I have been trying to scan through M. Merleau-Ponty's book and I feel it's a gold mine that may need more time and more tools. I felt overwhelmed unless you feel there is a particular strategy we may use to tackle it.
After your writing about death and fear I had a chance to read two articles that say something about the same issue.
1) By Chuck Gallozi (12/15/2010) has an an article on Fear of Death & this can be retrievd from http://www.personal-development.com/chuck/fear-dying.htm
2) F. Rozenzweig (1971). The Star of Redemption (W. Hallo -Translator), New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
F. Rozenzweig (1971) wrote that, "All that is mortal lives in this fear of death; every new birth augments the fear by one new reason, for it augments what is mortal" (p. 3). It's interesting to note that even though people live with this fear of death, they continue to bear children that will die some day.
I also have found some of Chuck Gallozi's ideas regarding fear, death & the fearless to be interesting. For instance, he wrote that sometimes fear of death is "so overwhelming that it completely debilitates the victims, making their lives worse than death". I can imagine how it will be like to entirely live one's life fearing death. Whilst in the grip of this kind of grip, ther is no doubt hat one becomes miserable and incapacitated. This is the time one may require the attention of a medical practitioner.
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Chuck further asserted that, "A common mistake is to label courageous men and women as 'fearless'". He said, "they are not fearless but committed to their cause and determined to act inspite of their fear". Anyway, I feel there is a very thin line that seperates the courageous from the fearless and I would think that there are individuals that are both fearless and courageous. Some people in this category have risked their lives and died prematurely and I would think some are still going to do that and live longer.
Yes! I think this is the kind of definitional "drawing of new lines" that's very useful. Having an articulated understanding of "fearing" and "fearless" is helpful. It's the beginning of the building up of nuances that promise when you define fear in your advanced work....it will have dimensions that reverberate more fully....that is....are open up human experience and culture to new insights (versus....impose theory upon them).
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