ABSTRACT
Introduction We might risk making biomedicine, its materialist sources and nihilistic overtones, a scapegoat for the intermittent sense of life being askew. Yet Wittgenstein’s counsel that we should not tell someone they are in error, but show them the road from error to truth, is important to remember. What are we to do with affect, with longing and resignation that Simmel identifies as our primary affects, or how should we live life in the shadow of death: forget it, deny it, or repress it?
