A Technology Problem or an Ascetic Teacher: Peter Thiel and John Climacus (Mis)remembering Death

Peter Thiel states that death is a problem to be solved. He routinely frames his transhumanist ideas through theological language, highlighting resonances between his vision of immortality and the Christian eschatological body. But beyond an external motivator for innovation, there is little room in Thiel’s proposal for dying one’s own death; that is, our deaths do not seem to inform us about life, finitude, or even mortality itself. As such, this paper offers a pedagogical interpretation of death by way of the ascetical rule of John Climacus. Through a constructive reading of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, I demonstrate that death operates paradoxically for Climacus, by inverting expectations on spiritual maturity with the goal of constituting the ascetic’s relation to the world by reorienting them back to their finitude.