Fear seems to rule our understanding of death. It takes us to the edge of our life and we await for what is there still to come. It being a threshold that separates us from everyone and everything, it becomes a domain of darkness and fear. It even appears that this threshold separates one from one self. One seems to have to leave one’s death. This is why maybe Heidegger views death as a possibility of impossibility was rephrased by Maurice Blanchot who sees death as the impossibility of all possibilities. Blanchot appears to be talking about the moment of death and sees it as a closure. Heidegger’s understanding still remains open and opens us to understand death as the fullest understanding of being human. It is the moment of death where we become fully what we as humans hope for. Our hope at death reaches its final fulfilment. This is why, perhaps, we might try to understand hope with the help of Jacques Derrida’s notion of trace.
Trace is waiting what is to arrive and is always already its own erasure. Hope is a longing. As a longing is a trace of what is to come. What is to come is already and not-yet . It is Derrida’s diffrance. It is different and is delayed. Hence, hope remains hope because what is to come in undecidable and open. What is to come remains in the zone of contingency and therefore, we actively hope for its coming. Therefore, hope makes us wait for the other and not the same. Same belongs to everyday life. The other is not the same. Hope transcends sameness Hope, therefore, cannot be totalized. I live my death but this death remains at a distance and remains other to me all my life. Death indeed is our ultimate hope. To take the side of death is to take the side of hope. It is to take the side of all that is possible of me. Death in some way is the ultimate possibility of possibilities. It is our final way of being Human-in-the-world. Hope is thus, always haunted by the other. It is haunted by death. We are waiting for the fulfillment of the other. Hope is many ways becomes a hauntology. In this context, it is a benevolent hauntology.
Hope is (dis)figured to the point of death. It does not figure out death. It remains a secret to it until it unfolds. Hope, therefor, is a figuration or (dis)figuration of death. What we assume death is, what we hope death is , is ultimately figured out or ( dis)figured by death. This is why it is said that one who knows how to die knows how to live. Learning to die lets us learn to live. We do try to figure or (dis)figure out death . It informs our deepest beliefs and values. We do hope and live for these beliefs and values. It is only in death that we figure out or (dis)figure out if our beliefs and values were worth living for. This is why taking the side of death (hope) is also taking the side of life. Paradoxically, death being a fulfillment of our hopes are keept aside that which does not truly belong to us. At death all our inauthentic beliefs, values and hopes remain aside as unfulfilled. Authentic hope fully flowers at the moment of not-being-able-to-be-there/ death. Hope does not see death as an absence. It ties death to the ultimate fulfillment of being-human-in-the-world. Death does involve being-not-able-to-be-there. But it opens us to the un-nameable fullness. It is un-nameable fullness because it stands beyond the calculus of exchange of rh market ( economy of the market) or either/ or thinking ( economy of reason) of our everyday thinking. It stands into the excess that is truly immeasurable. In some way, hope is therefore, a hope for death. By taking the side of death, it takes us beyond the economy of the market and that of the reason. This is why hope cannot be figured out. It can only be (dis)figured and by living and dying
This means death is hope that opens to un-nameable fullness. Death, thus, becomes an impossibility of being Dasien in the world but does not close other modes of being in and beyond the world. We as beings-towards-death move to the un-namable fullness. In this sense hope is a specter. It is pointing to and leading us to something infinite, something surplus, something excess. With death, when one is no more, one becomes absent present. One is absent but present in multiple ways though memories and lives. One through death becomes spectral, the invisible visibility, an absent presence, a death in the living. There is an afterlife of every dead person. This afterlife is not just in heaven or hell. It lingers in our world, in our memory in our lives. After death, thus, everyone becomes a specter that we may call as a lost presence. But as a lost presence, one returns as hope to those that are left behind. Being spectral or figural one turns into hope for one dear and near ones. The dead, therefore, are specters and hence, hope too becomes spectral. To be a specter one cannot be fully present, hope too cannot be fully present. Specter is the lost presence. Hope too is a lost presence. It is spectral. Hope is a gift. It cannot be gift before it is given. it becomes a gift in the giving. Hope becomes hope in the very act of hoping. Hoping requires us to lean to die. Montaigne rightly says, ‘ to philosophize is to learn to die’. Learning to die is learning to hope. Hope, therefore, in some way involves the ability to philosophize. It involves the challenge to take the side of life for learning to die is learning to live. Let us give ourselves the gift of hope.
