The inspiration for my dissertation dates back to an independent study directed by Marty Heitz in the spring of 2018 at Oklahoma State University. We spent the term slowly working our way through Heidegger's Being and Time and I quickly found myself both confused and enamored by Heidegger's treatment of human mortality. This interest was indulged and refined during my graduate studies both as a master's and doctoral student at Marquette University, where kind professors such as Pol Vandevelde, Michael Wreen, and Noel Adams allowed me to continue pursuing my interest in mortality from a variety of frameworks. 

My project addresses fundamental questions surrounding mortality and does so existentially. Of central concern is what it means to be mortal, the value of mortality, how we ought to relate to it, whether immortality is preferable to mortality, and what moral obligations can be derived from our mortality. By engaging thinkers such as Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Jonas, Epicurus, and contemporary anglophone philosophers, I challenge prevailing attitudes towards death. Through a meta-philosophical lens, I argue for the value of mortality as a shaper of the meaningfulness of existence, and for the cultivation of what I call ‘genuine mortality consciousness’ (GMC), which serves as the framework against which competing views of mortality and human flourishing are measured.

The project begins with a dissection of Heidegger’s phenomenology of death in Being and Time, paying special attention to death’s role as a condition for the possibility of authenticity and its equiprimordial relation to care. Subsequently, Kierkegaard’s notion of ‘becoming subjective’ and his dictum to ‘think death into every moment’ is examined, which reveals how holding onto death in the present moment serves to structure a purposeful life. Together, the work of these two thinkers underpins my concept of GMC, which allows for the introduction of focus and urgency into life. Also addressed is technology’s obfuscation of GMC.

Having provided a framework from which to approach mortality, I transition to a critical analysis of diverse attitudes towards death, including Epicurus’s claim that death is nothing to us, Nagel’s claim that death is bad, and Fischer’s defense of the desirability of immortality, each of which is ultimately rejected. Against Epicurus and Nagel, I argue that GMC provides a model for relating to mortality that is more conducive to human flourishing. Against the desirability of immortality, I utilize the work of Williams to show that an immortal life would lack meaning. Finally, the project culminates with a moral argument against the transhumanist pursuit of radical life-extension technology, while also showing that the state of contemporary moral theory is inadequate for our technological age. Utilizing Jonas’s ethics of responsibility, I argue that altering our lifespans is not only imprudent, but immoral because of our responsibility to conserve genuine human life.