33

The mechanist’s heritage obscures our understanding of death through the dualism of body and soul. Death is seen as a weakness of the body. We do not die because of the soul. In principle, the soul outlives the body. The problem is the support. This metaphysical a priori is found nowadays through the mask of the cerebral death criteria. It establishes death as a state of anoxia. While the body is still alive, the loss of mental faculty is what characterizes death. The process of death is reduced to a state, because what is important is consciousness. This incarnation of the soul is what characterizes human life. In losing this faculty, we die in the eyes of humanity. We therefore have to preserve the consciousness by repairing or changing its support. Against this metaphysical a priori, I propose to understand death as being a process already present in the living. The event of death is not reducible to its effectuation by the interruption of consciousness. Its process exceeds the consciousness. There is death in the living and living in death.