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“Some people maintain that the fear of death does not have a deeper justification, because as long as there is an I there is no death, and once dead there is no I any longer. These people have forgotten about the very strange phenomenon of gradual agony. What comfort does this artificial distinction between the I and death offer a man who has a strong premonition of death? What meaning can logical argument or subtle thought have for someone deeply imbued with a feeling of the irrevocable? All attempts to bring existential questions onto a logical plane are null and void. Philosophers are too proud to confess their fear of death and too supercilious to acknowledge the spiritual fecundity of illness. Their reflections on death exhibit a hypocritical serenity; in fact, they tremble with fear more than anyone else. One should not forget that philosophy is the art of masking inner torments.”

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“Healthy, normal people cannot experience either agony or death. They live as if life had a definitive character. It is an integral part of normal people's superficial equilibrium to take life as absolutely independent from death and to objectify death as a reality transcending life. That's why they perceive death as coming from the outside, not as an inner fatality of life itself. One of the greatest delusions of the average man is to forget that life is death's prisoner. Metaphysical revelations begin only when one's superficial equilibrium starts to totter and a painful struggle is substituted for naive spontaneity. The premonition of death is so rare in average people that one can can practically say that it does not exist. The fact that the presentiment of death appears only when life is shaken to its foundations proves beyond doubt the immanence of death in life. An insight into these depths shows us how illusory is the belief in life's integrity and how well founded the belief in a metaphysical substratum of demonism.”

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Book:On the Heights of Despair
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