ABSTRACT
Introduction The topic of death, often monopolized by theology, philosophy and even psychology through its studies of grief and bereavement, has rarely been treated as a signature of sociological theorizing except perhaps in empirical studies such as Durkheim’s (1951) Suicide. Yet, in the sociological canon and particularly the classical works of Durkheim, Simmel, and Weber, a dialogical engagement with death as a collective representation is developed in ways often unstated and unthought. I want to make this engagement transparent as a discursive focus. I proceed by showing how the topos of death and its social character opens up inquiry in important ways, especially with respect to social relationships to meaning and what is called limit thinking. On this basis, I offer food for thought concerning the relationship between the treatment of death and (what Parsons called) “ultimate meaning” as topics on grounds of the charge that the morbidity of one (death) and the irresolute character of the other (ultimate meaning) can elicit only gratuitous fascination that needs to be put to rest as impractical, idle, antisocial or even subversive.
