Introduction: Death as a Metaphysical Fact
Religion returns in every era not because of intellectual laziness, but because the facts of the world require a language that transcends everyday bookkeeping. Bogusław Wolniewicz suggests treating it as a response to a metaphysical fact—as real and inevitable as gravity. This article analyzes how the experience of the end becomes the foundation of belief systems and why modern attempts to suppress death destroy social bonds. You will learn how philosophy distinguishes religion from magic and what role culture and the state play in taming finality.
Bogusław Wolniewicz: Death as the Foundation of Religion
According to Wolniewicz, "the religious stirring of the soul is its stirring by death." It is death that turns thoughts toward matters beyond the temporal. Benjamin Constant pointed to the primacy of content over the form of religion: while the inner shock at the power of nature is constant, doctrines and organizations are merely its shifting, historical costume. The boundary between religion and magic is crucial here. Magic is a technical attempt to manipulate fate and postpone misfortune. Religion, however, begins with the humble recognition of the certainty of death, building an architecture of meaning around it.
Reason and Death: An Anthropological Definition of Humanity
Wolniewicz evokes the formula homo est copula rationis et mortis—man as the union of reason and death. This definition explains why a life enclosed within the horizon of consumption is a fundamental falsehood. Émile Durkheim saw religion as a social bond, creating a "union against death" through which no one faces the end in total solitude. Different traditions offer different answers: Judaism emphasizes the continuity of the lineage, Christianity the immortality of the person, and Buddhism liberation from the cycle of suffering. Ditheism and the figure of the devil introduced moral rigor into these systems, separating physical evil from spiritual responsibility.
Bioethics and Transhumanism: New Theology and Modern Magic
In an era of technical progress, bioethics is becoming the new theology, managing the boundaries of euthanasia or the definition of brain death. Transhumanism, promising the digital transfer of consciousness, is—in Wolniewicz’s view—modern magic and an escape from reality. Stanisław Lem emphasized that it is death as the measure of life's value that gives our choices and love the weight of responsibility. Meanwhile, secularization and the privatization of thanatology lead to the collapse of community and a crisis of rituals. The secular state has a duty to protect the memory of the deceased, as the suppression of death from the public sphere results in loneliness and susceptibility to illusions.
Summary: The Gravity of Finitude
Death is not merely a biological end, but a fact that gives ultimate gravity to human actions. In a world attempting to "neutralize" mourning through sterile language and technology, religion reminds us of the inevitability of the end as a condition for meaning. The acceptance of finitude allows us to find the true measure of responsibility for that which passes. In the face of promises of technical immortality, can we still build communities based on the truth of our fate? The answer to this question defines the boundaries of our culture.
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