Page 23 - The Drucker Lectures

4 [ The Drucker Lectures

Yet however successful the nineteenth century was in sup-
pressing the tragic in order to make possible human existence
exclusively in time, there is one fact which could not be sup-
pressed, one fact that remains outside of time: death. It is the
one fact that cannot be made general but remains unique, the
one fact that cannot be socialized but remains individual. The
nineteenth century made every effort to strip death of its indi-
vidual, unique, and qualitative aspect. It made death an incident
in vital statistics, measurable quantitatively, predictable accord-
ing to the natural laws of probability. It tried to get around death
by organizing away its consequences. This is the meaning of life
insurance, which promises to take the consequences out of death.
Life insurance is perhaps the most representative institution of
nineteenth-century metaphysics; for its promise “to spread the
risks” shows most clearly the nature of this attempt to make
death an incident in human life, instead of its termination.
It was the nineteenth century that invented Spiritualism with
its attempt to control life after death by mechanical means. Yet
death persists. Society might make death taboo, might lay down
the rule that it is bad manners to speak of death, might sub-
stitute “hygienic” cremation for those horribly public funerals,
and might call gravediggers “morticians.” The learned Professor
[Ernst] Haeckel [the German naturalist] might hint broadly that
Darwinian biology is just about to make us live permanently; but
he did not make good his promise. And as long as death persists,
man remains with one pole of his existence outside of society
and outside of time.
As long as death persists, the optimistic concept of life, the
belief that eternity can be reached through time, and that the in-
dividual can fulfill himself in society can therefore have only one
outcome: despair. There must come a point in the life of every
man when he suddenly finds himself facing death. And at this
point he is all alone; he is all individual. If he is lost, his existence