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Second Coming” is often regarded as prophesy (Rishika, 2018)252. A. Rishika (2018) agrees with previous conclusion that Yeats uses “The Second Coming” to predict that imaginable destructive force may appear in the world after WWI, but at the same time this poem may express modern people‟s death desire.

Chapter 2  Views on Death in Existentialism

2.1  Karl Jaspers’ Grenzsituationen and Tragedy Theory

Karl Theodor Jaspers (1883-1969) is a German philosopher and psychopathologist who is one of the founders of existentialism. He discovers the father of existentialism Kierkegaard as early as 1914. Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (1919) he published which is regarded as the first treatise about existentialism. More importantly, the existential theory he puts forward in this book is relatively systematic and its proposal is eight years earlier than Heidegger‟s theory (Duan Dezhi, 2017)306. Death is important to Jaspers because he holds that to pursue philosophy is to study death (Duan Dezhi, 2017)307. Experiencing death means one is in Grenzsituationen which is limiting situations for human existence and it is used to describe unchangeable and inescapable situation that one must face in his life. 

According to Jaspers, there are four types of Grenzsituationen, namely, death, suffering, struggle and guilt (Peach, 2008)30. To go through and defeat these four kinds of limiting situations in a proper way, one can comprehend the meaning of one‟s own life. Suffering, struggling and guilt arise in one‟s daily life. Death means one disappears in an existential phenomenon and it enables one to realize the limitations of existence. What one can do to handle death, this crucial situation is to enter with one‟s open eyes into it and at the same time, one becomes himself. One can know death only externally, and its reality can only be Existenz. To experience death is the same as Existenz (Peach, 2008)30. In other words, experiencing death signifies one is aware of his existence and then he will go back to his roots and realize Transzendenz (Duan Dezhi, 2017) 306. 

2.2  Jean-Paul Sartre’s Absurd Character of Death

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) is arguably the best known philosopher of the twentieth century. His major work Being and Nothingness (1943) has enjoyed worldwide fame. He is commonly considered the father of Existentialist philosophy, whose writings set the tone of intellectual life in the decade immediately following the Second World War. Sartre is a thorough atheist who claims to be the representative of atheist existentialism. Sartre (1943)18 holds that man should not believe in the existence of God which not a problem that man concern about. What man needs to do is to rediscover him and understand that nothing but himself can save him. 

Sartre (1943)18 defines existentialism as follows: “Existentialism is a doctrine that does render human life possibility; a doctrine, also, which affirms that every truth and every action imply both an environment and a human subjectivity”. It is obvious that the emphasis on his existentialism is on individual existence and resistance to the realistic living environment. Individual existence has close relationship of death, so as Jaspers, death is one of the indispensable points that Sartre pays attention to. 

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