Dr. Olberding's Analysis: Other People Die

I Want To Die First Everyone has thought of their own mortality before, their unavoidable death, but what people tend to avoid and repress is the death of their loved ones. In Dr. Olberding’s essay “Other People Die” she brings to light the distinct difference between eastern and western philosophies on death. Dr. Olberding also argues that it is equally important to come to terms with your own mortality and the mortality of your loved ones. The early Confucians take on death largely differed with Zhuangzi’s through their lavish and long-term bereavement process. While Zhuangzi’s take on death outright renounces ritualized mourning. It is difficult to choose between what is more difficult to come to grips with, your own mortality or the mortality

Olberding brings to light the oppositional points of view of eastern and western philosophies about death. Firstly eastern philosophy on death revolves around the problem of other people dying. Differentiating directly with western philosophy on death because western philosophy focuses on the problem of your own death. With both ideologies in mind Dr. Olberding argues that it is equally important to find the best way to respond to personal mortality and to the death of others. With personal mortality, being a westerner herself, Dr. Olberding claims that philosophy is a formidable strategy for assuaging ones fear of their own inevitable death and mortality. She claims this because philosophy defines what death is and rationalizes the anxieties brought on by awareness of personal mortality. Eastern philosophy focuses on the problem dealing with the loss of others, which everyone who lives a life in companionship with others will feel, at some point in their life. Dr. Olberding states that the problem of death is actually the problem of loss. In her essay she uses the traditions of both Confucius and Zhuangzi and their reflections on the death of others. By meticulously researching both sides of western and eastern philosophies on death Dr. Olberding concludes that finding the best way to cope with individual mortality and mortality of others are equally important to a person on an emotional, psychological, and philosophical level. She concludes this because both affect

Early Confucian opinions about death are that the bereaved cannot go on normally but they must go on so they must go in in a way that respects the loved ones lost. This statement reasons why the early Confucians had long and elaborate mourning rituals. Differing from the early Confucian opinion, Zhuangzi believed that death is like the four seasons because we start out as nothing then form into a person then we die and have no form (Down). A further explanation of this is that when Zhuangzi’s wife died he immediately felt her loss deeply but then he remembered his wife as her happy and exciting personality and he began to celebrate her life. Zhuangzi’s opinion on death allows some mourning for a short time but then with rationalization that death is inevitable and the natural flow of life he believes celebration for the deceased is