Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Zaleski, Carol

Titel

How to believe in immortality

Ist Teil von

• Religious studies, 2024-05, Vol.60 (S1), p.S117-S130

Ort / Verlag

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of particular religious traditions may avail where generic philosophical solutions fall short. With attention to the boredom and narcissism critiques, intimations of deathlessness in Śāntideva's radical altruism, and recent Christian debates on the soul and the intermediate state, I propose two criteria for a coherent religion-specific belief in immortality: (1) the belief is supported by a fully realized religious tradition, (2) the belief satisfies the demand for self-transcendence as well as for self-preservation. Where self-transcendence and self-preservation are kept in balance, and where the whole idea rests upon the lattice-work of a fully realized religious tradition, immortality is a fitting object of belief. Moreover, such belief is compatible with considerable speculative freedom concerning matter and spirit, body and soul, and personal identity over time.