Death Consciousness and Social Consciousness: A Critique of Ernest Becker and Jacques Choron on Denying Death

Abstract

Those who believe that more honest attitudes toward death will provoke more humane social and political attitudes need to confront directly the argument that the denial of death is both necessary and inevitable. Ernest Becker and Jacques Choron have made the most forceful recent cases that death deprives life of meaning and leads to massive denial in modern secular culture. However, while Becker vividly portrays the pervasiveness and desperation of death-denying behavior, he does not perceive that the denial of death may be an effect rather than a cause of inequality and competitiveness in modern culture. Choron's stress on the need for endurance in finding meaning in life amounts to a similar underestimation of the power of human relationships to provide life with significance in the face of death. Rather than establishing the necessity of denying death, Becker and Choron accentuate human vulnerability. The recognition of this vulnerability actually could challenge their assumptions by provoking a deep appreciation of the values of equality and community, which in turn could provide the critical social support needed for an acceptance of human mortality.

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