Disease, death, unavoidable accidents

1 Disease, death, unavoidable accidents Eric Delassus

“Nothing can be destroyed, except by a cause external to itself.” Spinoza, Ethics, Part III, Proposition IV.

“Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being.” Spinoza, Ethics, Part III, Proposition VI.

Life has this paradoxical nature of coming to an end one day. This seems natural, but on reflection, this is not obvious. Naturally life tends to be maintained and the living should do everything to sustain life indefinitely. Nevertheless we can notice that this is not often the way things happen. Our organism seems to have trouble maintaining its internal balance and is affected by malfunctions, usually called diseases. Malfunctions that make life difficult, weaken the body, cause suffering and irreparably lead to this exhaustion of life is death. Is it part of the nature of life to be so weak and sentenced to death? In other words, can illness and death be part of this process, which is called life? Isn’t there something shocking for reason, that life contains in its essence its own negation? Or, conversely, must we interpret disease and death like accidents? Certainly inevitable accidents because determined by external causes to whom no living man can escape, but accidents, however, in the sense that neither one nor the other would be included in the essence of life itself and can not therefore be regarded as capable of giving meaning to life itself.

In classical philosophical vocabulary, a property is qualified as accidental when it is not a part of the essence of a thing. What is accidental, is of the order of what is contingent, consequently this is not necessary. An Accident is therefore is distinct

2 from essence. So, if it is in the essence of a square to have four equal sides, the exact length of these four sides reports to accident. The term "accident" also means a contingent fact, in other words that might not happen. But then, in these conditions, how can we describe death as an accident? If we can, ultimately, admit the accidental character of disease – although as we never die of nothing, one can wonder if we are not all doomed to get sick one day or another -, is it the same for death? We know that it is impossible not to die. Death must therefore happen. How can we then suppose death is an accident? Issue such a hypothesis, to use a formula used by Gilles Deleuze in its courses on Spinoza, consists in supposing that "death can come only from outside". In other words, it is supposed that no living being is intrinsically determined to die. Certainly, there is a necessity of death, but extrinsic. Death is the consequence of external and not internal determinations. Life is therefore considered like a process, which cannot be realized by containing in itself the cause of its interruption. Life is power, and every living being, like everything anyway, maintains its organization only by the endeavor by which it persists in its own being. It would be therefore aberrant to conceive it as being programmed to die. Consequently, if death is not part into of the essence of a living being, it can’t result only from external causes, “it can’t come only from outside”. Death can’t only be the consequence of external aggressions and of wear of constitutive parts of body of a living being, or of the endeavor of this parts to persist in being and which doesn't suit with the one that provides the whole. Incessantly a living body is composed and decomposed to better recompose itself by incorporating other external bodies, and this applies to the simplest body as for more complex. I destroy in me simpler parts, which wish to persist in their being as individual elements, but my organism must in turn destroy them to regenerate itself and satisfy this same endeavor for itself. We are therefore authorized to think that, conversely, the part, to satisfy its trend to subsist, drives as consequences a

3 malfunction of the totality that it consists. Our body is, somehow, a set of opposing forces, each at different levels of complexity. And finally, the only one goal of each force is to survive as long as possible. My body is just like a metaphor of the state of nature described by Hobbes (state in which “man is a wolf for man”), in my body every part is fighting to subsist and its right extends as far as extends its power. If, it’s often, like in nature, where big fish eat small fish, the most complex outweighs the simplest; sometimes the simplest introduces disorder into the whole. For this reason, as death is only an accident (an unavoidable accident), so is disease, and not just disease that results of the intrusion of a foreign body in an organism (infectious disease primarily), but also this which results of seemingly internal malfunction of it, like cancers or autoimmune diseases. On the one hand, it’s not impossible that many of these diseases are, at least partly, the consequence of environmental causes, but on the other hand, could we not interpret these malfunctions as resulting from an action of parts on whole, these then acting into their external relationship with it. So, in case of a disease, like multiple sclerosis where some parts of organism destroy others that they recognize by there like potential aggressor by “indiscrimination”, could we interpret this behavior, not like a self destruction process of body by himself, but like a disorder resulting of the endeavor of some parts to persist in their own being. Each of these parts “plays his partition” regardless of the others and produces an inaudible and insupportable cacophony for the set. So, some parts, although they are localized into the body, destroy others and contribute to weakening the power of the body, even to its annihilation, but always maintaining each other and relative to organism an externality ratio compared to each other and to the body as a whole. But it doesn’t mean that the body is intrinsically destined to be sick or to die, he lives and his only concern is to live, anyway it is certainly for this that, for us, “conscious bodies” the idea of death is so unbearable.

4 If death was a part of our essence, may be we would be disposed to better receive it and it would be easier for us to accept it. But, on the contrary, life resists to death, and that’s why it’s hard to accept it, that’s why repetition, even during the worst moments, those who want to die are rare. This may occur, but that’s when outside wins over inside, when external causes affecting human being are stronger and make him inadequate to himself, foreign to himself foreign entity? This is also what reached the pinnacle of sadness; this feeling that accompanies the transition to a lesser perfection, because the disease or suffering can lead to hatred of life. Hatred is a sadness accompanying idea of an external cause; man blinded by his suffering can believe that life is the cause of his harm and aspires only to end it. In this sense, any inclination of a living being to end its days is expression of inadequate life – in the words of Gilles Deleuze in one of this courses – maybe except for one who understands that life cannot be by nature object of hate for a living being. This one understands that, even if life isn’t responsible for his suffering, the fight against external forces is lost and he prefers to die by his own hand, to avoid suffering that he considers more unbearable than life itself. Thus considered, the behavior of an individual, who anticipates his own death, could be interpreted like an active and free behavior because it is adopted by life love and not by hatred of life. But anyway, this is a stopgap, a lesser evil, in relation to a situation in which man who can no longer find joy prefers to annihilate himself rather than fall down to a degree yet lowest of perfection and thus toward an even greater sadness. Could not we conceive disease in terms of passivity and sadness, disease could finally be defined like à kind of body sadness, an effect produced on this last by transition from a greater to a less perfection and conversely, health should be bodies’ joy, an effect resulting of a transition from a lesser to a greater perfection. As for this perfection, it should consist in adequacy of body to itself, which should consist in a greater or lesser activity of this one; active body means that for which all parties behave, for them and for all, in perfect harmony in relation to each other. In

5 contrast, a sick body, passive, would undergo aggression of an external body (poison, microbe or virus) or would suffer a malfunction resulting of break of solidarity between one or several parts, which would go they alone, and the totality of organism with which they would maintain a relation of externality.

Consequently, disease, and death would be therefore accidental, they would be consequences of unavoidable affections, which would come from external causes and which would be not essential. So, it’s easier to understand this sentence from Spinoza when he writes: “A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life1”. By this, it’s not in anything in denial attitude about death, Spinoza is an author whose lucidity is not to prove and it would be difficult to accuse him of refusing at any time to look at reality. By this sentence, Spinoza wants to tell us that death isn’t essential and that even if we must think about its eventuality and prepare us to this fatality, this is not to make death a positive reality, but conversely to live better. Philosophize, is not here, to learn how to die, but learn how to live better with the knowledge of our mortality, striving to be ever more active in the fight against death. Death is not present in life, but life affirms itself against death. Life opposes all forces that could break the fragile relationships that define and perpetuate. Death can’t therefore give sense to life; because life is sufficient in itself. Only the man enslaved to passions expects salvation in death. A free man can rather find his salvation in understanding of nature and in contemplation of truth to access eternity in this world.

1

Spinoza, Ethics, Part. IV, Prop. LXVII