death

death, the total cessation of life processes that eventually occurs in all living organisms. The state of human death has always been obscured by mystery and superstition, and its precise definition remains controversial, differing according to culture and legal systems.

During the latter half of the 20th century, death has become a strangely popular subject. Before that time, perhaps rather surprisingly, it was a theme largely eschewed in serious scientific, and to a lesser extent, philosophical speculations. It was neglected in biological research and, being beyond the physician’s ministrations, was deemed largely irrelevant by medical practice. In modern times, however, the study of death has become a central concern in all these disciplines and in many others.

“So many more people seem to die nowadays,” an elderly lady is alleged to have said, scanning the obituary columns of a famous daily. This was not just a comment on the documented passing of a cohort. Various journals now not only list the dead but also describe what they died of, at times in some detail. They openly discuss subjects considered too delicate or personal less than a generation ago. Television interviewers question relatives of the dying—or even the dying themselves—and films depict murders or executions in gruesome and often quite accurate detail. Death is no longer enshrined in taboos. Popular readiness to approach these matters and a general desire to be better informed about them reflect a change in cultural attitudes perhaps as great as that which accompanied the more open discussion of sex after World War I.

Thanatology—the study of death—delves into matters as diverse as the cultural anthropology of the notion of soul, the burial rites and practices of early civilizations, the location of cemeteries in the Middle Ages, and the conceptual difficulties involved in defining death in an individual whose brain is irreversibly dead but whose respiration and heartbeat are kept going by artificial means. It encompasses the biological study of programmed cell death, the understanding care of the dying, and the creation of an informed public opinion as to how the law should cope with the stream of problems generated by intensive-care technology. Swiss-born American psychiatrist and author Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004), who was a pioneer in the study of death and dying, was especially known for having identified five stages of grief experienced by the dying. She was credited with bringing acceptance and respect to the new field of thanatology and to the hospice care movement.

Legal and medical quandaries regarding the definition of death and the rights of the terminally ill (or their families) to refuse life-prolonging treatments force physicians to think like lawyers, lawyers like physicians, and both like philosophers. In his Historia Naturalis (Natural History), the Roman author Pliny the Elder wrote that “so uncertain is men’s judgment that they cannot determine even death itself.” The challenge remains, but if humans now fail to provide some answers it will not be for lack of trying.