Life And Death

[DaVinci]

... or also: What's the sense of Life and Death, in philosophical meaning?

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I personally go with an apparent simplicity: The Mortality Gives Life Its Sense.

Plus: Mortality gives every life and thing on earth its sense and its beauty.

Example: Look at a rose ... a rose is beautiful, because of the blossom time, a rose asks not for something, a rose is ... perfection of life ... for a moment.


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Hans Holbein d. J., Die Gesandten (The Ambassadors), 1533/London

What tells us this picture?

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Do we have to fear the death?

When life is, death is not.
When death is, life is not.

[SuperTechmarine]

There is death in life,
There must be life in death,
There cannot be one without the other
Pure Logic

[Vizsla]

If I don’t have a deadline to work to I never get anything done.
Ageing, disease and death are the ultimate deadline.
It is difficult to appreciate things until they are gone.
Morbidity and mortality force us to appreciate what we have.
Even so there is no higher meaning to it. From the Sun’s perspective we would be as insignificant as bacteria are to us. We age and die because of the immutable physical laws of the Universe. If we can get something from the hard facts of reality and use that to our advantage then all well and good, but it is just whistling into the winds of time. Our thoughts and beliefs have no intrinsic value unless it is to numb the pain.

[NotYetRegistered]

There is death in life,
There must be life in death,
There cannot be one without the other
Pure Logic

That's terrible logic.

[Vizsla]

It’s not logic. It is deliberately moving between different word definitions in order to create an apparently logical argument. It is the opposite of logic. It is a logical fallacy.

Death is an absence of life following a period of being alive. No more and no less.
So it is not ‘in life’.
Neither is life ‘in death’.
It is true that you cannot die without having been alive but the observation is not instructive and is not linked to the two preceding untruthful statements.

[SuperTechmarine]

That's terrible logic.

Thats awesome logic.

[chriscase]

Thats awesome logic.

End thread.

Now, wouldn't that have gone better on a blog?

[SparksNow]

When life is, death is not.
When death is, life is not.

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Life is death.
Death is life.

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Birth is inevitable death.
New life wasn't before existing.

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The living feed on dead/killed things.

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Life = Death
Death = Life

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I Dunno!

[Himster]

Life is an organismic state characterized by capacity for (at least 2 of) metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction whereas death is a lack of these.
Without mortality our lives would be completely meaningless: why do anything now if you have an eternity to do it in, everything can wait indefinitely.

[SparksNow]

Without mortality our lives would be completely meaningless: why do anything now if you have an eternity to do it in, everything can wait indefinitely.

A good thought.

[AqD]

Life is an organismic state characterized by capacity for (at least 2 of) metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction whereas death is a lack of these.
Without mortality our lives would be completely meaningless: why do anything now if you have an eternity to do it in, everything can wait indefinitely.

Life is always meaningless to me even with mortality. I pick up something to do because I'm still alive and need to keep myself occupied, to suppress bad feelings - not that I really want to do anything.

[Hobbes]

Instead of trying to suppress your negative emotions you should try to rid your mind of them. Suppressing them only makes them build up until you won't be able to suppress them anymore.

[DaVinci]

Life is an organismic state characterized by capacity for (at least 2 of) metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction whereas death is a lack of these.
Without mortality our lives would be completely meaningless: why do anything now if you have an eternity to do it in, everything can wait indefinitely.

Well no, that thinking is a (luxury) modern human view only, and a rough philosophical, too, not a practical that is feasable in real life, and thus not a helpful philosophy - just you have to do something in our societies, we have daily constraints, that wouldn't change if life would be eternal. And think more about animals and early humans in this regard. Just animals don't know about mortality as we do, but they act and care for their life. And early humans viewed death not so fearful, just as death would be another phase of being, but certainly they acted and cared about their life, otherwise humans didn't survive as species (same with all animals which survived the selective evolution), it's in us to do action. I think it's saved in all creatures, the knowing of the precious life, life is action and no-action is death, life is also the knowledge that we have to use the time, if a creature does not use its time, it is sick (either physically ill or mentally/psychologically ... in the grand scale will die out), "does not use" in the sense of laid-back i have all time because it's eternal doesn't function.
Btw., i see the human consciousness about mortality as reason for the development of religion, which is the seek for an anchor out of the nirvana (where life is not) or "there must be something more after death" until even "i must get a loan in an after-life for all my good efforts", and so on.

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Life is death.
Death is life.

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Birth is inevitable death.
New life wasn't before existing.

-->

The living feed on dead/killed things.

-->

Life = Death
Death = Life

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I Dunno!

Agree to the two middle statements/formulas.
True is that life is a process to death from on the first moment of life, death is looking all the time over our shoulders (of every creature), can happen every moment. Life and death belong together but it is not life is death and death is life.
Just, when life is, death is not, and vice versa, is the absolute view, there are imo. no other formulas for the absolute view of life and death.

[SparksNow]

(...) Just animals don't know about mortality as we do, but they act and care for their life.

Yes, they don't fight death, which they have no certain idea of, but they fight to be (as per se) - [following for mammals/dogs eg.:] to be able to breathe, to be able to eat and drink, to be to have fun sex (sex!; but not procreation which is a human idea), to be able to have fun/play and to be able to be a part of the pack and cuddle and relax.

And early humans viewed death not so fearful, just as death would be another phase of being, but certainly they acted and cared about their life, otherwise humans didn't survive as species (same with all animals which survived the selective evolution), it's in us to do action. I think it's saved in all creatures, the knowing of the precious life, life is action and no-action is death, life is also the knowledge that we have to use the time, if a creature does not use its time, it is sick (either physically ill or mentally/psychologically ... in the grand scale will die out), "does not use" in the sense of laid-back i have all time because it's eternal doesn't function.

I agree, but I think you missed out, that early humans were certainly not less social and altruistic than the dogs they came to make their comrades.

Btw., i see the human consciousness about mortality as reason for the development of religion, which is the seek for an anchor out of the nirvana (where life is not) or "there must be something more after death" until even "i must get a loan in an after-life for all my good efforts", and so on.

I can't really see, in an otherwise comprehensible statement, that nirvana (which isn't "where life is not") is a belief that has to be overcome. "i must get a loan in an after-life for all my good efforts", and so on - is more an idea that, imo, is worth overcoming.

Agree to the two middle statements/formulas.
True is that life is a process to death from on the first moment of life, death is looking all the time over our shoulders (of every creature), can happen every moment. Life and death belong together but it is not life is death and death is life.
Just, when life is, death is not, and vice versa, is the absolute view, there are imo. no other formulas for the absolute view of life and death.

What I was saying is:

Life is birth, is being, is decay, is death.
Death is resource (of dead things), is birth, is being.

Birth is eventually and inevitable death.
There is no new life without death (= killed/dead plants, killed/dead animals, dead/passive air).

All living beings feed on death [self evident].

Thus...

Life IS death.
Death IS life.

That's no metaphysical crap, it's fact.

[DaVinci]

... for my taste you go too far into a nature-scientific "philosophy" for this theme here in the philosophy forum section with your formulas about life and death, they are not really tensing or interesting but mere dry for this section, because you are of course right in factual and physical view, but this is actually merely boring here in this section, and first i misunderstood you, as i didn't realise that you mean the things as you wrote them, as physical facts with nature-scientific background.

Here it is pure philosophy - for this thread it is the thinking about life and death as meaning for us humans, just not for the nature/environment and bio-cycle ... and i see no need to explain the physical/biological relations of life and death on earth for this philosophy theme, except you would meet here religious believers who partly have no clue about nature-science or ignore it. And i aim also not for the metaphysic/esoteric view, not at all (i can't take esoteric guys serious anymore), just pure simple philosophy, which is perhaps a kind of 'existentialism' for this theme, but factual nature-science related views about life and death here, hm ... doesn't fit imo.. Naturalism, well ... perhaps i have put the nature idea into you with the intitial example of the rose? Maybe a mistake, but i found it good as "symbol and picture" for the life and death theme with the background, why do we humans think about life and death that much or fear the theme death but other life forms on earth not, this makes us humans somehow unique, and here we have the comparison to animals and plants ... ie. the thought, the higher the intelligence of a life-form, the higher the fear for not being and the seek after an idea to escape from this fear, and makes that sense for the human evolution or ie. is it even a necessarity and so on.

However the 1st post content was mainly meant as thinking-aspect for "do we have to fear death?", and just the meaning of death for us when we are still alive and for our plans in life, no bio-cycle, we are not in a biology-class here, ok.

[It is difficult here as for language barriers, for me at least, as those items are really very complex, and my english-knowledge is too limited to express/write/communicate properly in a non-mothertongue about science and philosophy things, i should stop it].