About Death
Detail of "The Creation of Adam" — Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel "Procreation and death are consubstantial correlates, correlates that neutralize and suppress each other mutually." — Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation The ancient Greeks had a tradition of placing a coin —an obol— beneath the tongue of their dead. It was payment for Charon, the ferryman of Hades, the guardian of the threshold between the world of the living and the realm of the dead. This image, laden with symbolism, reveals something that modernity has tried to hide with stubborn clumsiness: death is not the enemy of life, but its most intimate condition. In this essay from the book "Resisting the Sisyphus Average" , Miguel Troncoso Castro explores with philosophical and literary sharpness the nature of human mortality. Drawing on Schopenhauer, Greek mythology, and evolutionary biology, the author invites us to rethink ...
