Hans Jonas in the introduction to "Phenomena of life" begins by separating the philosophy of life into two categories: "philosophy of the organic" and "philosophy of mind", the first is foreshadowed by the second and the second is determined by the first. In this strange relationship it is up to the philosopher to determine in what way even the organic in its most basic form, as mere "metabolism", can be on its way to mind, can even exhibit the greatest faculty of mind, namely freedom. If we say that metabolism is free, we begin to see a dynamic polarity between "stuff" and the "stuff" that it consumes: between being and non-being. If there is this "relationship", this tension between being and non-being, then there is a mode of transcending this relationship, and "If we can show the presence of such transcendence, and of the polarities that specify it, at the very base of life in whatever pre-mental form, we have made good the contention that mind is prefigured in the organic as such". This introduces his book which aims, by looking "over the scale of faculties with which the organisms meet the challenge of the world", and the historical accounts of men to question the meaning of life in this relationship, to gather some kind of coherent account of "the phenomena of life".

Primitive Man's Simultaneous Acknowledgement and Negation of Death through Tombs

"As early man's practice is embodied in his tools, so his thought is embodied in his tombs which acknowledge and negate death at the same time. Out of the tombs arose pristine metaphysics in the shape of myth and religion. That all is life and that all life is mortal is the basic contradiction it strives to resolve." -Hans Jonas, Life, Death and the Body in the Theory of Being

These are pictures of Etruscan tombs from Tarquinia in Italy. The images of people depict symposiums, a commonly used theme for the walls of these ancient tombs. Other images of frequent occurrence include olive trees and animals.