The Dignity of Death and the Dignity of Life

For a long time now our publishing industry has been content to use Western products or traditional resources, and has not been very willing to develop new materials. Even if the writer is scholarly, it is necessary to consider market demand and the extent to which readers can accept the given work. Therefore it is quite exciting that a scholar such as Charles Fu is able to get such a wide-ranging response with a book about death and dying.

You can get the author's main focus from the title. It includes death, life, thanatological psychtherapy, the modern theory of life and death, and the "dignity" toward which everyone aspires but which seems so elusive. How does he lay out these weighty views and scholarly ideas? The "Introduction" tells us that the contents are based mainly on a class offered by the writer in the Department of Religion at Temple University in the US. Thus the argumentation is clearly set out, and the logic clearly presented; there is a great deal of data and the structure is well integrated. Reading this book is equivalent to having attended that class; it proceeds gradually and cumulatively, so that one inevitably profits a great deal from it. As for why the author thought to write this book, it is because he himself faced the threat of death; this book resulted from that struggle. This background means that the author's personal knowledge and first-hand ideas shine through throughout the rigorous process of thought and argument, making for a very intimate and personalized book for the reader.

Charles Fu's The Dignity of Death and the Dignity of Life is the first book in Taiwan to weave together literature, religion, and philosophy in a structured way to specifically explore the problem of death. （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）

Review of the literature on death

Structurally, the book is divided into three parts: One is "Dying with Dignity," the second is "World Religions and the Transcendence of Death," and the third is "Problems Raised by the Modern Theory of Life and Death." In order to clarify the meaning of death, the author introduces four representative works. The first is On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. In this book she describes the five stages through which terminally ill patients pass: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This is still the classic formulation. Second is Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych, which describes the awakening and enlightenment of a man who has accepted death. Akira Kurosawa's film Ikiru further reveals that enlightenment comes with the acceptance and completion of one's responsibilities. Finally there is Loving and Leaving the Good Life, a 1992 book written by Helen Nearing, which affirms that people can depart with joy and with hope.

Dr. Fu's review of the above "literature on dying" reveals his broad field of vision and his tolerant spirit. The materials considered by a philosopher should not be limited to the realm of pure thought, and this is even more the case for a "existential situation" like death.

Following on this, Fu takes world religion as his counterpoint, because a major concern of religion has always been with death and how to handle death. He explains in depth Christianity, Hinduism, traditional Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. Of course these are not all of the major world religions, but these canons are representative as far as Chinese people are concerned. Of these, the section on Hinduism is overly long and complex, and may exhaust the ordinary reader; even if one understands it, it is of little overall value.

World religions and death

There has been pluralization in every major world religion. Does this indicate that as far as the problem of death is concerned, "to each his own"? The author rejects this idea, criticizing it from the point of view of an outsider to religion. He proposes many questions, such as, for Hinduism: "How can we confirm that there is reincarnation for all life?" Or, for Christianity: "Can those who have never heard the gospel or believed in Christianity find redemption?" This type of doubt is expressed out of rational concern; however, it is incompatible with the ultimate truth or transcendent doctrines of believers.

By pursuing this logical path, Fu naturally moves in the direction of the "true understanding" realm of "self-awareness of subject and mind." Thus, for example, Confucianism and Taoism, and the Buddhist concepts of su-ti (the knowledge of the mundane world) and chen-ti (true, nonworldly understanding) are relatively highly evaluated in this book. But this evaluation involves a problem of the meaning of "religion." Confucianism and Taoism are originally philosophies of how to live in the mundane world, and cannot in themselves be deemed religions. In a religion, though they have doctrines and interpretations, as well as norms and restrictions on behavior, the most important things are: "rites" and "mythology." To ignore the latter two is equivalent to asking religion to appear as something other than religion, which is really forcing things a bit.

The Modern Theory of Life and Death

The author tries hard to rectify this. In the section on "the modern theory of life and death" he deliberately makes a division between systematized religion and real religion, giving preference to the latter. He says, "True religion takes the self-awareness of the innateness of individual being as its foundation. This either calls up innate understanding and comprehension, or establishes active and positive beliefs, providing the truth about the end of the universe, the ultimate purpose of human life, and paths to follow to achieve the liberation of the soul, and other specific answers. Individual beings then make a choice depending upon their free will and their spiritual needs" (p. 185). The definition sketched out here is not at all what we normally think of as religion, but is the "philosophy of life and death" as conceived by philosophers. Perhaps a philosophy of life and death can be free from objectivity, formality, and rigidity, but it has the opposite critical problem of becoming personalized, and freely verified only in one's own mind, so it is impossible to come to a common spiritual consensus.

In order to strengthen his position, the author proceeds to introduce Victor Frankl's "logotherapy" and Morita's "Zen therapy." Frankl affirms that there must be a search for meaning in life, and if a mission can be produced, then what happens to the individual will not become a cause of illness. But when he talks about the "God in one's unconsciousness" and "ultimate existence or belief in God," the author of this book points directly to the fact that there is an internal contradiction. Here the author seems to forget: Is it possible that the "ultimate truth" which he places at the top level of his own ten levels of living does not have the same nature? From this one point we can see that the writer has a great deal of wisdom, but lacks the corresponding understanding. That is, although the world sketched out by mysticism includes the "unmentionable," it's not necessarily wrong to mention it; and not to mention it does not necessarily mean that one truly has understanding.

Morita's "Zen therapy" has been called "fundamental natural therapy." It calls on the ill person to identify with such Taoist-flavoured concepts as "obeying nature" and "reality is the only truth," so that one will have no fear when facing death. We know from the "Conclusion" of Fu's book that Fu himself was in a life-and-death struggle with cancer, and in the end won completely.

Waiting on a "Fu therapy"

Given his experience, it should not be hard to come up with a "Fu therapy." Such a therapy could include all the important concepts in this book and build on a special Chinese foundation of Confucianism and Taoism. And, as expected, the writer makes a preliminary sketch in the section on the modern theory of life and death. He makes six suggestions, advising us to combine a coherent and simple concept of death with a pluralized and tolerant modern mind; to combine scientific rationality and philosophical rationality as the methodological key; and to distinguish between su-ti (mundane experience) and chen-ti (true understanding) on the basis of Buddhist teachings, finally reaching the highest level of meaning by climbing upward level by level.

Thereafter, it is not necessary to concern oneself with before-life or after-death. It is only necessary to concentrate on "the attitude to select here and now to face life and death," to undertake self-cultivation and reflection, and to finally realize a philosophy of life and death. "Accept our lives as a highly complex test, duty, or mission; then thoroughly transform our characters, and return once again to the mundane world and undertake all those tasks which have meaning in day-to-day life, and create truly beautiful cultural values" (p.229).

This passage makes one really long to share in Dr. Fu's modern theory of life and death. The great value of philosophy is that it employs reason to organize an ever-changing and flowing experience of reality, constructing a comprehensible system, and from this pointing to a meaningful model for living. This model for living must be verified with concrete experiences. But since an individual's experience may be limited by their circumstances in life, it is necessary that everyone share with others what evidence each has, and in this way to mutually enlighten and raise each other up.

Ultimate truth and "me"

If the modern theory of life and death is just an intellectual construct, to serve as food for thought for relevant university courses, then there would be no harm in doing as the author suggests and returning in the end to "self-awareness of subject and mind." But if you really want to make it functional, the the first question must be this: Is there any group which has close enough educational backgrounds and levels of knowledge to truly verify these principles in daily life? An academic theory that extols "self-awareness of subject and mind" will face the difficult problem of human comprehension. Moving to the end, the modern theory of life and death might very well seem to ordinary people to be just another subject taught in academia, just a theory for intellectuals. When most ordinary people are confronted with death, they usually resort to appeals through systematized religion, or even seek secret cures from fortune tellers and geomancers.

Even if just talking about the structure of the theory, the writer's "ten levels of life" is not very applicable. Of the ten levels, every person can understand the categories of physical activity, psychological activity, politics and society, history and culture, exploration for new knowledge, the experience of judging beauty, or ethics and morals.

Yet the three highest levels--existential being, ultimate concern, and ultimate truth--are the critical ones. These are precisely the three levels of life brought out by the imminence of death. If you really want to resolve the problems brought by death, then you must "wait for the discovery, understanding, and realization of the ultimate truth." This idea of the author's is surely universal, and no one would deny it. But how can one grasp "ultimate truth" by relying solely on one's personal "self-awareness"? The ultimate truth is singular, it is absolute, and therefore comprehends everything within it. Since this is the case, it is also something impossible to put into words, and impossible to define. We can say what it is, and we can say what it isn't, but what is important is the relationship that it has with me, with this actual being. If it is simply a vague affirmation of ultimate truth, and does not clearly establish its relationship to me, then "my" life and death are ultimately an empty dream, or a simple game of chance in which we deceive ourselves that we have control that we do not really have.

Perhaps in his next book Professor Fu will respond to my small queries. Nevertheless, the contents and import of the book in front of me now are truly eye-opening and admirable. Chinese have always avoided talking about the subject of death, but perhaps now it won't hurt to adjust our focus and, with the help of this book, to explore the mysteries of life and death, and in this way to clarify once again the meaning of human dignity.

Title: The Dignity of Death and the Dignity of Life--From Thanotological Psychotherapy to the Modern Theory of Life and Death

Author: Charles Fu

Publisher: Cheng Chung

Price: NT$195

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Charles Fu's The Dignity of Death and the Dignity of Life is the first book in Taiwan to weave together literature, religion, and philosophy in a structured way to specifically explore the problem of death. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)