| The Denial Of Death |
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| 1973 books | |
| denial of death, the | |
| pulitzer prize for general non-fiction | |
| denial of death | |
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The main theme of ''The Denial of Death'' is that most human activity ultimately concerns the denial of one's Mortality . The full realization of one's own mortality is mostly unbearable, absolutely terrifying and horrific. Man transcends this problem in the concept of Heroism . By being heroic, man feels he has meaning, a purpose, something that will never die. One can be a hero to the eye of God, to the State, to the eyes of his peers, to his family, etc. Mental illness is thus most insightfully interpreted as a bogging down in one's hero system(s). Another theme running throughout the book is that humanity's traditional "hero-systems" i.e. Religion , are no longer convincing in the Age Of Reason ; science is attempting to solve the problem of man, something that it can never do. The book states that we need new convincing "illusions" that enable us to feel heroic in the grand scheme of things, i.e. immortal. REFERENCES |
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