(Minneapolis, MN: Existential Books, 2006—5th edition)       72 pages
(ISBN: 978-0-89231-959-6; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: BD444.P37 2006)

    Normally we deny, evade, cover-up, and repress the deeper dimensions of death.
Drawing on insights provided by Martin Heidegger,
this book creates the new concept 'ontological anxiety',
which differs both from the physical-biological-medical fact of death
and from our emotional-subjective-personal fear of ceasing-to-be.
We begin by discussing 8 common ways in which we turn away from
our fear of ceasing-to-be and our even deeper ontological anxiety.

    This existential-phenomenological approach
requires a paradigm shift in our thinking about death,
but we can hope that the new model will make better sense
of what we already 'know' at our deepest levels of being.

    Here is the complete table of contents for this book.
This link also contains the first page of the book.
A hyperlink from the table of contents
will take you to an except from the section on Authenticity.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE
IN THREE DIFFERENT PRINTED FORMATS:

    An Existential Understanding of Death:
A Phenomenology of Ontological Anxiety
is also published as Chapter 9 of
Our Existential Predicament:
Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety, & Death .
This larger book sells for $45 wholesale,
which is one reason for selecting just the chapter on death,
which sells for $10 wholesale.
If you buy this larger book of over 300 pages,
you will already have An Existential Understanding of Death.

FIFTH EDITION, 2006

    This is the same text as contained in
Our Existential Predicament (Fifth Edition, 2006),
mentioned just above.
An Existential Understanding of Death:
A Phenomenology of Ontological Anxiety
(Minneapolis, MN: www.existentialbooks.com, 2006)
(ISBN: 978-0-89231-959-6; paperback enclosed in clear plastic covers)
(Library of Congress call number: BD444.P37 2006)
This new edition has the same pages as the 4 earlier editions.
Beginning with the Fourth Edition (2001),
the text has been completely reset in a new font or typeface:
Humanist 777 BT, 11 points.
The wholesale cost of this 5th edition is: $10.

FOURTH EDITION, 2001

    The first three sections of this book explore and distinguish
the following three dimensions of death:
Each dimension of death may be described in 7 corresponding features:

THE FACT OF DEATH
1. intellectual construct.
2. empirical fact.
3. observable occurrence.
4. finitude.
5. objective-external.
6. abstract-general.
7. unowned.

THE FEAR OF CEASING-TO-BE
1. emotional response.
2. arises from empirical fact.
3. personal apprehension.
4. awareness of my finitude.
5. subjective-deep.
6. specific-personal.
7. owned.

ONTOLOGICAL ANXIETY
1. inner state-of-being
2. arises from my internal 'nothing'.
3. existential disclosure.
4. constant internal threat.
5. arises from the core of my self.
6. more mine than my death.
7. lays claim to my self.

    Then we distinguish the two deeper dimensions of death:

The five defining features of
THE FEAR OF CEASING-TO-BE

1. Definable, intelligible response
to the threat to specific life-values.

2. Caused by objective dangers to our survival;
specific channels of approach;
based on intellectual information.

3. Temporary—lasts only as long
as the objective danger to survival.

4. The collection of our values
is threatened thru one organ or system;
if that endangered organ or system can be saved,
life will continue;
isolatable approach of threat.

5. Can be confronted
—by working against the specific lethal threats;
death can be postponed.
 

The five defining features of
ONTOLOGICAL ANXIETY

1. Free-floating, generalized feeling
of total threat-to-being.

2. Uncaused;
not the result of the fact of biological death;
arises from within our selves;
no channels of approach;
existentially disclosed.

3. Permanent inner state-of-being;
utterly constant threat.

4. Ownmost, pervasive, internal threat-to-being;
arises not thru an isolatable bodily system
but from the depths of our selves;
cannot be isolated from our selves.

5. Cannot be overcome;
all our efforts fail.

    These five distinctions are explored fully
in the first half of this book.

AN EXCERPT FROM THE PREFACE of
An Existential Understanding of Death:
A Phenomenology of Ontological Anxiety

     The 'fear of death' is a composite experience encompassing:
(1) the abstract, objective, external, empirical fact of biological death;
(2) our personal, subjective, emotional fear of ceasing-to-be,
which arises from our awareness of our own finitude; and
(3) our ownmost ontological anxiety,
our Existential Predicament disguised as the fear of ceasing-to-be.
This least understood and most repressed existential dimension of death
(which has also been called "being-towards-death" and "the anxiety of nonbeing"),
will be the focus of this phenomenological investigation.

     Whenever "death" is mentioned, we think first of biological death,
but this tendency to focus exclusively on the objective, terminal fact of dying
may well be a trick of thought designed to protect us
from noticing our fear of ceasing-to-be or our even deeper ontological anxiety.
We have other protective techniques as well:
religious illusions, philosophical desensitization, and diversionary small-talk.
Most of these distracting ploys amount to seeing death exclusively
as an objective event, which befalls all plants, animals, and people eventually.
All such attempts to picture and talk about death as a fact are (at least in part)
attempts to evade the two deeper dimensions of death
by interpreting death only from the point of view of a spectator.
Even our scholarly symposia about death
often provide only an objective understanding of death.
Such approaches keep death outside of ourselves
—a phenomenon we know about only as observers, never as participants.

     Here, however, we will push in the opposite direction:
First, we will attempt to get beyond the objective fact of death
to our deeper, subjective response to finitude—our fear of ceasing-to-be.
And, not being satisfied with that dimension,
we will seek to probe even deeper behind our fear of ceasing-to-be
to uncover our repressed ontological anxiety
—the threatening inner state-of-being that possesses us continuously
from the time we become aware of ourselves
but which has very little connection with the fact of death.

     It will be relatively easy to move beyond
the objective, public, external, spectator's vision of death
as a once-in-a-life-time event—in fact, the end-event of life—
to feeling subjectively our deep fear of ceasing-to-be.

     But it will be more difficult to separate the deeper dimensions of death:
our terrifying fear of ceasing-to-be and our underlying ontological anxiety.
If we probe even below our personal fear of ceasing-to-be-in-the-world,
we may discover the cause of much of our evasive talk and deceptive posturing;
we may pull the covers off our trembling, naked ontological anxiety.
If we find ways to look deeply into ourselves,
exposing even our most clever tricks of thought,
then not only will we begin truly to fear our own deaths,
but we may even confront our underlying ontological anxiety.

     This ontological anxiety is obscurely felt by all of us
as a subjective awareness drifting up from our inner depths,
a pervasive haunting of our whole being,
which we are reluctant to confront because we have no easy way to handle it.
This continuous inner state-of-being is not the result of the fact of dying;
it is not worry arising from the inevitability of actual death.
Rather, our ontological anxiety is the deepest truth of our existence,
obviously deeper than the external, objective, empirical fact of biological death,
but even deeper than our inward, subjective, personal fear of ceasing-to-be.
Our ontological anxiety does not arise from the fact of death,
but much of our concern about death arises from our ontological anxiety!
(This paradoxical statement should become clear in the next 70 pages.)

     If our ontological anxiety truly grips us,
we can go either of two possible ways:
(1) We can organize our lives around this all-pervasive 'threat',
courageously embracing our ontological anxiety,
moving ourselves toward "Authentic Existence".
Or (2) we can be freed from our ontological anxiety
after having fully acknowledged it (and attained some Authenticity),
thereby coming into the new inner state-of-being "Existential Freedom".

    If you would like to buy a copy of An Existential Understanding of Death,
search the Internet for the publisher's website: Existential Books.