Life Against Death

A shocking and extreme interpretation of the father of psychoanalysis.

A shocking and extreme interpretation of the father of psychoanalysis.

A shocking and extreme interpretation of culture, history, and the father of psychoanalysis. In Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, social philosopher Norman O. Brown radically analyzes and critiques the work of Sigmund Freud. Brown attempts to define a non-repressive civilization, draws parallels between psychoanalysis and the theology of Martin Luther, and also examines the revolutionary themes present in western religious thought, such as ideas found in the work of William Blake and Jakob Böhme. “Life Against Death cannot fail to shock, if it is taken personally; for it is a book which does not aim at eventual reconciliation with the views of common sense. The highest praise one can give to Brown’s book is that, apart from its all-important attempt to penetrate and further the insights of Freud, it is the first major attempt to formulate an eschatology of immanence in the seventy years since Nietzsche.” —Susan Sontag “One of the most interesting and valuable works of our time. Brown’s contribution to moral thought . . . cannot be overestimated. His book is far-ranging, thoroughgoing, extreme, and shocking. It gives the best interpretation of Freud I know.” —Lionel Trilling

A philosopher refutes our culturally embedded acceptance of death, arguing instead for the desirability of anti-aging science and radical life extension. Ingemar Patrick Linden’s central claim is that death is evil. In this first comprehensive refutation of the most common arguments in favor of human mortality, he writes passionately in favor of antiaging science and radical life extension. We may be on the cusp of a new human condition where scientists seek to break through the arbitrarily set age limit of human existence to address aging as an illness that can be cured. The book, however, is not about the science and technology of life extension but whether we should want more life. For Linden, the answer is a loud and clear “yes.” The acceptance of death is deeply embedded in our culture. Linden examines the views of major philosophical voices of the past, whom he calls “death’s ardent advocates.” These include the Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Lucretius, and Montaigne. All have taught what he calls “the Wise View,” namely, that we should not fear death. After setting out his case against death, Linden systematically examines each of the accepted arguments for death—that aging and death are natural, that death is harmless, that life is overrated, that living longer would be boring, and that death saves us from overpopulation. He concludes with a “dialogue concerning the badness of human mortality.” Though Linden acknowledges that The Case Against Death is a negative polemic, he also defends it as optimistic, in that the badness of death is a function of the goodness of life.

After the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1992, a war broke out. In the final stages of the war in July 1995, Serbian forces surrounded and laid siege to the town of Srebrenica. The largest genocide in Europe since World War II had begun. Out of options, Kadir decides to seek refuge at the Potocari enclave, a safe zone protected by a UN Dutch battalion, but the safe zone provides no protection to the unarmed civilians fleeing from certain death. Kadir and his family are captured by Serbian forces and forcibly separated from each other. Kadir is imprisoned with other men in the local high school in Srebrenica where they are severely beaten and tortured. The next day, he is loaded onto the back of a cargo truck with a group of Bosnian prisoners to be executed in a nearby town. Watching men being pulled off the backs of trucks and executed, Kadir begins shaking with the realization that he is about to be killed just like them. He then makes the daring decision to escape and flees into the woods. Exhausted, alone, starving and disoriented with an infection from an injury ravaging his body, Kadir wanders aimlessly through the woods for 17 days. On the verge of death, he hears a voice from the mountains. Moved by this surreal experience, Kadir finds the strength within himself to go on…

This book focuses on the intrapsychic vicissitudes of what it means to be truly alive and how death accompanies us at each step of our life's journey. It shows that, psychologically-speaking, death is always present in life and life in death.

Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the 'why' of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie - man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. The book argues that human civilisation is a defence against the knowledge that we are mortal beings. Becker states that humans live in both the physical world and a symbolic world of meaning, which is where our 'immortality project' resides. We create in order to become immortal - to become part of something we believe will last forever. In this way we hope to give our lives meaning.In The Denial of Death, Becker sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates decades after it was written.