Defining and Conceptualizing Death

Death is generally considered the only certainty of life. At the same time, however, no matter where or when one is living, death is also regarded the ultimate mystery of human experience. The answer to the question “What is death?” is far from universal, and the concrete ways of defining and conceptualizing death vary from culture to culture. Furthermore, multiple definitions of death exist within the same culture because of the various situations and perspectives from which they are acted upon.

The question arising from the topic of death is how to be sure that the same reality is being talked about. For instance, does the concept refer to one's own death, or to the death of another? Is it a physical death here and now or an abstract idea in the past or future? Is it possible to define death at all? One could further argue that the act of making death knowable and controllable through explicit definitions, as is the case in this encyclopedia, exemplifies a typically Western project of truth seeking.

By the beginning of the 21st century, in most Western contexts biomedical definitions of death, constructing death as the irreversible end of life, are a taken-for-granted discourse. Some researchers of death hold that in such a rational or disenchanted world, death appears as a threatening and destructive immensity that cannot be averted and so must be hidden or avoided. By consequence, individuals would no longer have images and conceptions to fall back on. Other researchers, however, find it more accurate to say at the beginning of the 21st century, images of death are omnipresent. In their view, formerly shared definitions and conceptions of death, like from the Christian tradition, have not disappeared but rather are fragmented and personalized.

Death belongs not only to human nature but also to the shifting world of cultural meanings and social practices. Hence, ways of defining and conceptualizing death are dynamic and multiple. First, it is important to mention that death can only be made present through metaphors: conceptual constructs that are pervasive not only in language but also in thought and practice. Second, the definition of death depends on the social context rather than on one primordial essence. Third, understanding death inevitably involves defining life: The concepts of death and life are dynamically related to one another.

Defining Death is Making Death Present

Death is simply impossible to imagine. Every statement on death refers to symbols rather than to an empirical reality. Death is hence conceptualized and acted upon as a process (e.g., dying), an instance (e.g., the Grim Reaper), a state (e.g., the absence of life), or a moment (e.g., one's final breath). It is only in such metaphors that death can be experienced as a real entity. In other words, defining death is an act of presentation, rather than one of representation. It is a performative act: Each definition of death fixes a specific content and brings forth death in one way or another. Whether in a scholarly publication or in social practice, death is visually or verbally defined through metaphors.

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