Immortality

immortality, in philosophy and religion, the indeퟚ�nite continuation of the mental, spiritual,
or physical existence of individual human beings. In many philosophical and religious
traditions, immortality is speciퟚ�cally conceived as the continued existence of an immaterial
soul or mind beyond the physical death of the body.

The earlier anthropologists, such as Sir Edward Burnett Tylor and Sir James George Frazer,
assembled convincing evidence that the belief in a future life was widespread in the
regions of primitive culture. Among most peoples the belief has continued through the
centuries. But the nature of future existence has been conceived in very different ways. As
Tylor showed, in the earliest known times there was little, often no, ethical relation between
conduct on earth and the life beyond. Morris Jastrow wrote of “the almost complete
absence of all ethical considerations in connection with the dead” in ancient Babylonia and
Assyria.

In some regions and early religious traditions, it came to be declared that warriors who died
in battle went to a place of happiness. Later there was a general development of the ethical
idea that the afterlife would be one of rewards and punishments for conduct on earth. So in
ancient Egypt at death the individual was represented as coming before judges as to that
conduct. The Persian followers of Zoroaster accepted the notion of Chinvat peretu, or the
Bridge of the Requiter, which was to be crossed after death and which was broad for the
righteous and narrow for the wicked, who fell from it into hell. In Indian philosophy and
religion, the steps upward—or downward—in the series of future incarnated lives have been
(and still are) regarded as consequences of conduct and attitudes in the present life (see
karma). The idea of future rewards and punishments was pervasive among Christians in the
Middle Ages and is held today by many Christians of all denominations. In contrast, many
secular thinkers maintain that the morally good is to be sought for itself and evil shunned
on its own account, irrespective of any belief in a future life.

That the belief in immortality has been widespread through history is no proof of its truth. It
may be a superstition that arose from dreams or other natural experiences. Thus, the
question of its validity has been raised philosophically from the earliest times that people
began to engage in intelligent reퟟ�ection. In the Hindu Katha Upanishad, Naciketas says:
“This doubt there is about a man departed—some say: He is; some: He does not exist. Of this
would I know.” The Upanishads—the basis of most traditional philosophy in India—are
predominantly a discussion of the nature of humanity and its ultimate destiny.

Immortality was also one of the chief problems of Plato’s thought. With the contention that
reality, as such, is fundamentally spiritual, he tried to prove immortality, maintaining that
nothing could destroy the soul. Aristotle conceived of reason as eternal but did not defend
personal immortality, as he thought the soul could not exist in a disembodied state. The
Epicureans, from a materialistic standpoint, held that there is no consciousness after death,
and it is thus not to be feared. The Stoics believed that it is the rational universe as a whole
that persists. Individual humans, as the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote, simply have
their allotted periods in the drama of existence. The Roman orator Cicero, however, ퟚ�nally
accepted personal immortality. St. Augustine of Hippo, following Neoplatonism, regarded
human beings’ souls as being in essence eternal.

The Islamic philosopher Avicenna declared the soul immortal, but his coreligionist Averroës,
keeping closer to Aristotle, accepted the eternity only of universal reason. St. Albertus
Magnus defended immortality on the ground that the soul, in itself a cause, is an
independent reality. John Scotus Erigena contended that personal immortality cannot be
proved or disproved by reason. Benedict de Spinoza, taking God as ultimate reality, as a
whole maintained his eternity but not the immortality of individual persons within him. The
German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz contended that reality is constituted of
spiritual monads. Human beings, as ퟚ�nite monads, not capable of origination by
composition, are created by God, who could also annihilate them. However, because God
has planted in humans a striving for spiritual perfection, there may be faith that he will
ensure their continued existence, thus giving them the possibility to achieve it.

The French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that belief in the God of
Christianity—and accordingly in the immortality of the soul—is justiퟚ�ed on practical grounds
by the fact that one who believes has everything to gain if he is right and nothing to lose if
he is wrong, while one who does not believe has everything to lose if he is wrong and
nothing to gain if he is right. The German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant held
that immortality cannot be demonstrated by pure reason but must be accepted as an
essential condition of morality. Holiness, “the perfect accordance of the will with the moral
law,” demands endless progress “only possible on the supposition of an endless duration of
the existence and personality of the same rational being (which is called the immortality of
the soul).” Considerably less-sophisticated arguments both before and after Kant attempted
to demonstrate the reality of an immortal soul by asserting that human beings would have
no motivation to behave morally unless they believed in an eternal afterlife in which the
good are rewarded and the evil are punished. A related argument held that denying an
eternal afterlife of reward and punishment would lead to the repugnant conclusion that
the universe is unjust.

In the late 19th century, the concept of immortality waned as a philosophical

preoccupation, in part because of the secularization of philosophy under the growing
inퟟ�uence of science.

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