Clash of the Dead: Two Ancient Constructions of Death

Abstract

The paper will present the ancient origins of two symbolic constructions of death. In the first, the deceased is buried and materialized as part of a culture and a passive object of transformation, that is, of the transition from the world of the living to the community of the dead, while the second, much more significant for the philosophical tradition, represents the birth of a man of contemplation and theory and work on its maintenance. This strategy is nothing more than an attempt to "die while alive", so that the apparently dying subject can integrate himself into an even stronger and more potent order of struggle against the inevitability of the impermanent and mortal. Also, two strategies show that modern man can learn from the ancient heritage about two ways of immortality, the one in the memory of the community as a socially confirmed being, and the ideational one, which is measured according to the individual's contribution in the sphere of continuous effort to correctly interpret and understand the world.