Topics Death

Question Is man mortal given he assumes new forms of life even if he is reduced to dust (from dust sprouts new vegetative forms of life which in turn sustains animal life)? But what about the people who are cremated; they cannot make the mother earth richer. The only remains left of them may be their spirit (if there is one). Do they still live through their spirit or other etheric or esoteric bodies? In short the question is whether man is reduced to naught after death?

Accepted:
June 28, 2010

Comments

A question of the ages! Most philosophers in the west and east who believe that persons survive the death of their bodies either believe that there is more to being a person than their body there is a soul, for example and when the body dies, the soul endures, or they believe in some kind of physical resurrection or material re-embodiment. Both positions have defenders today. For a defense of the first, see work by Stewart Goetz or Richard Swinburne. For a defense of the latter, see Peter van Inwagen or Trenton Merricks. As for the notion of a person having some kind of extended life after death if her body nurtures future animal and vegetative life, this seems problematic for after a certain point of disintegration there will be no meaningful way to identify the person or her body as a thing or subject. The question about the coherence and plausability of a person surviving bodily death would ultimately need to take up large philosophical questions about the nature of reality involving both theistic and non-theistic accounts of persons and the cosmos.