Life-Time. Re-investigating Phenomenological Analyses of Death and Human Mortality with Max Scheler and Edmund Husserl

Phenomenologists have debated death and human finitude for more than a century. However, the plentitude and diversity of contributions is hardly known, largely due to the dominance of Heidegger’s analysis of death in Sein und Zeit (1927). In recent years, the discussions on Heidegger’s Black Notebooks reinforced the need to critically reassess key ideas of his thought, such as his thanatology. This project aims at recovering two of the most important alternative views that have been ignored, mainly due to belated editions, translations and publications. In particular, it intends to demonstrate how Scheler’s writings from 1911-1928 and Husserl’s manuscripts on the topic during the early 1930ies, provide resources for an entirely different phenomenological conception of death that not only anticipated but already left behind debates that were to follow. In this way, this project sets out to correct the common misperception that Heidegger’s analysis is not only the single origin of this debate but also still the only account capable of tackling death as a philosophical problem. By introducing Husserl’s and Scheler’s ‘new’ material, this project re-orients the phenomenological discourse on death beyond the current paradigm towards phenomena of birth, old age, and transgenerational relations.