Abstract

This dissertation aims to bring Heidegger and the Igbo into dialogue on death. It also explores their contributions, thereby enabling us to elaborate the Igbo phenomenology of death and understand better Heidegger's articulation of death. A dialogue, however, is intended as hints/intimations, which give access to the unthought and hold the key to the "beginning," the origin , where primordial thinking belongs. Though a dialogue does not essentially strive for congeniality, it operates on some common basis. Thus, Heidegger and the Igbo find a parallel in the rootedness to earth, evoking a sense of finitude. ;I begin by clarifying Igbo philosophy; its indebtedness to phenomenology and hermeneutics, notably Heidegger's; the role and the nature of language in both thoughts. I argue that hermeneutics and language, which are intimately connected, are indispensable for our dialogue. Moreover, such exchange is designed to elucidate what has come to language in Heidegger and the Igbo, with a view to reaching a better understanding of the unthought, death. ;Deliberating finitude in Heidegger and the Igbo gives way to thinking death, which itself is earthbound. However, death, for Heidegger and the Igbo, does not evoke an end . Rather it intimates an authentic being, another beginning, which expressly embodies temporality and eschatology, finding expression in the Igbo mortuary rite . I argue that temporality/eschatology aims at overcoming time, "the spirit of revenge" from the Nietzschean perspective. To the extent that Da-sein anchors in temporality and eschatology, it does not "die," let alone "come to an end."