Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Death and Immortality

  • Six Types of Death Fear

    1. There is the fear of nonbeing, of annihilation.  The best expression of this fear that I am aware of is contained in Philip Larkin's great poem "Aubade" which I reproduce and comment upon in Philip Larkin on Death.  Susan Sontag is another who was gripped by a terrible fear of annihilation. There is the…

  • The Dead

    Where they are, we will be.  And soon enough.  But people think they have plenty of time.  They fool themselves. Don't put off until the eleventh hour your preparation for death.  You may die at 10:30.

  • Jack Kerouac Went Home in October

    Jack Kerouac quit the mortal coil 50 years ago today, October 21st, securing his release from the samsaric wheel of the quivering meat conception, and the granting of his wish: The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . . . . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe…

  • Roger Kimball on Elias Canetti on Death

    An excerpt from Roger Kimball, Becoming Elias Canetti: . . . . Canetti’s response to the fact of death—“the only fact,” as he sometimes puts it—is a tragic stance of rebellion against an ineluctable fate. The overriding question for every individual, he writes in The Torch in My Ear, is “whether he should put up…

  • Praeparatio Mortis

    We cannot prepare for the journey at the time of departure; the time of departure must find us prepared.

  • The Christian View of Death and Immortality

    Thanatology presupposes philosophical anthropology: what death is taken to be depends on what the human being is taken to be. Although Christianity certainly has affinities with Platonism, so much so that Nietzsche could with some justice speak of Christianity as Platonism for the people, the Christian view of man is in an important respect un-Platonic.…

  • Conceiving the Afterlife: Life 2.0 or Beatific Vision?

    This weekend I had the pleasure of a visit from Dale Tuggy, noted philosopher of religion.  We discussed a number of topics at table and on trail including imago dei, the nature of forgiveness, the role of Platonism in Christianity, and death and afterlife.  His position on the latter topic I would characterize as 'Life…

  • Immortality and Meaning

    Here at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical. Is the brevity of life an argument against its ultimate meaningfulness? Or is rather that case that brevity is necessary for meaning, and that eternal life would be an eternal drag? I draw upon a neglected and no-longer-read philosopher, A. E. Taylor.

  • Et in Arcadia Ego

      Death says, "I too am in Arcadia." The contemplation of death, one's own in particular, cures one of the conceit that this life has a meaning absolute and self-contained.  Only those who live naively in this world, hiding from themselves the fact of death, flirting with transhumanist arcadian and other utopian fantasies, can accord to…

  • Ashes to Ashes; Dust to Dust . . .

    "Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.How real can we…

  • Just Getting Started at 70

    A valued correspondent offers, I'm 70 years old, but I feel like I'm just getting started. Maybe that's a common experience. I follow not far behind, and I can relate to the sentiment. I am just getting started as I near the end of the trail. The clock is running and I feel like a…

  • How to Grow Old and the Question of an Immortality Worth Wanting

    Sage advice from Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) who grew old indeed. The best part of his short essay follows: I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities. It is in this sphere that long experience is really fruitful, and it is in this sphere that…

  • Years Pass, Dates Repeat

    You were born only once but every year you have a birthday. Equally, you will die only once but every year you have a death day, the date on which you will die. It is just that you don't know what it is. Suppose you could know the date of your death but not the…

  • A Letter from Ronald Reagan to his Dying Father-in-Law

    Here: Loyal Davis, Reagan’s father-in-law and a pioneering neurosurgeon, was just days away from death. Something else worried Reagan: The dying man was, by most definitions of the word, an atheist. “I have never been able to subscribe to the divinity of Jesus Christ nor his virgin birth. I don’t believe in his resurrection, or a…

  • The Ambiguity of Death

    Death is ineluctable and irrevocable, but still equivocal this side of the divide. It presents itself, by turns, as the worst of calamities and as a welcome release from an untenable predicament.