<Articles>The Meaning of Death in Education from an Heideggerian Perspective

Abstract

The paper explores the meaning of death in education to examine the possibility of teaching death from a Heideggerian perspective. Teaching death itself appears unlikely to achieve the aim of death education, overcoming the fear of death, if it could not include one's own death, the utmost fear. The educational practices for death appear to help students to understand what is to be learned in terms of the need to attain knowledge whilst this still seems to leave one's own death behind, to leave this utmost fear out of the picture. In this paper, considering other's death is defined as impersonalised death. In Heidegger's philosophy, human beings appear possible to consider their own death since death is no more than being-toward-death : the human being lives in a condition in which 'I am dying' from the birth. Besides, the care-structure of Dasein involves its being-ahead-of-itself and the anticipating of death opens the possibility of being authentic. Therefore, death education can consider the issue, one's own death as the most fear. Finally, wellbeing in educational practices for death is approached as a state of happiness in a sense of contingency. In Heidegger's analysis contingency appears in human mortality and temporality in relation to death as existential characteristics of Dasein.