The chapter on Kierkegaard gives us:
"He [the aesthete] chooses himself and his life, resolutely and consciously in the face of the death that will come as certain; and his choice by its very consciousness and resoluteness, is a piece of finite pathos in the face of the vast nothingness stretching before and after his life. The aesthete may not wish to dwell on this somber background to his choice, but that background is surely there even if we, to use Tolstoy's phrase, are not able to stand face to face with it. It is thus by an act of courage that we begin to exist ethically. We bring ourselves to ourselves for a lifetime."
Who is and who isn't standing face to face with death?
Is Unamuno?
"If there is no immortality, what use if God?" Unamuno quotes an old peasant approvingly.
I have always wondered: how can a life have value if it never ends?
Musn't life be demarcated?
"Find the edges!" Cried Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark
EXT. INDY’S DIG - NIGHTIn the eerie conjunction of moonlight and torchlight, Indy and the other men step back in awe of their discovery: there,flush with the bottom of their pit, is a heavy stone entry door to an underground chamber. Special prying tools are produced. With two men assigned to each of the two long tools, they work in unison to open the vault. They open it a foot and the two other men rush in to flop the heavy door completely open. Down inside, only blackness. The men quickly prostrate themselves around the edge of the entry to look inside. Indy and Sallah each take a torch and hold them down the hole.
As an atheist, I am my ownmost possibility which cannot be outstripped; a being-unto death. Death, my finitude, is the background that forms my figure, gives definition, gives value, because...
I found the edges!
Does your faith require you to stand face to face with death?
If it doesn't you could find yourself digging in the wrong place.
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