"What is death metaphysically?" or How Philosophy preceds Theology

(originally answered at Quora.com)

That question can only be answered comparatively to the concept of Life.

If it is seen and experienced that Life is what makes particular beings move on their own, it can be infered that Death is the withdrawal of Life from them, resulting in the disintegration of their constituing elements. Whereas Life gathers the elements and makes a being funcional, Death is their separation and return to their original state. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

But Life cannot die metaphysicaly speaking, otherwise Life would be mortal, which be a conumdrum.

What does, or what ceases to be is the form put together by Life.

Life goes on, I go on, only this body as it is truly ceases to be.

And so it can be seen how Philosophy, the enquiry about the nature of things, predates Theology and its exoteric forms, such as mythology.

It is commonly thought that it was Philosophy which drew theological elements from Mythology, thereby creating a theological system like that of the Neoplatonic Theology. It is also correct in a sense, since as an enquiry into the nature of things, Philosophical discourse unveils what is hidden in Mythology, but it actually predates it first hand.

The initial dialectics of this answer are an example of how Philosophy preceeds Theology and Mythology.

The allegorization of this given discourse and understanding could then be applied in a mythological covering such as the myth of the Phoenix, which rose from its ashes (disintegration), because Life cannot truly die in order to be Life, it can only acquire form and dispose of form.

A depiction of a phoenix by Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1806)

And then the reverse interpretation can be applied to come at the hidden meaning of the myth, comparing it to metaphysical concepts such as Life and Death, and the cycle is complete.

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