A human life, Arendt argues, only becomes a complete entity after its death. She continues, "death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject" (The Life of the Mind, Vol.1, p. 164). This line of thinking has it all backwards. Death is the ultimate hazardous flux. Is ontology really up to the task of elucidating anything about what it means for a person to exist? Why is quotidian existence such a problem for ontology? My neighbor whom I don't know very well can at least ask me how my day went. Perhaps I should turn to him for philosophical guidance. Well, I'm not quite ready to abandon all hope. I bought a copy of Jean-Luc Nancy's Being Singular Plural and plan to dig into it this coming weekend. In the meantime I'll amuse myself by wondering what sort of quality a being must have in order to understand daily life as something that really exists.
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