ABSTRACT
Death hangs like a pall – or like layers of sores – over the whole of Abschied von den Eltern. Weiss’s father was already dead before he died. Weiss’s intense resistance to the conception of life shared by his parents found expression in a completely different sense of learning, wholly other than swotting for exams. Philosophy must constantly be recalled back to itself; the philosopher needs constantly to be reminded of his or her humanity, weakness, vulnerability. For sure, much philosophical discourse seeks to reconcile the reader to death even as it seeks to understand death, precisely through its seeking to understand it, and the people have need of such reconciliation. They have to learn to live with the shambolic unclarity of such matters, and for that they need both philosophy and literature. Weiss’s text says this to the reader: death is everywhere. It is the center of the people life, even if they think it is not.
