Essay Questions

What is the lesson that the author wants readers to learn from the story The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy?

This lesson is of such supreme importance and significance to the book that the author does not even wait for Chapter One to raise it. It is in the second paragraph of the Introduction that the author begins relating the plot of Tolstoy’s story about a forty-five year old Russian man who injures his leg after falling from a ladder one day. The bulk of the tale revolves around attempts to diagnose why the injury does not heal and the pain grows more intense instead of abating. His wife desperately consults doctor after doctor and not only do they disagree on diagnoses, but on treatment. The result is an overwhelming focus on treating the injury with expectations of a cure rather than the pain itself and its consequences upon the mental health of their patient. The story of nightmarish primitive health care becomes an unexpected lesson in the state of technologically advanced modern health care in which the focus on curing a problem is often made at the expense of treating the patient with dignity and respect.

What is mean by the term “dying role” which the author asserts is disappearing with the advancement of technology?

The term “dying role” is specifically defined as the jargon of scholarship to refer the multitude of steps one takes as death makes it final approach. This role is characterized by many steps which will be quite familiar to most people, but which are practiced according to specific circumstances. For instance, many people will feel the drive to reconcile existing disputes before it is too late, but not everyone will be moved to take the legal steps necessary to divide their estate according to wishes. Likewise, many people for whom death comes at an advanced age are compelled to share the wisdom of their experiences or the lack thereof while fewer will be equally motivated to take steps to preserve a positive image of the legacy they leave behind. Nevertheless, these are and other steps fulfill the onset of the “dying role” which the technological promises of continued survival may unfortunately put off engaging until it is too late.

What does philosopher Josiah Royce suggest is the only possibly way to overcome the conviction that mortality makes existence meaningless?

The great tragedy of human intelligence is the foreknowledge of the inevitability of our death. If every birth comes with an unavoidable death sentence, then how it is possible to find any meaning at all in anything one does? This is a concept quite apart from merely finding happiness or contentment during life. It is not about the meaning of life as lived, but rather about the meaning of one’s life after death. Royce argues that there is really one possible way to live one’s life knowing death will eventually arrive without making that life meaningless and that is by ensuring that one’s death is not meaningless. And the way to ensure that death is not meaningless is to live one’s life actively engaged as something much bigger than the individual. It is only by actively existing as a member of a community that takes an interest in how your life contributes to society after your death that can give mortality meaning.