Hayot (animals)

C'est toujours les autres qui meurent… (it is always other people who die)- so writes Marcel Duchamp on his tombstone in Rouen. Is this simply just the last witticism, from an array of witty sayings of this 20^th century artist? Years later, in a television interview, Yeshayahu Leibowitz would say things of a similar nature, but not necessarily to amuse: death, he would argue, cannot be placed on the continuum of human experience which transpires on the timeline of our existence. Consequently, a reality which is called death does not exist, there is only lack of life. Kant, so it seems, also shared this way of thinking. Two hundred years prior, in his lecture on anthropology, he related to the linguistic aspect of these insights. According to Kant, since no one can experience his or her death, the thought “I no longer exist” cannot exist; nothing can be thought if I don’t exist. He thus claims it would be a contradiction to assume a subject that negates his or her existence while speaking in the first person.

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