FILM: Being 97

Documentary screening & live reflections from philosophers

Screening of the documentary short Being 97, followed by reflections on life and death by local philosophers.

Being 97 is a documentary short that features 97-year-old philosopher Herbert Fingarette reflecting on aging and the meaning of life and death as he approaches his final days.

In his 1996 book about death, Herbert Fingarette argued that fearing one’s own demise was irrational. When you die, he wrote, “there is nothing.” Why should we fear the absence of being when we won’t be there ourselves to suffer it?

Twenty years later, facing his own mortality, the philosopher realized that he’d been wrong. Death began to frighten him, and he couldn’t think himself out of it. Fingarette, who for 40 years taught philosophy at the University of California at Santa Barbara, had also written extensively on self-deception. Now, at 97, he wondered whether he’d been deceiving himself about the meaning of life and death. https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/604840/being-97/

This event will involve a screening of this documentary short. The screening will then be followed by four local philosophers' own reflections on the meaning of life and death. The speakers will be Wayne Pomerleau, John Wagner, Rosemary Volbrecht, and Anna Nowland.

Pomerleau, Wagner, and Volbrecht are Professors of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Gonzaga University.

Ms. Nowland is a senior philosophy major at Gonzaga University.

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