The Denial of Death

The Denial of Death was written by the American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker and published in 1973. The work explores the fear of death and the ways in which rituals and beliefs have helped humans to cope with it throughout history. It was inspired by the fact that Becker had been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Over the course of his life, he taught at several prestigious universities, including Syracuse University, UC Berkeley, and, by the time of his death, Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. Becker often clashed with college administrators and faculty, but he was extremely popular among students, often supporting controversial professors and the rights of student activists to protest. After Becker’s death, The Denial of Death received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1974.

Content Warning: There is some sexually explicit content in the source text, including references to rape. The source text also makes some controversial and, by modern standards, offensive assertions about mental health and people with mental health conditions.

Summary

A work of philosophy that draws heavily from Freudian psychoanalysis and modern philosophy, The Denial of Death argues that the fear of death is “the mainspring of human activity” (ix). From a very early age, children become aware of themselves as animal beings. This sets up a painful, lifelong contrast with what Becker calls humanity’s symbolic nature, meaning their capacity for abstract thought and for mentally imagining themselves beyond the limitations of the body. This can even lead to a fear of life, as people find themselves being overwhelmed by the world around them. As people become adults, they develop subconscious ways to deal with this binary, including personal beliefs, ambitions, anxieties, phobias, superstitions, and even mental illnesses.

According to Becker, human cultures are designed to give people means to cope with death and this dual nature. Traditionally, cultures did so by offering people ways to identify with higher realities, such as God or gods, an afterlife, or unity with the cosmos itself through shared rituals and beliefs. This is what Becker calls heroism or a “mythical hero-system” (5), which is needed to give people a sense of significance and oneness with the universe and themselves. In Western society, Christianity filled this purpose.

However, Becker also asserts that the “mythical hero-system” provided by Western culture has broken down in the modern era. With the decline of Christianity, nothing has emerged to take its place and fulfill people’s needs for the heroic and the mythic. In addition, material science has made people skeptical of anything spiritual. There have been some attempted substitutes in the modern world, such as romantic love, consumer capitalism, communism, science, and psychoanalysis itself. However, none can provide the same metaphysical and symbolic power as traditional religion. Becker therefore suggests that the best solution is possibly a new belief system that combines the metaphysical and ritualistic qualities of religion with the discoveries of modern science and psychology.