Death - Defining Death, Bereavement, Grief, And Mourning, Why Must People Die?, Historical Perspectives
live human peace art
The idea of death—the irreversible end to life—has preoccupied, fascinated, and struck fear into human beings through the millennia. In the early twenty-first century, artists continue to sing about death, write about death, and depict it in paintings and photographs. Religious leaders are still talking about how to live a meaningful life in the face of death's inevitability. Governments go to war in the name of peace and the defense of the living, causing death on a massive scale. Ethicists and activists argue over the right to die, the right to live, the right to kill. Medical personnel strive to prevent it, are often present at the bedside of the dying, and pronounce when death has occurred. Biologists and physiologists puzzle over when it occurs and how it can be measured. Counselors, therapists, relatives, and dear friends help those
The Sorrow of Andromache (1781) by Jacques-Louis David. Oil on canvas. The concepts of death, grief, and mourning have been represented by innumerable artists throughout the centuries. During the Enlightenment, themes in art were frequently linked to human mortality. ERICH LESSING/ART RESOURCE, NY
who are dying make peace with their death, and help those left behind to live on. Young children wonder what has happened to their loved ones, and families struggle with their grief.
Additional Topics
Death is clearly a part of life—every day. And yet, the word defies simple definition, because there are so many aspects to death and so many perspectives. A 1913 edition of Webster's Dictionary defined death as "the cessation of all vital phenomena without capability of resuscitation, either in animals or plants." The current Concise Oxford Dictionary defines death bot…
The word bereavement comes from a root word meaning "shorn off" or "torn up." It suggests that one has been deprived or robbed, dispossessed, left in a sad and lonely state. Bereavement is the state of being in which a person has suffered the death of a relative or friend. Grief refers to the total range of emotions humans feel in response to a loss. The word suggests n…
A number of answers to this question have been proposed by philosophically oriented biologists such as Sherwin B. Nuland and Basiro Davey and colleagues. The results of tissue cultures indicate that cells are "preprogrammed" by their genetic code to cease the dividing processes after a certain number of divisions have occurred, and then die. A further argument proposes that death is …
In 1900 the average life expectancy at birth in the United States was 47 years, and this figure increased to a record high of 77.2 years a century later. The gap between female and male life expectancy peaked in 1979 when women outlived men an average of 7.8 years. By 2001 the gap was down to 5.4 years.
That year, women lived an average of 79.8 years and men an average of 74.4 years. White males …
Death, an emotionally wrenching idea, has been both a subject for artists and an incentive for artistic production throughout history. Perhaps as much as, perhaps more than, any other subject, artists have dealt with death, dying, the threat of death, escape from death, thoughts of death, and preparation for death through the centuries. The importance of death as a concept in ancient Egyptian cult…
The American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross developed a five-stage model of the psychology of dying and grief. In her book titled On Death and Dying (1969), she proposed that in response to the awareness of their impending death, individuals move through stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
and acceptance. Other authorities note that these stages do not occur in any predictab…
The death-related experiences of most Americans and people in other Western and industrialized societies in the early twenty-first century are markedly different from how people experienced death a century ago. At present, death is much more likely to take place in a medical facility under the control of well-trained strangers. In the past, death more commonly was an intimate family event and usua…
Arias, Elizabeth, and Betty L. Smith. "Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2001." National Vital Statistics Reports 51, no. 5 (2003): 1. Arias, Elizabeth, et al. "Deaths: Final Data for 2001." National Vital Statistics Reports 52, no. 3 (2003): 21. Carroll, Nöel. Philosophy of Art. London: Routledge, 1999. Davey, Basiro, Tim Halliday, and Mark Hirst, eds. Human Biology an…
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