A 97-year-old Philosopher Looks at Death and the Meaning of Life
His Enigmatic Last Words May Be Key to the Mystery
The day before he died in 2018, after many hours in silence with his eyes closed, Herbert Fingarette suddenly looked up and said, “Well, that’s clear enough!”
His grandson, Andrew Hasse, notes that his last message is open to interpretation, “but I’d like to believe that he might have seen at least a glimpse of something beyond death.”
Hasse made this video Being 97 of his grandfather’s last days. Note the quiet dedication of the caregiver Sherly Pontis.
The following is reprinted from Richard Wagner’s The Amateur’s Guide to Death and Dying
In his 1996 book about death, Herbert Fingarette argued that fearing one’s own demise was irrational. When you die, he wrote, “there is nothing.” Why should we fear the absence of being when we won’t be there ourselves to suffer it?
Twenty years later, facing his own mortality, the philosopher realized that he had been wrong. Death began to frighten him, and he couldn’t think himself out of it.
Fingarette, who for 40 years taught philosophy at the University of California at Santa Barbara, had also written extensively on self-deception. Now, at 97, he wondered whether he’d been deceiving himself about the meaning of life and death.
“It haunts me, the idea of dying soon, whether there’s a good reason or not,” he says in the documentary Being 97. “I walk around often and ask myself, ‘What is the point of it all?’ There must be something I’m missing. I wish I knew.”
“What is the point of it all?” Yes! It was not the fear of dying that drove me forward, but the need for meaning, for purpose, not a substitutionary one, but an eternal one.
“…the need for meaning…” That’s it — We are all (or just about all) searching for that — and God, if we can wrap our heads around it (a big ‘if’ for me), is preferable to Oblivion.
Death and dying doesn’t worry me. What will be will be, when it happens there is nothing I can do about it. I will just go with the flow.
Seems, to me, he finally woke up.
I think he saw heaven. he got his answer, just hope it wasnt to late. many people just before they die, have seen great things. as I have been with people holding there hand before they take there last breath.as a Christian I dont fear death. as Jesus Christ said not to fear death.
Thanks for sharing that. I have hope but short on faith.