Where are the Dead?: Exploring the idea of an embodied afterlife

by Peter Moore

Overview

Where are the dead? What are they doing? What kind of a process is dying? What relationships exist among the dead themselves, and between the dead and those in the world they have left behind? Modern philosophers argue that the idea of disembodied survival - to which many believers pay lip service - is incoherent, and that there can be evidence neither for nor against something incoherent. By contrast, this book argues, the idea of an embodied survival (albeit a form of embodiment differing from our present embodiment) makes perfect sense in itself and fits much better with the alleged evidence for post-mortem survival. Exploring post-mortem survival, Where are the Dead? uses a variety of empirical data, alongside mythological, legendary and purely fictional material, to illustrate how the less familiar idea of embodied post-mortem survival might actually ’work’ in some real afterlife environment. By asking questions about the nature and whereabouts of the afterlife, and about what it might be like to be dead, the book explores themes nowadays relatively neglected even in disciplines explicitly concerned with ideas about death, dying and life after death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134763580
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/13/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	258
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Peter Moore took his first degree in English, French and Philosophy at the University of Sheffield (1966); a Diploma in Social Studies at the same University (1967); and completed his doctorate under the supervision of Professor Ninian Smart at the University of Lancaster (1975). He spent most of his academic career at the University of Kent at Canterbury, where he introduced the study of world religions, taught a variety of undergraduate courses and supervised research students. In 1990, together with his colleague Dr Leon Schlamm, he created and taught the MA programme in the Study of Mysticism and Religious Experience. Dr Moore also worked as external examiner and academic advisor for a number of UK universities and colleges of higher education. He retired from full-time teaching in 2011.

Table of Contents

Preface

1 Clarifying the question

2 What could it be like to die?

3 What might it be like to be dead?

4 Locating the afterlife

5 What would the dead be doing?

6 Between the living and the dead

7 Post-mortem identity and continuity

8 Eschatology and the future of the afterlife

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