of Human Death” chapter, a person is dead either if he/she suffers irreversible loss
of functioning of the organism as a whole, or he/she experiences irreversible loss of
the capacity for consciousness, or the combination of both (World Health Organiza-
tion 30). To understand it thoroughly, we should understand the following three
terminologies: function refers to the purpose of organs to sustain life, irreversible
refers to the condition that can never resume or return, and consciousness refers to
“awareness, wakefulness, interaction, and sensory perception” (World Health
Organization 11). Therefore, death occurs when some or all the symptoms men-
tioned above appears.
Based on their knowledge, people intuitively fear death. Seemingly, it
becomes the main source of human fear, “a number of psychologists, including
Freud, have considered death to be the root source of all human anxiety” (Mary
279). People cannot view death as lightly as they view ordinary obstacles in their
daily lives, because it stands on the antithesis of life and evokes their physical and
emotional apprehension. Interestingly, however, death itself may not be the main
reason “that causes emotional pain, but the loss of having been” (Mary 279). During
the colorful journey of life, people go through many ups and downs, sweetly and
bitterly. And because they learn a lot from their experiences, they do not want to
lose everything they have, they do not want to lose the capacity to love, and they do
not want to lose the feeling of living. Therefore, people tend to be more terrified of
death because they have existed. Understandably, if people love and cherish their
life, it is always sorrowful to know that not even a tiny piece of their happiness will
last forever.
But how can we deal with this fear and live with the awareness of death?
Philosophers then find their roles at here. Viktor Frankl, a neurologist as well as a
philosophical writer, contends that death is necessary for life to be meaningful
(Trisel 62). Once in his work The Doctor and the Soul, Frankl writes, “If we were
immortal, we could legitimately postpone every action forever...But in the face of
death...we are under the imperative of utilizing our lifetimes to the utmost, not
letting the singular opportunities...pass by unused” (Frankl 64). As he says, death
makes life finite by setting the boundary to the future and limiting the infinite
possibilities. If people lived in infinity, time means nothing to them. Since