Events Calendar

Professor Alex Sharpe, University of Warwick

This audio-visual lecture will consider the biggest of themes, death. More particularly, it will consider three ways of ‘being with death’ that are apparent in the life and work of the late David Bowie (religious transcendence, existential defiance, and acceptance). It draws, in particular, on the philosophy of Simon Critchley, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Tibetan Buddhism to explore these themes in Bowie’s work. Starting from Critchley’s premise that we should face down death, neither succumbing to escapism (oblivion) nor to the temptations of an afterlife (redemption), it argues, following Nietzsche, that we must, in order to avoid nihilism, make meaning in the world, and following Heidegger, that we must do so with others.

Please register for your place at this event Warwick Law School Public Lecture