In his book, Death, Todd May argues, among other things, that death is not an accomplishment. It is not “the fullest expression of life” nor does it “bring a life to what it most characteristically is”. May argues that death is, quite literally, the opposite of this.1)Todd May, Death. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 25-26. During the course of this post, I will attempt to show that May’s argument is not correct and that death is a structuring principle of existence that serves to affirm, as opposed to negate, meaning in life – in other words, death is the “fullest expression of life”. To achieve this, I will look at life and death as structuralistic binary opposites wherein the meaning of either one is conferred upon it by the existence of the other (its opposite).2)The full paper I wrote from which this post is excerpted contains a Jüngerian analysis that I am still working on fleshing out.
