The Denial of Death

“The prospect of death, Dr. Johnson said, wonderfully concentrates the mind. The main thesis of this book is that it does much more than that: the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.”

Here, Ernest Becker lays out the main argument in his book. Although Becker will later also discuss the fear of living, he contends that the root of all human activity is the avoidance and denial of death.

“It is not that children are vicious, selfish, or domineering. It is that they so openly express man’s tragic dynasty: he must desperately justify himself as an object of primary value in the universe; he must stand out, be a hero, make the biggest contribution to world life, show that he counts more than anything or anyone else.”

The primary way people respond to death and their awareness of their animal natures is to try to assert themselves as individuals. As Becker will go on to argue throughout The Denial of Death, cultures primarily exist to give individuals that outlet for their heroism (4-5).

“The crisis of modern society is precisely that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up.”

Becker asserts that ancient cultures and traditional religion provided a means for people to assert their individuality or heroism. However, modern society is less efficient at this because of greater skepticism toward traditional religion and toward the metaphysical. For Becker, this is The Problem of the Modern World.