Ernest Becker: o que torna a morte aceitável

As a philosopher, you have thought as hard about death as anybody I know. And now, as it were, you are doing your empirical research.

Becker: It only hurts when I laugh.

Keen: And somehow, I would like to ask you what you can add now that you are closer to experience.

Becker: I see what you mean…. What makes dying easier is to be able to transcend the world into some kind of religious dimension. I would say that the most important thing is to know that beyond the absurdity of one’s life, beyond the human viewpoint, beyond what is happening to us, there is the fact of the tremendous creative energies of the cosmos that are using us for some purposes we don’t know. To be used for divine purposes, however we may be misused, this is the thing that consoles. I think of (John) Calvin when he says, ‘Lord, thou bruises me, but since it is You, it is all right.’ I think one does, or should try to, just hand over one’s life, the meaning of it, the value of it, the end of it. This has been the most important to me. I think it is very hard for secular men to die.