Abstract
In this essay I discuss the metaphysical possibility of life after death, and the empirical evidence for it, on the basis of a position I call ‘post-modern animism’. Animism is something we have all, as moderns, been taught to reject. In the first part of the essay, I point out some of the problems with the anti-animistic starting point of modern philosophy, thereby suggesting that it is time to give a hearing to animism after these three modern centuries during which it has been taboo. I then briefly describe a post-modern form of animism. In the second part, I explain how this position overcomes the modern prejudice against the possibility of life after death, and hence against even looking at the evidence for it. In this second part I also mention some ways in which parapsychological phenomena provide indirect evidence for life after death. In the third part, I look very briefly at some of the direct evidence for life after death.
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Notes
For the motives for the adoption of the mechanistic view summarised in the following paragraphs, see Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution ( New York: Harper & Row, 1980 );
Eugene Klaaren, Religious Origins of Modern Science: Belief in Creation in Seventeenth-Century Thought ( Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977 );
J. R. Ravetz, ‘The Varieties of Scientific Experience’, Arthur Peacocke (ed.), The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century (University of Notre Dame, 1981 );
Margaret C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689–1720 (Cornell University Press, 1976 );
J. R. Jacob, Robert Boyle and the English Revolution: A Study in Social and Intellectual Change (New York: Franklin, Burt Publishers, 1978 ).
For the best overall survey of studies in a wide range of areas of parapsychological research, see Benjamin Wolman (ed.) Handbook of Parapsychology ( New York: Von Nostrand, 1977 ).
For the best accounts of recent work, see the series edited by Stanley Krippner, Advances in Parapsychological Research, especially vol. I, Psychokinesis (New York: Plenum, 1977), and vol. II, Extrasensory Perception (1978). For evaluations by capable philosophers, see Stephen Braude, ESP and Psychokinesis: A Philosophical Examination ( Philadelphia: Temple University, 1980 );
C. D. Broad, Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research ( New York: Humanities, 1969 );
William James, William James on Psychical Research, Gardner Murphy and Robert Ballou (eds) ( New York: Viking, 1960 );
Rene Sudré, Parapsychology (Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel, 1960 ).
See D. Scott Rogo (ed.), Mind Beyond the Body: The Mystery of ESP Projection ( New York: Penguin Books, 1978 ).
For surveys and evaluations of the various types of evidence, see F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (London: Longmans, Green, 1903 );
Hornell Hart, The Enigma of Survival: The Case For and Against Life After Death ( Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1959 );
C. D. Broad, Human Personality and the Possibility of its Survival (Berkeley: University of California, 1955 );
C. J. Ducassee, A Critical Examination of the Belief in Life after Death ( Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1961 ).
See Raymond Moody, Life after Life (New York: Bantam, 1975); Reflections on Life after Life ( New York: Bantam, 1977 );
and Karlis Osis and E. Haraldsson, At the Hour of Death (New York: Avon, 1977).
See Eleanor Sidgwick, Phantasms of the Living ( Salem, NH: Ayer Co. Publishers, 1975 );
G. N. M. Tyrrell, Apparitions ( London: Society for Psychical Research, 1942 );
and Celia Green and Charles McCreery, Apparitions ( London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975 ).
See H. F. Saltmarsh, Evidence of Personal Survival from Cross-Correspondences ( London: G. Bell, 1939 ).
See Ian Stevenson, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (University of Virginia, 1974); also the several volumes entitled Cases of the Reincarnation Type the first volume of which was published in 1975.
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© 1989 Claremont Graduate School
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Griffin, D.R., Hughes, E.J. (1989). Life After Death, Parapsychology, and Post-Modern Animism. In: Death and Afterlife. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10526-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10526-7_4
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