Abstract
The question of an afterlife is arguably of interest only if (a) it is reasonable to fear death and (b) defeating the fear of death requires accepting belief in an afterlife. This Chapter accordingly discusses the fear of death, beginning from the ancient argument that this is an irrational fear because death is total extinction, and responding with the Nagel-Williams view that, since death deprives us of potential enjoyment and achievement, it is quite rational to hold that it is a harm. There may, however, be more to the fear of death than this rational attitude – something more like grief at our own nature than a fear about what will befall us. I argue that it may be the overcoming of our self-centredness that most fundamentally frees us from the fear of death, and that, in so far as a promise of immortality is implicated, to be ethically worthwhile it must be a kind of immortality for which a transformative ‘loss of self’ is essential. I therefore consider the possibility of understanding eternal life (in a specifically Christian context) other than as an everlasting continuation of a person’s individual existence and experience.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Death…, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.’ Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus.
- 2.
‘Look back at time…before our birth. In this way Nature holds before our eyes the mirror of our future after death. Is this so grim, so gloomy?’ Lucretius, De Rerum Natura. For a recent study of Epicurean arguments for the conclusion that death is not to be feared see Warren (2004).
- 3.
In W. H. Gardner (1953: 50)
- 4.
The quotation is from Dylan Thomas’s poem addressed to his dying father, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’. The attitude towards death Thomas expresses in the poem may be more nuanced than the sheer defiance suggested by the memorable phrase often quoted from it.
- 5.
- 6.
‘The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality’ in Williams (1973: 82–100).
- 7.
This pronouncement about our human condition is found at Genesis 3:19, and is used in the Christian ‘ashing’ ritual that marks the start of the penitential season of Lent.
- 8.
For a recent discussion of the prospects (or – as he argues – the lack of them) for a satisfactory account of diachronic personal identity that could persist post-mortem, see Johnston (2010). Johnston defends a wholly naturalist account of surviving death according to which people survive in the future persons whose future they care about. Such an account is open to the general reservation against naturalist conceptions of immortality already mentioned – though, of course, it well fits the requirement for a form of immortality for which ‘loss of self’ is essential. For a helpful outline and criticism of Johnston’s view, see Mulgan (2011).
- 9.
Williams’ requirement that ‘nothing less will do for eternity than something that makes boredom unthinkable’ (1973: 95) might perhaps be met by this conception of immortal life. Marilyn Adams (1999) appeals to the inexhaustibility of personal relationship with God in her account of how God is able to defeat, rather than simply counterbalance, horrendous evils.
- 10.
Ken Perszyk and I (2011) have argued that there is a version of the Argument from Evil that succeeds against the existence of God under this personal omniGod conception.
- 11.
Dying to self and being reborn to eternal life are enacted sacramentally in Christian baptism. (It is worth noting, incidentally, that the fact that baptism occurs in historical existence gets over any doubt about how it could be me that is reborn into eternal life – a doubt that would be highly salient if the rebirth happened only after my death. It is clearly the very same human animal that goes down into the water of baptism and comes back up.)
- 12.
The question arises whether the loss of self that is supposedly inherent in love may be achieved in any other way. One possibility is absorption in intense intellectual contemplation – which is a kind of love, perhaps, but not generally included within the scope of Christian agape. Williams considers the suggestion that an everlasting personal life of such contemplation would not succumb to the tedium of immortality – and makes the joke that since the self is lost in such absorption this could not be a form of immortality that preserves personal identity.
- 13.
The required loss of self thus does not undermine the best kinds of relationships between selves, but is rather a necessary condition for them.
- 14.
Hopkins says: ‘no matter, child, the name’. What does matter is that there is something deeply grievous about the human condition that we all recognise emotionally and spiritually (‘What heart heard of, ghost guessed’), however difficult its intellectual expression may be (‘Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed’).
- 15.
If this commandment did not presuppose a grasp of properly virtuous self-love, then the commandment would risk allowing that you might treat your neighbour in any idiosyncratic or destructive way you happen to be prepared to treat yourself.
- 16.
It is worth observing that, in a different religious tradition, although personal existence may be in some sense continued beyond death through reincarnation, the ideal of ultimate human fulfilment is not to continue through cycles of reincarnation endlessly, but to attain a total enlightenment that enables escape from the cycle of birth and rebirth. (Boddhisatvas, though they have attained enlightenment, postpone their own achievement of nirvana out of compassion for those still suffering.)
- 17.
See Matthew 22:31–32, Mark 12:26–27, and Luke 20: 37–38. Only the passage in Luke draws the conclusion of the argument explicitly, and, furthermore, makes it universal: ‘for to [God] everyone is alive’ (Jerusalem Bible translation).
References
Adams, Marilyn (1999). Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bishop, John (2012). Solomon on Spirituality. In K. Higgins and D. Sherman, eds, Passion, Death and Spirituality. Dordrecht: Springer.
Bishop, John and Ken Perszyk (2011). The Normatively Relativised Logical Argument from Evil. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 70.2, 109–126.
Gardner, W.H., ed. (1953). Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Johnston, Mark (2010). Surviving Death. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mulgan, Tim (2011). Religion, Supernaturalism and Superstition. Analysis 71.4, 755–765
Nagel, Thomas (1979). Mortal Questions Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Solomon, Robert C (2002). Spirituality for the Skeptic: the Thoughtful Love of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Warren, James (2004). Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Williams, Bernard (1973). Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Bishop, J. (2017). The Fear of Death. In: Nagasawa, Y., Matheson, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife. Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48609-7_17
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