In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

IMMANENCE = TRANSCENDENCE (DEATH) 373
scendence, Death also marks the one moment in which it is impossible
to distinguish the world from what may lie beyond it. Thus, Death stands
for a paradoxical simultaneity that may exist between Immanence and
Transcendence; and the less Immanence is separated from Transcendence,
the more people think and talk about Death. This intrinsically
paradoxical concept of Death is frequently linked to a concept of life that
itself represents the paradoxical unity of (and the impossibility of distinguishing
between) Authenticity and Artificiality. Being a potential paradox
itself, the formula "Death and Life" is thus a point of convergence
for two of the most popular and most burning concerns of the moment.
[ see Transcendence vs. Immanence, Authenticity vs. Artificiality (Life)]
What remains difficult to explain is the particularly strong association
between Death and life. In La tentation de ['Occident (The Temptation
of the West), Andre Malraux attempts to solve this problem: "In order
to destroy God, and after destroying him, the European spirit wiped out
everything that could oppose itself to man. Having reached the culmination
of its efforts, ... it finds nothing but death" (Malraux, 203). The
absorption of Transcendence into Immanence would be a side effect of
the obsessive anthropocentrism that characterizes Western modernity.
The only thing left to provide a contrast by which human existence can
be defined-and given form-is Death. Moreover, the necessity of defining
human existence seems only to grow in a world where their meanings
are no longer guaranteed by a transcendentally grounded cosmology.
Such a need to experience the limits, and through them the meaning, of
human existence could well be the motive for the numerous rituals and
competitions that enable people to watch others confronting Death-activities
such as boxing, airplane flight, long-distance running, Channel
swimming, bullfighting, and mountain climbing. [see Airplanes, Boxing,
Bullfighting, Endurance, Mountaineering] Since efforts to scale the
world's highest peak have already claimed the lives of thirteen peoplewithout
yielding definitive success-a rhetorical question by Sir Francis
Younghusband, the first chairman of the Mount Everest Committee of
the Royal Geographical Society and Alpine Club, is assuming a seriousness
that he probably never intended: "Why not leave it at that? With
the knowledge now obtained, the needs of science are satisfied. Should
not further efforts be abandoned?" (Younghusband, 309). By way of an
answer, he suggests that mountain climbing offers the opportunity to