On the Personal, Intersubjective, and Metaphysical Senses of Death: An Inquiry into Edmund Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenological Approach to Death

Abstract

In this short study, I attempt to reconstruct the main conceptual components of Edmund Husserl’s concept of death following the leading clue of his late transcendental phenomenological methodology. First, I summarise his thoughts on death, from the point of view of “the natural attitude”, as an event in the world. Then, I try and explore the manifold senses of the limit phenomenon of death as a multidimensional transcendental phenomenological problem in all of its intersubjective-world constitutive, personal-primordial, and metaphysical-constructive layers of meanings, respectively. By doing so, I also hope that the path we travel can serve the reader as an opportunity for a personal and reflective confrontation with death.