Matar a morte, esvaziar a vida

a histeria da sobrevivência e a crise de sentido do morrer na sociedade paliativa

Abstract

This article analyzes the ontological reconfiguration of death in contemporary society based on Byung-Chul Han’s thesis of the “palliative society.” The bibliographical research investigates how the “hysteria of survival” and “algophobia” (the generalized fear of pain) reduce existence to mere biological life, or “bare life,” deprived of transcendent meaning. The study argues that contemporary technoscience functions as a secular religion by promising the overcoming of finitude and interpreting death not as mystery, but as a technical problem to be solved. It traces the historical process of the deritualization of dying, describing the transition from “tamed death” to “forbidden death,” now hidden within hospital environments where dying becomes a solitary event without narrative meaning. The article also discusses how the loss of collective rituals and the new aesthetics of mourning fragment communal solidarity and prevent the symbolic closure of life. In this context emerges the “living dead” within the “hell of the same”: individuals who optimize vitality while remaining existentially uprooted. Finally, the text concludes that the attempt to “kill death” results in the death of life’s meaning itself.