In this workshop we are going to depart by reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s last unfinished poem: “Come you, you last one”. This will open the space for a discussion of four of the most influential theses on death and dying in twentieth century Western philosophy:
1. Our unconscious, which is to say, the greatest part of our psyche, does not know or believe in death (Freud);
2. Understanding that our death is possible is the condition for any authentic selfhood and historical existence (Heidegger);
3. Our relation to our death is firstly through the other, whose death has a philosophical and ethical priority (Levinas);
4. Our relation to ourselves is a priori posthumous; anticipatory mourning is the fundamental condition for any relation to ourselves and others (Derrida).