ABSTRACT
Death anxiety was a key experience during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. Assuming Jung’s premise that death is the purpose of the life process, what is death anxiety? Some philosophers suggest that death anxiety is about both physical death and the “death of the soul”—an image of the way a soul and its teleology turn against itself. Some of the troubling psychological states and behaviors witnessed during the pandemic appear to arise from anxiety over the “death of the soul” and further point to a potential basis for a clinical ethics.
