I have recently read a number of plays by the British play write Tom Stoppard. If I am honest I had not heard of him or his work until watching the BBC Imagine… documentary about his work and life. His work is funny and absurd in many ways. My focus on Heidegger’s philosophy led me to be interested in the works to an even greater extent.

Stoppard focuses on misunderstanding and the ways in which language apparently fail us. He looks at time and how the past and future can exist simultaneously. He also looks at death.

Heidegger looks at the same things but perhaps in a different way.

What really drew me in however was the way that Stoppard uses playing with language and the meaningless to stand against death. This show most obviously in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead where the main characters flip coins, lose their train of thought and forget what their first memory is. This is cut through with the stark comments made about death. These are approached but are quickly brushed past. The speed with which death comes and goes as a topic of their conversation brings to the forefront our inability to deal with death. This for me is the pinnacle of what Heidegger calls idle talk and being consumed in the they-self. It is easier to just call heads or tails after a coin is flipped. If we ignore death what do we have left? Only that which is meaningless? But we must remember that death is not avoided completely. It is simply the case that it is brushed over. It is said flippantly whenever it is mentioned – this perhaps more than the omission of death is what Heidegger speaks of when addressing our avoidance of death and our finitude.

I may write more extensively on this in the future – for the moment these are just some preliminary notes.