A contextualist thanatology: A pragmatic approach to death and dying

Abstract

Viewed from the modern American standpoint, life is the ground of all our values and death is a limiting condition. The approach discussed in this paper is pragmatic and hence contextualistic. Denying the value of death but accepting its reality, the author points to dying, not death, as the problematic phenomenon with which a pragmatist thanatology must deal Focusing on the dying individual as the core context, other related contexts are recognized and examined: the medical, the religious, and the familial (including friends as well as relatives). It is suggested that dying contains opportunities for growth—for the dying as well as for their surviving friends and relatives. In dying, the tragic sense of life may be most poignantly felt, not in the sense that life is ultimately doomed (for that is pathetic and not tragic), but in the sense that, though ending for the individual, life is ultimately valuable.