What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James

Scientific GOD Journal, 2017

The gist of this paper will be my exploration of the kinds of issues that emerge when existentially-grounded phenomenologists confront the issue of death. After briefly examining the materialist perspective on consciousness, we will concentrate our attention on how the recognition of different levels of consciousness can show us how we can relate to death in different ways. We will proceed from examining the impossibility of the death of the self, to the possibility of transcendence through experiencing the death of the other. We will turn to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of bodily knowledge for help with the matter of how consciousness constitutes the world around itself and enables the possibility of transcendence. We will also examine passages from Nietzsche’s philosophy (with guidance from Heidegger and Blanchot) that cover the transition from viewing time as linear to viewing time as circular, and the transition from understanding our place in the universe in a passive, accepting way...

1998

Preface "Call no man happy until he is dead" wrote unhappy Aeschylus. "Death is nothing" opined the much more contented Epicurus. "Death is not an event in life. Death is not lived through" wrote the early Wittgenstein.

APPON Philosophical Quarterly vol. 3.2, 2024

is reported to have attempted answers to the puzzles of human existence namely, who am I? what should I do in life? What is the meaning of life? Is there a hereafter for humanity? These interrogatives which have situated the human species on an evolutionary continuum have not been fully answered by humans from time immemorial though, they still remained beholden to primitive survival impulses. The paper argues on this score that, as a being that encapsulate change, discontinuity and continuity, man's dissolution through death is not an external and public fact that creates a sense of loss and saddens humanity, but an internal possibility of his being. It is the fulfilment of the Man project of self-liberation, self-transcendence, and a process of surpassing one's existential condition. We shall argue further that, in this form of change, man ceases to be the impersonal social being among beings and has freed himself from the servitude of the anonymous "they" and thereby opened himself to his own most potentiality for being. In birth, there is the change of nonbeing to being, of nothingness to somethingness. In death man changes his constitution of somaticity to pure being; to a spiritual reality. We shall argue the conclusion that, in death, Man further becomes the most vitalizing fact of life and the cardinal indicator of authentic selfhood. He transcends from nothingness to somethingness.

2020

In paleontology, the discovery of funeral rites is an important factor in determining the degree of social awakening of a hominid. This awareness of death is an engine of social cohesion (uniting to resist disasters and enemies) and action (to do something to leave a trace). It is an important element of metaphysical reflection. This is also what gives the symbolic power to acts such as homicide and suicide. According to Plato, death is the separation of soul and body. Finally freed from his fleshly prison, the immortal soul can freely reach the sky of Ideas, Eternity, the domain of philosophers. (cf. Phaedo)

Death is inevitable in human existence and at the core of religious traditions. Throughout history death has had a symbolic presence. The word “symbol” comes from the Greek sýmbolon, which consists of συν- (syn-) "together" and βολή (bolē) "a throw", hence meaning "to throw together" (Collins English Dictionary). A symbol might thus be considered something that unites several meanings into an entity. The Greek sýmbolon specifically referred to objects of faith connecting the supernatural to everyday life (Becker 1994: 5). A symbol points towards a “deeper reality” beyond itself, whilst at the same time may be considered to be identical with that reality (Tillich 1955). In Natural Symbols, the anthropologist Mary Douglas argues that symbols are at the centre of rituals. She defines rituals as acts carried out to establish contact with a higher level of existence. They are tangible and visible, fostering solidarity by bringing adherents closer to their object of worship (Douglas 1996). Death becomes embodied through symbols and rituals. It may be personified as a mystical “being”, or turned into a representation of the dualistic nature of existence. Socially determined symbols and rituals make death familiar. For example, during the European Middle Ages a personified death was an integrated part of religion and folklore. However, in our current globalized and individualized existence, death is being bereaved of its socially determined presence. It is becoming invisible, or rather - alienated from our personal lives. Rituals are turning into something negative, implying that people are following something blindly without thinking about its meaning (Douglas 1996). Death is thus losing its symbolic presence, becoming nothing else but a scientific fact, the permanent termination of our biological functions. Death’s fearsome unavoidability is no longer approached through communal/religious rituals, but mitigated through individual approaches like healthy living, strict diets and unreflective, “optimistic” ways of thinking.

Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 2002

2017