어네스터 베커(Ernest Becker, 1924-1974)의 죽음학과 종교

초록

In this article, with respect to the works of Ernest Becker(1924-1974), the author attempts to analyse critically the role andplace of heroism within human life as this exists within a religiouscontext. He develops his analysis with respect to three aspects whenlooking at the relation between studies about death and the role ofreligion. In the first section, he introduces Becker's comprehensiveacademic concern about religion and how we are to understanddeath in human life. Then, he tries to speak about the kind ofmutual relation which exists between death and heroism. Heroismis key for us in understanding human life since, in the denial ofdeath as a reality, a place is created for the place and being of ourhuman lives. In the third section, the author speaks about thereligious dimension: if our human heroism is embodied within acreaturely experience which knows about the existence of our coming physical death, then, in religion, we have a surplus kind ofexperience which refers to a form of self-transcending struggle thatattempts to move beyond the human limitations of death. In thefinal section, the author focuses on heroism itself in an effort tounderstand a paradoxical quality which belongs to it when heroismis seen as a source of evil in terms of an "anthropodicy” whichbelongs to it. Through the development of this article, its author came torealize that though Becker would be recognized as one of the keyarchitects for an understanding and study of death within the worldof modern academia beyond how death is studied in a medicalcontext, the direction and meaning of his studies is to be seen assomething that is fundamentally identical with how death isunderstood within the context of religious studies. Becker’s deathstudies cannot be understood apart from considerations which dealwith the religious dimension which exists in human life since, here,in religion, we have a response that is given to the factual realityof death as the sign and proof of our human limitations. Inaddition, Becker’s studies are able to identify and point out the factthat heroism exists not only as a locus of the possibility ofconsolation or healing but also, paradoxically, as a locus for thepossibility of religious violence or the possible existence of religiousconflict. In this sense, the author emphasizes and argues that Becker'stheory of death studies should be seen in a positive light ascontributing to a further development which can be made when werefer to the life and being of homo religious in relation to anunderstanding of human existence which transcends understandingsthat are limited by institutionalized ways of living that can be found within different religious traditions.

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