Fear of death and experience of time

Abstract

The fear of death is, of course, the fundamental fear, namely, the fear from which practically all other fears are derived. The fear of ageing can be seen as the fear of approaching death or the fear of small amounts of preliminary deaths. The fear of the alien can be seen as the fear of the death of cultural identity that is constitutive of personal identity. The fear of war and conflict can be seen as the fear linked to the death of national identity, to the death of neighbors, and to individual death. The fear of environmental catastrophes is also something that can be seen as a synthetic fear related to individual death, to the collective death of humanity, and also to the death of an amplified identity of being in nature. I want to discuss here how the fear of death is based on the threats to our own identity in view of the experience of time.