Abstract:

We do not encounter any problems in comprehending someone else's death. On the other hand, all our attempts to think about our own death end in paradox. While we think, most of the time, without even realizing it, we jump over the paradox and slip through it. In our article, we will try to reveal this problem, which we call the 'mortality paradox'. In our opinion, the background of this problem lies in the differentiation between first and third person perspectives. We can think about someone else's death without any problems because it is based on a third-person perspective. However, we can only think about our own death from a first-person perspective. The reason we do not realize that a paradox emerges in this thinking is because these two perspectives are mixed with each other through imagination. In our opinion, if we could stay in the third-person perspective, it would be possible for us to think without falling into paradox; and yet since it is possible to look at it from these two perspectives, we cannot avoid the paradox. Therefore, the "shadow of death", that is, the awareness of self-consciousness of its finitude, is an inevitable essential aspect of our life.

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