If, furthermore, as I am convinced, death is immanent in life from the outset, this, too, involves a stepping out of life beyond itself. From its center, life stretches out toward the absolute of life, as it were, and becomes in this direction more-life; but it stretches out toward nothingness as well. … The deep relationship between birth and death, which man has always perceived, as if some formal relation existed between them as life catastrophes, finds here its metaphysical pivot. Both events are attached to the subjective life and transcend it, toward above and toward below, so to speak. The life beyond which they extend is nevertheless not conceivable without them.

DEFINE: Introduces a metaphysical framework where life transcends itself in two directions: toward more-life and toward nothingness, with birth and death as its pivots.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 826