must be accepted individually. And the fact that the entire Rohan army accepted Death meant that the entire army was under a banner of individuals – under the banner of the Divine Individual.

We may think that the Mordor Orc army was fearsome, however if we actually understand that the Rohirrim Riders in the Pelennor Fields was a group of riders who have all accepted Death and battle sung while hacking and slashing away, the Rohan army was actually much more fearsome. And it wasn’t like the Orcs could not feel fear.

So let's tie this back in with our modern world. The acceptance of Death allows the individual to truly understand the meaning of Life and to accept Life for what it really is. I have written a bit about Yin and Yang / Pisces in the Astrological section and this theme is again repeated here. To fully understand Life the individual must fully understand Death. A mind that only dwells in Life will never truly understand what Life is and therefore never understand the meaning of Life. This is because it will be equivalent to a mind which have only experienced hot and never cold - this mind will not understand what hot really is.

Some people may ask: if we accept Death then won't we all simply commit suicide? We will not because Death is better than Hell. If we commit suicide, our minds may end in peace in Death, however our Death will bring Hell to our family or friends. We also have not lived our Life to its full potential and there may still be a duty we must fulfill with the Life that we are given. So Death is not the answer - we can accept Death but we should not simply choose Death if there is no higher meaning of Life for making that choice.