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Being evil by nature we ought nevertheless to become good; and so we can. Kant's philosophy is supposed to give us grounds for hope in an “afterlife”, when we can be good, or at least better, and when happiness will be proportioned to virtue as the highest good. Yet it remains unclear how to understand the temporal relation of this present, sensible life and the afterlife. Some of Kant's reflections suggest that heaven and hell may belong to the intelligible world we already occupy. Because the world would have been created for a moral purpose, and because the highest good is a just reward, we have rational grounds for hope in an afterlife.

This chapter considers the claims by extra-corporeal experience (ECE) subjects to experience an other-worldly domain and thereafter to report on it. It evaluates the validity of this recall of another world from the perspective of Christian eschatology, with its variety of notions about the soul and resurrection, and from the biblical viewpoint of the anthropological nature of the person.

Since extra-corporeal experiences (ECEs) are widely alleged to offer new insights into phenomena exemplary of the afterlife, there is an imperative to examine these experiential claims. This chapter examines whether ECEs can justifiably fulfil criteria of divine disclosure, and thus be construed as truly spiritual events. This is an important issue, raising the problem how God communicates with earthbound subjects and, importantly, how the brain is involved.

This chapter examines the martyrs’ rapid ascent to heaven following death and the roles that the martyrs play in the afterlife in heaven. In opposition to the ordinary dead, martyrs quickly ascend — by various routes — to heaven and participate in a number of activities similar to those of the exalted Christ. It argues that, rather than assuming that martyrs serve in a similar capacity as angels in heaven, it is possible to view the martyrs’ participation in a heavenly banquet, judgment scenes, and role as heavenly intercessor as analogous to the roles of Christ. This suggests that the question of the martyrs’ identity is more complicated than is usually assumed.

Religion is a form of risk management in human lives and in religious groups. Pascal’s Wager famously illustrates the calculation of loss and benefit in religious belief. But there are other economic models for how religion deals with uncertainty, and this chapter looks at three. First is insurance against risk, with its byproduct of “moral hazard. Second is the need to verify the reliability of religious “goods,” which economists call “credence goods.” Religions, like businesses, seek to assure consumers of reliability. Finally, consumers search for reliable information, which in religion means explanations about the gods, the afterlife, and ultimate religious consequences, such as hell. Typically, monotheistic faiths are deemed “high risk” religions because of their belief in ultimate consequences. But all religions have this feature to some extent, speaking to the human incentive to avoid risk.

This chapter focuses on greater in-depth criticism of extra-corporeal experience (ECE) phenomenology related to its interpretation and meaning and, more generally, to its cultural relativity — historically and geographically. Subjects undergoing a near-death experience believe themselves to have been rewarded with glimpses of the afterlife and indisputable convictions that an other-worldly domain does exist. Such convictions are private, unassailable and independent of previously held religious belief.

A good course on death does more than explore the way we die and grieve. It does more than show us how to prepare a living will or to decide whether physician-assisted suicide is ethical. It does more than survey the various religious views on death and afterlife or the philosophical arguments for or against survival of bodily death. A complete course will address the question of meaning. What is the meaning of death? The meaning of death hinges on the question of afterlife—as does the meaning of life. Do we survive death? If so, what do we survive into? There is no evidence more helpful in deciding how to answer these questions than that coming out of psychical research. This chapter looks at the most important of these evidences: near-death experiences, deathbed visions, studies of children who remember previous lives, and mediumistic accounts of the world beyond.

This chapter examines the role of purgatory in Anglo-Saxon writings (especially those of Boniface) and in missionary eschatology. It discusses how pagan and Christian beliefs about the afterlife were represented by contemporaries, and how they have been represented by scholars and archaeologists. It examines the role played by the limitations of the Christian afterlife during the Frisian mission and in King Radbod’s failed conversion. This chapter also considers the relative appeal of ideas about purgatory, universal salvation, and posthumous salvation in a missionary environment.

This chapter returns to Avicenna’s theory of the intellect, but now with a focus on the practical intellect and its role in the formation of our moral temperaments. Since Avicenna believes that the proper formation of these temperaments and the life of the human species require communal association, there is a discussion of Avicenna’s political theory, which at its core has the Avicennan counterpart to the Platonic “Philosopher-King,” namely, Avicenna’s “Prophet-Lawgiver.” Once completing this background, Avicenna’s conception of the return or afterlife is taken up, along with a discussion of Avicenna’s vision of the pleasures and pains that one might expect to experience there depending upon the life one has lived here. The chapter concludes with Avicenna’s views about providence and his general account of why evil exists in a world created by a wholly good God.

The first quarter of Tanxu’s life was dominated by war, death, and dislocation. Figuring prominently in this chapter is Tanxu’s (then called Wang Futing) death and encounter in the underworld with the King of Hell. Illustrating cultural perceptions about the afterlife and social roles, Tanxu negotiates that he be allowed to live again, in part because he is his parents’ only surviving child. Returning to life, Tanxu began a career as a merchant and clerk, which was disrupted by the Sino-Japanese War (1894–5), the Boxer Uprising (1899–1900), and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5). Observing China’s relative weakness in these conflicts, Tanxu began to construct his sense of Chinese nationalism, which included drawing on foreign technology and ideas, but focused on building a strong moral foundation for China.

This chapter argues that the moral character of God, as portrayed in the Scriptures he is supposed to have inspired, is a reasonable test of the claim that those Scriptures convey a divine revelation. The Christian Scriptures (the ‘Old’ Testament and the New) fail the test. They frequently represent God as authorizing bad conduct. He commands child sacrifice and genocide. He permits slavery and rape. This is only a partial list of passages which make it incredible that the morally perfect being of Christian theology could have inspired the Bible. Also problematic: the Bible contradicts itself about how God will treat his creatures after death, sometimes denying an afterlife, sometimes affirming it; when it affirms an afterlife, it threatens those who do not believe with eternal punishment. Better to give up the hypothesis of divine inspiration than to corrupt our moral thinking by trying to defend the indefensible.

This chapter explores a variety of explanations which aim to show that animal pain and suffering is a necessary condition for various outweighing goods which accrue to the suffering animals themselves. More specifically, it treats the two main variants of this position that have been defended. First, some have argued that animal suffering allows animals to secure goods that for various reasons make their lives more valuable for them here and now. Some, for example, argue that the reality of animal pain and suffering allows animals to exhibit a variety of virtue that is itself intrinsically valuable, while others argue that animal pain is necessary to allow animals to avoid physical threats to their organismic integrity. The chapter argues that the former ideas are too anthropomorphic although the latter are defensible. Second, others have argued that animal suffering allows animals to enjoy a correspondingly more valuable post-mortem existence either as compensation for suffering during their earthly life, or by way of a process analogous to soul-making. It is argued that the former are incomplete since they do not account for the evil for which animals are being compensated. The second can succeed if animals indeed enjoy post-mortem existence and are capable of such development.

The chapter begins by setting out the terms of traditional aristocratic immortality in Rome, which consisted in the acquisition of praise (laus) and glory (gloria) during life and the survival in the memory of the family and the larger civic community after death; in contrast to philosophical belief in the immortality of the soul and the hubristic desire for deification, it was thus grounded in practices of commemoration. The chapter shows how Cicero nevertheless flirted with the radical possibility of continued existence after death through deification or the immortality of the soul, conceiving of the hereafter as a realm of reward and/ or punishment. The discussion thus illustrates how he strategically endorsed the popular, but also Platonic idea of the afterlife as a site of reckoning where mechanisms of distributive and retributive justice balance open accounts.

For Judaism, ours is an unredeemed, pre-messianic world. This chapter focuses upon how hope, faith, and sacred deeds offer human beings an opportunity and a challenge to help move the world toward messianic redemption. Various views of the human role in the messianic process, including the kabbalistic notion of tikkun — “repair,” are examined, as are various forms of redemption such as individual, collective, and cosmic redemption. Further ideas of Jewish eschatology, such as the afterlife, are also presented.

Bâbâ Afdal drew inspiration both from Greek writings in Arabic and from the writings of various Muslim thinkers. This chapter provides excerpts from his Persian translations of the pseudo‐Aristotelian Liber de Pomo, Aristotles’ De anima, and the Hermetic Fountain of Life. Also included is a full translation of his abridgement of Ghazâlî's introduction to Kîmiyâ‐yi sa`âdat (The Alchemy of Felicity), which provides a straightforward introduction to basic philosophico‐religious concepts such as soul, spirit, heart, body, God, this world, and the next world.

This chapter examines how the afterlife was reconceived in the Protestant religious imagination of the post-Reformation decades, suggesting that images of hell were easier to conjure than those of heaven. The ascendant doctrine of predestination implied that few would be saved, but examination of funeral sermons and epitaphs suggests that confidence in the salvation of individuals was widespread, even among ‘godly’ clergy, and parishioners were usually reassured that even their popish ancestors could be saved. Although the new doctrine insisted on a complete lack of communication between the living and the dead, this had the effect of heightening interest in the theme of the reunion of loved ones in the afterlife, and, despite the caveats of the theologians, heaven was seen as a very human society. Theologians also showed more concern than ordinary people with the final resurrection of the body.