ABSTRACT
The old and the chronically ill often develop a subtle irony and abandon the determination to live at all costs (Hillman). But the hospital environment facilitates repression, in the interest of efficiency and to save time. In the doctor, an unconscious furor agendi risks becoming a conscious furor sanandi. Coping consciously with emotions involves an element of moderation, of waiting, which should be respected, whereas the common tendency is to eliminate it. The system might gain in efficiency from this, avoiding hasty decisions. Lack of interest in the great questions of philosophy seems linked to the expectation of a prosperity unprecedented in history. Doctors have a privileged window of observation, from where they can draw on the long philosophical tradition of their art. In the world of unlimited consumption, death concretized in the present becomes a taboo. Repressed by the omnipotence of the technical gesture, it re-emerges as guilt, like all inadequacy and vulnerability (Zoja). The high rate of depression is related to this phenomenon. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead the eternal death of the soul is represented symbolically for those whose hearts are not as light as the feather of Maat, goddess and measure of cosmic order.
