However, as we approach this boundary, when our end is present, we are nothing but terror. All pursuits disintegrate, and our self-understanding collapses. At once we are expelled from the sphere of meaning. We are nothing more than this body. This body and its last breath. It is not simply that we cannot survive our own death; we cannot bear the sight of it. We do not want to die. Not now.
And yet the possibility of self-sacrifice suggests that this terror can be overcome, that death can be meaningful. One recent example is that of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in December 2010 and whose death put in motion the massive uprising known as the Arab Spring. But there are many less noted acts of self-sacrifice. In different places and moments in time, in different languages and cultures, soldiers, activists, lovers, friends, and parents exhibit a willingness to die that demands our attention.
Such acts, so difficult to comprehend, may seem at first sight unworthy of serious consideration. But rushing to this conclusion would be a mistake. It is not only that by dismissing acts of self-sacrifice as unintelligible we disavow a prevalent and influential human phenomenon. Understanding these acts may also shed light on the way we value things more generally. Indeed, we will see that even if most of us will never actually take such extreme measures, the possibility of self-sacrifice is part of living a meaningful life.
Consider, then, three famous individuals whose deaths are often seen as examples of self-sacrifice. As we consider their deaths, we will come to realize that only one of them found meaning in her own life and that, surprisingly, of the three it is only her death that may properly be called an act of self-sacrifice.
Three Sights of Death
First: a seventy-year-old man. His beard elongates his stocky face. He has an exceptionally broad and flattened nose. Its nostrils flare with each breath, as if each drawing of air originates in a new, voluntary decision to inhale. We watch him in the early hours of dawn, sitting quietly in his prison cell. The skin on his forehead is wrinkled and soft and covered with dried sweat. He has not bathed during these days of waiting, of which this day is second to last.
The old man’s eyes are fixed on the spot where his friend and disciple had just stood. Only a moment ago his friend spoke hopefully, pleading with the old man to flee this jail, to come with him, to save himself. Perhaps the old man is considering the state of mind his friend must be in now: walking back, his mission unfulfilled, unable to understand why his wish that life prevail was shattered by the wisest of men.
Crito has left, and Socrates, who thrived most amongst the crowds, is now alone in his cell, having turned down his last chance of survival. On the day after tomorrow he will drink a cup of poisoned hemlock and expire in accordance with the decision of the Athenian court. The sun rises in the sky outside and daylight fills the dank, dusty cell. Socrates breathes calmly, his nostrils flare and contract. It is summer, 399 BCE.
Socrates could not acknowledge that his death would be a terrible loss.
Second: two months short of his forty-sixth birthday, a man in uniform steps from a balcony into an office that is not his own. The office belongs to the commandant of the Japan Self-Defense Force, who is tied and held at sword-point near the wall. “I don’t even think they heard me,” the man says, as he undoes the last button of his uniform jacket.
A moment ago, standing on the balcony, he had called upon the 800 soldiers of the 32nd Regiment to rise against Japan’s liberal-democratic constitution in the name of the country’s history and tradition: “Will you abide a world in which the spirit is dead and there is only a reverence for life?” he asked. The soldiers jeered and hissed, “Let the commandant go!” “Come down off there!” He was not able to finish his speech and decided to move forward with his plan. He motioned to his soldier, Morita, and together they called out, “Long live his imperial Majesty! Long live his imperial Majesty! Long live his imperial Majesty!”
Having failed to inspire a coup d’état, the man sits on the floor of the commandant’s office, and Morita takes his place behind him and slightly to his left, a sword raised above his head. The man grasps a short sword with both hands and points it to his stomach. His strong eyebrows sharpen, but his face is still imprinted with vulnerability. He was a tender, sickly child, and though his features have hardened over the years, though he is now the commander of his own army, the Shield Society, the fragile essence of his face has remained: his right eye slightly larger than his left and higher on his face.
The next moment, the man will disembowel himself. He will then be decapitated by Morita, with the help of another soldier, Furu-Koga, who will, in turn, decapitate Morita and thereby complete the seppuku ritual and the effort of the Shield Society to revive “the spirit of Japan.” This will be the end of one of Japan’s most celebrated and prolific authors, Yukio Mishima, in Tokyo, November 25, 1970.
Third: a forty-year-old woman in the midst of a great crowd of people huddled around the Epsom Downs Racecourse, south of London. Her thin lips are pressed together, her eyes, normally weary and doubtful, are filled with intent. She stands close to the barrier that separates the masses from the racetrack and watches the horses’ hooves thump the ground.
The socialites, the gamblers, the peddlers, the riff-raff, the jockeys, King George V and his wife Queen Mary—all are present and following the race. None entertains a shred of doubt that the Derby will run its course. Emily Wilding Davison, a militant suffragette, resists this overwhelming certainty. She stands still, around her the incessant movement of things and events, the habitual pattern of human and animal affairs. She clasps the metal bar and takes a deep breath. She slips under the railing, the suffragettes’ flag on her body, and runs to the king’s horse, which has appeared around the bend. Days later she will die of her injuries. It is June 4, 1913—Derby Day.
Socrates, Yukio Mishima, and Emily Wilding Davison. Perhaps the only thing they have in common is their public embrace of death. All three had sufficient time and leisure to consider their options, to choose their ending, and all saw death as their final, life-affirming action.
by Oded Na’aman, Boston Review | Read more:
Image: uncredited
