Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons / Edition 1

by Kevin Corcoran

Overview

How are soul and body related to one another? Are human beings immaterial souls, or complex physical organisms? Will we survive the death of our bodies? Does only the dualist view allow the possibility of life after death? This collection brings together cutting-edge research on the metaphysics of human nature and the possibility of post-mortem survival.Kevin Corcoran's collection, Soul, Body, and Survival, includes chapters from those who embrace traditional soul-body dualism, those who assert person-body identity, and those who propose entirely new views that fall outside the categories of monism and dualism. The first book to connect the metaphysics of persons with the belief in life after death, thus intersecting with theological as well as philosophical inquiry, it blurs the divide between metaphysics and the philosophy of mind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801438295
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/23/2001
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Kevin Corcoran is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College.

What People are Saying About This

Dean W. Zimmerman

Soul, Body, and Survival is a good collection that comes along at a propitious time, just when there is renewed interest in the topics it addresses. There are new models of resurrection afloat, greater efforts to make use of the latest work in metaphysics on personal identity, and more serious attempts to understand the Thomistic model. The authors in this book are among the most important contributors to these debates.

Editorial Reviews

Are human beings made up of two separate entities, the mind and the body, or are we a psychosomatic unity? Is there life after death? If so, what form does it take, and does it require human beings to be made up of two separate entities, one of which is left behind at death (the 'body') and the other which continues (the 'mind' or 'soul')? These are the questions which form the substance of this book.

Theology - Geoffrey Burn

"Soul, Body, and Survival is a good collection that comes along at a propitious time, just when there is renewed interest in the topics it addresses. There are new models of resurrection afloat, greater efforts to make use of the latest work in metaphysics on personal identity, and more serious attempts to understand the Thomistic model. The authors in this book are among the most important contributors to these debates."

Dean W. Zimmerman

"This is an excellent collection of original articles with a very specific focus, namely western mind-body dualism and whether it is the view of survival contained in Christian scripture.... The book is well worth acquiring. There are many reasons to think that reductive materialism has completely failed in its efforts to get rid of subjectivity, qualia, free will, rationality and the rest of the basic furniture of folk psychology. Whether or not you think Conservative Christianity is a live option philosophically and theologically, its exponents are very much alive and dominate contemporary American philosophy of religion. Soul, Body and Survival is a valuable addition to my library, and I have put it alongside books suggesting process, disembodied soul and reincarnationist views of survival or advocating both western and non-western philosophical and religious views that there is no self to survive."

International Journal of Philosophy of Religion - Frank B. Diley

"This is an excellent collection of original articles with a very specific focus, namely western mind-body dualism and whether it is the view of survival contained in Christian scripture. . . . The book is well worth acquiring. There are many reasons to think that reductive materialism has completely failed in its efforts to get rid of subjectivity, qualia, free will, rationality and the rest of the basic furniture of folk psychology. Whether or not you think Conservative Christianity is a live option philosophically and theologically, its exponents are very much alive and dominate contemporary American philosophy of religion. Soul, Body and Survival is a valuable addition to my library, and I have put it alongside books suggesting process, disembodied soul and reincarnationist views of survival or advocating both western and non-western philosophical and religious views that there is no self to survive."—Frank B. Diley, University of Delaware, International Journal of Philosophy of Religion 52: 195-197, 2002

"Are human beings made up of two separate entities, the mind and the body, or are we a psychosomatic unity? Is there life after death? If so, what form does it take, and does it require human beings to be made up of two separate entities, one of which is left behind at death (the 'body') and the other which continues (the 'mind' or 'soul')? These are the questions which form the substance of this book."—Geoffrey Burn, Theology, July / August 2002

"Soul, Body, and Survival is a good collection that comes along at a propitious time, just when there is renewed interest in the topics it addresses. There are new models of resurrection afloat, greater efforts to make use of the latest work in metaphysics on personal identity, and more serious attempts to understand the Thomistic model. The authors in this book are among the most important contributors to these debates."—Dean W. Zimmerman, Syracuse University

From the Publisher