Art of Living, Art of Dying

The author of this important book is Professor of Care Ethics and Spiritual and Ethical Questions in Palliative Care at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht. The main value of the book is the way in which it updates and translates the mediaeval Ars Moriendi into modern terms. Leget begins from the study of death and dying, usefully distinguishing between fear as an emotion with a specific object, and anxiety that has no such specific object. Pointing out that we both are and have a body, he then explains how in the mediaeval tradition people on their deathbeds struggled with questions of faith, hope, love, patience and humility. He translates these into series of tensions, each of which correspond to a question. Thus knowing – believing leads to asking what one can hope for; remembering – forgetting to how one looks back on one's life; holding on – letting go to how to say goodbye; doing – undergoing to how to deal with suffering; and finally myself – the other to asking who I am and what I really want. The following chapters explore these questions in detail, with many touching and insightful examples, and the whole model is predicated on the author's idea of inner (open and reflective) space. The final two chapters discuss the model in a religious perspective and how best to work with it. This is very helpful as a guide to those working in palliative care, as well as to general readers with an interest in philosophy of death and dying. It would be useful if in the future addition the author also explored the work of Monika Renz on death as transition, which I have reviewed in these pages.