For example, I may have a life-defining commitment to being both a father and a political activist. If the two commitments come into conflict—e.g., if my political engagement requires that I sacrifice the care for my child—the question of what I should do cannot be settled merely by considering what is the right thing to do. Should I be faithful to the political cause or to my child? Before any explicit deliberation, what appears to me as the right thing to do is itself expressive of the practical identity I prioritize and the commitment with which I keep faith. I can try to revise my priorities, but I cannot do so from a detached standpoint. The difficulty is not only the test of reason—however demanding that may be—but also the trial of faith. Failing as a father is not necessarily a failure of reason, since I may be justified in sacrificing my parental obligations for the sake of my political obligations. I am nevertheless failing as a father, since I am failing to be faithful to my child. I may have good reasons for what I do and still fail as a father, insofar as my actions betray the demands of fatherhood.
The same precarious dynamic holds for all life-defining commitments. Because it is not given what we should do or who we should be, there is always a question of with whom and with what we should keep faith. These questions—“Who should I be?” “Whom should I love?” “With what should I keep faith?”—concern our spiritual freedom. As I emphasize throughout this book, they can be living questions only for a being who understands herself as finite. The questions do not have to be explicitly self-reflective but are already at work in the way I practically care about my life. The questions concern what matters to me and there can be no pressure to answer them (whether through direct action or reflective deliberation) unless I understand my time to be finite.
To answer the question of what matters to me is to decide what is urgent in my life and what I should prioritize. If something is important to me, it matters that I do it sooner rather than later. To do something sooner rather than later, however, is not necessarily to do it right away. What counts as sooner rather than later cannot be measured directly by objective time but depends on my practical commitments and constraints. Thus, acting on my commitment to being a father does not necessarily mean that I try to have a child with my partner here and now. In an existential sense, postponing the possibility of pregnancy can be a way of acting on my commitment sooner rather than later, insofar as I take prudential steps in light of the project of fatherhood. Saving money and getting an education, for example, can be a way of prioritizing my commitment to fatherhood over other commitments on which I could spend my money and time.
Furthermore, the distinction between sooner and later is not absolute but relative and relational. That I want to do something sooner rather than later can mean that I want to do it one year from now rather than ten years from now. It may be important to me to become a father, but how important it is to me is revealed by how long I am willing to wait before taking the steps toward its realization and how much it would pain me to fail to take the steps. If I am fine with waiting ten years before acting on my commitment to being a father, it is less important to me than if I am eager to take the first steps within the next year. If it does not matter to me at all when I see someone or do something—if there is no time scale on which I take it to matter that I do it sooner rather than later—then the prospect of doing it has no importance to me at all. Inversely, if something matters to me, there has to be an existential time scale on which I take it to matter that I do it sooner rather than later.
To be sure, I do not necessarily act in accordance with what matters the most to me. The mere fact that I am eager to do something does not mean that it is truly important to me; my eagerness can be a matter of frivolous indulgence. Moreover, even when it is of the utmost importance to me that I do something sooner rather than later, I can still fail to do it. Precisely because it is so important to me, I can become paralyzed by anxiety over the stakes and do something else instead. Insofar as I experience that as a failure, however, I am still holding myself to the commitment. The importance of doing something sooner rather than later answers to a normative self-conception—e.g., my practical identity as a father—in relation to which I can succeed or fail.
My distinction between “sooner” and “later” should not be conflated with the distinction between “before” and “after” on a time line of events that are seen from a third-person standpoint. The distinction between sooner and later is available only from a first-person standpoint and presupposes that I am engaged in the project of leading my life. It is because I am projecting myself into a future that I can understand what it would mean for something to happen sooner rather than later.
Moreover, it is because I am projecting that it will be too late—because I am projecting that my life will end—that I can be responsive to the urgency of doing anything sooner rather than later. In everything I do, I project myself into a future, which is a condition for experience to be possible. To be anyone and do anything is to project myself into possibilities that I must sustain. To be a father, for example, is to project myself into possible ways of being and acting as a father, which depend on what I do. The projection of my death, however, is the unique form of possibility that structures all of my life. My death is not something that I can experience, since any experience of mine presupposes that I am alive. Rather, my death is the projection of an unsurpassable limit of my life, which makes it possible to distinguish between sooner and later in my life.
The projection of my death does not mean that I project when I will die. On the contrary, the time of my death is indefinite, both in the sense that it can happen at any moment and that it may be postponed. The indefinite time of my death is both what gives me the chance to prolong my life—to live on—and what makes it urgent to decide what I should do with my life.
My death is therefore the necessary horizon of my life. In spatial terms, the horizon is a condition of possibility for anything to be visible at all. Everything I see, I see against a horizon, which makes it possible to distinguish between proximity and distance: to distinguish between what is close and what is far away. The horizon allows me to discern spatial relations, but the horizon is not itself located at any point in space. No matter how far I walk, I will never arrive at the horizon, since the horizon moves with me.
In temporal terms, the same holds for my death. No matter how long I live, I will never arrive at my death, since I cannot be dead. Nevertheless, any possibility of my life—any possibility of doing something or being someone—can only be grasped as a possibility against the horizon of my death. My death is the horizon that renders intelligible all temporal relations of my life. If I actually believed that my life would last forever, I could not make any sense of the distinction between sooner and later in my life. The distinction itself would be unintelligible for me, since I would have no sense of a horizon in relation to which anything could be sooner or later. For the same reason, any question of priority would be unintelligible. For anything to be urgent and for anything to be at stake in prioritizing one thing over another, I have to project the horizon of my death.
The horizon of my death is not a psychological projection, since it is not something I can “choose” to project. Rather, the horizon of my death is a condition of intelligibility for my life. In being a person at all, I necessarily project the horizon of my death. As long as I am here, the horizon is there. Just as I cannot “choose” to see a spatial horizon—since it is a condition for anything to be visible—I cannot choose to project the horizon of my death, since it is a condition for any possible projection of my life. The horizon of my death opens the question of what I should do with my finite time and thus makes it possible to lead my life in the first place.
The horizon of my death always exerts a pressure on my life, but it precedes the distinction between negative and positive pressure. The horizon of my death is the condition of possibility for all expe
riences of joy and release as well as for all experiences of intensity and dedication. Even the psychological experience of being relieved of pressure—of having time to be grateful for my life—is intelligible only because I understand my time to be finite and appreciate the precious quality of my experience as something that cannot be taken for granted.
Yet the horizon of my death does not by itself give a direction to my life. A horizon is the condition both for finding a path and for being lost, since even the experience of being lost presupposes that I am trying to orient myself. The horizon cannot by itself tell me where to go, but makes it possible to look for a direction in the first place. In the same way, the horizon of my death does not by itself give me a reason for acting. My reasons for acting do not come from the prospect of my death but from my practical identities (e.g., being a father). I am a father not because I will die but because I am committed to my child, which makes me answerable for what I do as a father and gives me reasons for acting. My practical identity as a father and my reasons for acting can only matter, however, against the horizon of my death. To have a reason for acting is to have a priority and the urgency of making something a priority in my life requires that I grasp my life as finite. This is why my spiritual freedom—my ability to engage the question of what I should prioritize—depends on the projection of my death. The horizon of my death does not provide an answer to the question of what I ought to do with my life but renders intelligible how the question can matter to me.
A comparison with the seagull is once again instructive. Like all living beings, the seagull is acting in relation to its own death. Even the most elementary purposive behavior of a living organism (the purpose of maintaining the life of the organism and the species) makes sense only in relation to the prospect of death. Yet the purpose of maintaining the life of the organism and the species is not itself in question for the seagull. The seagull is always acting in light of that purpose and is therefore restricted to a form of natural freedom. For us, on the contrary, the purpose of our lives is itself in question. Even when we are completely devoted to what we do and who we take ourselves to be, our fundamental commitments can come into question. We can wake up in the middle of the night, asking ourselves what we are doing with our lives. What used to be utterly meaningful can lose its grip and what we do can cease to make sense to us. These forms of existential anxiety can be paralyzing (as in boredom or depression), but they can also transform, change, and reinvigorate our commitments. Existential anxiety is a sign of our spiritual freedom. It is because our fundamental commitments are not given that we can bind ourselves to an ideal rather than a natural purpose. Moreover, it is because our fundamental commitments are trembling and may fall apart that we can even engage the question of what to do with our lives.
V
The notion of spiritual freedom allows us to assess the deepest difference between secular and religious faith. In one sense, religious forms of faith are a clear example of spiritual freedom. To organize your life in relation to an invisible higher power—and with the aim of attaining a state beyond anything that is possible for a finite being—requires the ability to call into question existing norms and hold yourself to different requirements. Moreover, religious faith is itself fragile: it always lives in relation to doubt and can cease to make sense to you. Yet the aim of religious faith is to eliminate spiritual freedom in favor of eternal salvation. Rather than hold open the question of what to do with your time, eternal salvation would close down the question completely. Eternal salvation would not allow for any form of spiritual freedom, since it would remove the question of who you should be and what you should do with your time.
Let me recall why. An eternal salvation is either timeless or endless. In a timeless state of being, there is no freedom because there is nothing to do and nothing for which to strive. There can be no actions, no intentions, and no aspirations without a surplus of time. An endless life may therefore seem more attractive, since it would allow an infinite time for experience. An endless life, however, could never be your life. Since your life could never end, you would never be able to ask yourself what to do with your life, and you could never sacrifice your life for something that mattered more to you than your own existence. Most fundamentally, you would have no horizon of death against which you could give any direction to your life.
A prominent scholar of Buddhist thought, Steven Collins, has made a related observation in his systematic study of the notion of nirvana. Collins perceptively points out that eternal salvation (whether conceived as a timeless or an endless existence) is incompatible with any form of personal agency. “I would ask any reader who may think it possible to know what eternal happiness might be like: if it is timeless, how are you present, and if it is endless, what possible well-being could retain its attraction, indeed its meaning as well-being, when infinitely repeated?”12 Collins elaborates the case against an endless life as follows:
If one—anyone—tries to imagine his or her existence stretching forward not merely 300 years, but 300,000 or 300 million or 300 billion, or whatever (in immortality, “world without end,” these lengths of time are but a beginning), it will soon, I contend, become impossible to retain any sense of a recognizable structure of human emotions, reactions, intentions, aspirations, interrelations, etc.13
Collins’s point can be made more precise in light of my argument that death is the necessary horizon of leading a life. The problem is not that an endless life eventually would become impossible to recognize as a life, but that an endless life is unintelligible from the beginning. The duration of your life is indefinite, but you cannot grasp your life as endless. Anyone who is leading her life in any way must project the temporal horizon of her death, just as anyone who is walking in any direction must project a spatial horizon. Without a horizon that delimits your visible space, you could never engage the question of where to go, since you would not be able to make any distinction between what is near and what is far away in relation to where you are. Likewise, without the horizon of your death, you could never engage the question of what to do with your time, since you would not be able to make any distinction between sooner and later in your life.
An endless existence would have no horizon of death and could therefore never be the life of a person. The same problem is even more obvious in the case of a timeless eternity. “Even if we can make sense of the idea of a timeless consciousness, such a prospect clearly will not be me,” Collins writes. He continues:
No action, no thought, no intentions, aspirations, or memories can be possible without time. With no time to remember anything, let alone to have new experiences, it would be impossible to have any sense of personality, any sense of “who one is.” For this reason such a prospect, although certainly a possible aim for me now, cannot be said to be a form of survival—rather, for me now it is indistinguishable from death.14
Buddhism is remarkably honest about this implication of eternal life. Rather than promising that your life will continue, or that you will see your loved ones again, the goal of nirvana is to extinguish your life and your attachments. The aim is not to lead a free life, with the risk of suffering that such a life entails, but to reach the “insight” that personal agency is an illusion and to dissolve in the timelessness of nirvana.
The Buddhist conclusion may seem extreme, but it makes explicit what is implicit in all religious ideas of eternal salvation. An immortal soul is ultimately just as impersonal as the selfless oblivion of nirvana. As Collins recalls:
I used to worry that I couldn’t understand nirvana until I realized that I didn’t understand the Christian (or Islamic) heaven or the Hindu idea of absorption into the World Spirit (brahman), or indeed any other such conception of eternal salvation either; it is a mistake, I think, to assume that the presence in doctrine of a self or a soul, whether individual, as in Christianity, or collective, as in (much of) Hinduism, makes eternity any more
comprehensible.15
Collins is here on the verge of understanding that eternal salvation is inseparable from death. Yet he backs away from the conclusion that the aspiration for eternal salvation is indistinguishable from an aspiration to end one’s life. “I do not mean to denigrate religious aspirations to eternity,” he assures us,16 since he thinks that a critique of such aspirations would not show sufficient empathy for those who hold religious beliefs. “As an attempt at humanistic, empathetic understanding, rather than as a conceptual point, the suggestion that untold millions of our fellow human beings can have simply and explicitly aspired to a ‘superior sort of death’ as their highest conceivable goal seems rather unsatisfactory.”17 Instead, Collins short-circuits the possibility of calling into question the ideal of eternal salvation. “It is certainly coherent,” he asserts, “to hope that a resolution of suffering and a fulfillment of human aspiration are possible, without knowing anything about what that is or might be.”18
Collins’s argument is the last line of defense for a religious ideal of eternal salvation. Even though he concedes that eternal salvation is incompatible with any sense of leading a life—any sense of personhood—he maintains that it is coherent to hope for eternal salvation as a fulfillment of human aspiration and that such hope should be sheltered from critique by virtue of empathy with the religious. This line of defense is misleading. It is certainly important to show compassion for those whose suffering leads them to subscribe to a religious ideal of salvation. The right form of compassion, however, is not to promote the promise of eternal bliss but to transform the conditions of social suffering in this life. Collins fails to distinguish between the religious ideologies that promise salvation and the “untold millions of our fellow human beings” who are socialized into such ideologies. To argue that eternal salvation is inseparable from death—as I have done throughout this book—is not to say that untold millions of our fellow human beings actually do strive for salvation/death as their highest conceivable goal. Rather, I argue that ideals of eternal salvation are self-contradictory and self-undermining. Eternal salvation is not a goal worthy of our aspirations and it cannot even in principle redeem any forms of social injustice, since it would eliminate our freedom and any sense of who we are.
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