by Stephen Cave
CHAPTER 4: ST. PAUL AND THE CANNIBALS
There are many thousands of studies on the life and works of St. Paul available. Two nice little introductions are Edward Stourton’s In the Footsteps of St. Paul (Hodder & Stoughton, 2004) and E. P. Sanders’s Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2001). Two extremely useful scholarly introductions are The Writings of St. Paul: A Norton Critical Edition, edited by Wayne A. Meeks and John T. Fitzgerald (W. W. Norton, 2007) and The Cambridge Companion to St. Paul, edited by James D. G. Dunn (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Paul’s Judaism and its implications for his theology are explored in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism by W. D. Davies (SPCK Publishing, 1948) and more recently by Alan F. Segal in Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (Yale University Press, 1990), and his influence on Christianity is debated accessibly in A. N. Wilson’s Paul: The Mind of the Apostle (W. W. Norton, 1998) and What Saint Paul Really Said by Tom Wright (Lion Hudson, 2003).
The Martin Luther quote is taken from Corliss Lamont’s aforementioned The Illusion of Immortality. The Karen Armstrong quote is from A Short History of Myth (Cannongate, 2005). A good introduction to the nature of ritual, including the aspects I mention, is Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions by Catherine Bell (Oxford University Press, 1997). A magnificent account of the development of afterlife beliefs in the ancient world can be found in Alan F. Segal’s Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (Doubleday Religion, 2004). An overview of the state of scholarly thinking on the “dying and rising gods” can be found in The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East by Tryggve N. D. Mettinger (Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001).
The Sigmund Freud quote is from The Future of an Illusion (Penguin, 1927). Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion was first published in 1890 and is available in various editions.
Oscar Cullmann’s comparison of the deaths of Socrates and Jesus and subsequent insightful discussion can be found in his Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? (The Epworth Press, 1958). The Catholic Encyclopedia (original version from 1914) is available in various editions and online. Nerina Rustomji’s analysis of the Islamic afterlife is published as The Garden and the Fire: Heaven and Hell in Islamic Culture (Columbia University Press, 2009). The quote from Jon Levenson is from Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (Yale University Press, 2006).
Diarmaid MacCulloch’s discussion of the resurrection is taken from his monumental work A History of Christianity (Allen Lane, 2009). The report of a Roman persecution of Christians in Gaul is taken from a letter from the church of Lyons to the church of Vienne, as described by the Dutch historian of religion Jan N. Bremmer in his thought-provoking collection of essays The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (Routledge, 2002). A very interesting account of the idea of resurrection in the early Church is Caroline W. Bynum’s The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: 200–1336 (Columbia University Press, 1995). The estimate that we replace 98 percent of our atoms every year is from What Is Life? by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan (University of California Press, 1995).
The area of philosophy that asks what kind of thing humans or persons are (e.g., a body or a soul) and whether they can survive bodily death is “personal identity theory.” A good introduction to the technical discussion is Harold Noonan’s Personal Identity (Routledge, 2003), whereas an excellent, less technical exploration is Julian Baggini’s The Ego Trick: What Does It Mean to Be You? (Granta, 2011). Essays particularly concerned with personal identity and the afterlife can be found in Paul Edwards’s aforementioned collection Immortality. This latter book contains the important paper “The Possibility of Resurrection” by Peter van Inwagen (first published in the International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 9 [1978] 114–21), from which I take the problem of resurrecting both the child and adult versions of the same person.
CHAPTER 5: FRANKENSTEIN REDUX
Mary Shelley first published Frankenstein in 1818, then a revised version in 1831. Most modern editions use the 1831 text (which is the one I quote), but good ones, such as that from Penguin Classics, also list the revisions so that it is possible to see how the text evolved. Mary Shelley’s account of the story’s inspiration is in her introduction to the revised edition. The other Mary Shelley stories referred to—“Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman” and “The Mortal Immortal”—can both be found for free online. Mary Shelley’s diary entry on losing her first baby is taken from Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters by Anne K. Mellor (Routledge, 1988), a seminal analysis that skillfully summarizes the feminist critique of scientific discourse found in Frankenstein.
The account of Giovanni Aldini’s galvanic experiments can be found in Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder (Harper, 2008), a fascinating introduction to the science and personalities of the Romantic period. It is also retold in the aforementioned Mortal Coil: A Short History of Living Longer by David Boyd Haycock. The quotes from Descartes and Bacon are both taken from Gerald Gruman’s aforementioned A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life.
The Zygmunt Bauman quote is of course from Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies, mentioned above, which has a good account of the drive to mastery as the essence of modernity. The quote from Braden R. Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz is from their book The Techno-Human Condition (MIT Press, 2011). The thesis that the Enlightenment offered a secular version of Christian apocalyptic thinking was first advanced by Carl L. Becker in The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (Yale University Press, 1933). It was subsequently developed by the historian David F. Noble in his book The Religion of Technology (Penguin, 1997) and brilliantly explored by John Gray in his books Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (Penguin, 2007) and The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death (Allen Lane, 2011).
The story of New England folktales is taken from Stuart Alve Olson’s The Jade Emperor’s Mind Seal Classic (Inner Traditions, 2003). Those wishing to find out more about cryonics or mind-uploading should best search the Internet. The cryonics institution Alcor Life Extension Foundation at press time has a useful online library of information on the science and philosophy of cryopreserving human beings (www.alcor.org). The book considered to have launched the cryonics movement is Robert C. W. Ettinger’s The Prospect of Immortality (Doubleday, 1964). One leading exponent of mind-uploading is the roboticist and futurist Hans Moravec, for example, in Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Harvard University Press, 1988). Ian Pearson’s prediction of mind-uploading by 2050 is taken from an interview with the Observer newspaper, May 22, 2005. Frank Tipler expounds his extraordinary thesis in The Physics of Christianity (Doubleday, 2007) and The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead (Doubleday, 1994).
The arguments against the view that we can survive through reproduction of our psychology (and therefore could survive such things as mind-uploading) have a long history. In recent times, they were stated clearly by Bernard Williams in his book Problems of the Self (Cambridge University Press, 1973). But a hugely influential defense of this view was recently given by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons (Oxford University Press, 1984), after which the view flourished. But it is now giving ground once again, largely in the face of arguments from the philosophical position known as “animalism,” the seminal text of which is Eric Olson’s The Human Animal (Oxford University Press, 1997). The philosopher who suggested that God snatches our bodies in order to keep them safely for the resurrection is Peter van Inwagen, in his paper “The Possibility of Resurrection,” referred to above.
CHAPTER 6: BEATRICE’S SMILE
All the quotes in the first section are from Dante’s Vita Nuova (“New Life,” first published in 1295 and available in many editions and online), his early collection of poetry and prose mostly dedicated to his i
nfatuation with Beatrice. Dante’s Divine Comedy is also available in many editions; I have mostly relied on the 1993 Oxford World’s Classics edition with translation by Charles H. Sisson.
Augustine’s views on the role of the female body in heaven are taken from Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang’s excellent Heaven: A History (Yale Nota Bene, 1988). Good accounts of how Christianity adopted Plato’s view of the soul can be found in Alan Segal’s aforementioned Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion and in Raymond Martin and John Barresi’s The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self (Columbia University Press, 2006). From the latter comes the quote about the idea of the soul shaping the mind-set of Western civilization.
The Ernest Becker quote on Christianity is again from The Denial of Death. Louis Dumont’s account of Christianity’s role in the development of individualism is from his essay “The Christian Beginnings of Modern Individualism,” which can be found in the book The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History (Cambridge University Press, 1985), edited by Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins and Steven Lukes.
I have borrowed Boccaccio’s tale of Dante’s charred beard from Lisa Miller’s Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife (Harper, 2010). The quotation from the judgment against Galileo is taken from The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History, edited and translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro (University of California Press, 1989). The C. S. Lewis image of us moderns staring out into the void is from his The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1964). The views of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) on heaven can be found in his book Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (The Catholic University of America Press, 2007).
More details on the Islamic view of the afterlife can be found in the aforementioned The Garden and the Fire: Heaven and Hell in Islamic Culture by Nerina Rustomji. The female companions in paradise are mentioned in the Qur’an, for example sura 55, verses 46–78, though the idea that there are seventy-two is not, but belongs to one of many traditions of commentary.
Élie Reclus’s story of Eskimo heaven comes from his book Primitive Folk (1885, reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, 2006) and is also cited by Corliss Lamont in the aforementioned The Illusion of Immortality. An account of the impact of the American Civil War on ideas of heaven can be found in Rebecca Price Janney’s Who Goes There? A Cultural History of Heaven and Hell (Moody Publishers, 2009). The pastor James L. Garlow’s view of heaven is in his book with Keith Wall, Heaven and the Afterlife (Bethany House Publishers, 2009). The modern guide to the afterlife cited is Bryan McAnally’s Life After Death & Heaven and Hell (Guidepost Books, 2009).
The quote from theologian Paul Tillich is from The Eternal Now (Prentice Hall, 1963).
CHAPTER 7: THE LOST SOUL
The Dalai Lama tells his own story in the fascinating Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama of Tibet (Abacus, 1998). Numerous other biographies also recount the story of his discovery, with varying details. There are many introductions to Buddhist and Hindu thought available; those by Klaus Klostermaier are good. I have mostly relied on W. J. Johnson’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita (Oxford World’s Classics, 1994). The Dalai Lama’s view on the nature of the spiritual something that survives bodily death is taken from the fascinating account of his 1989 conversations with neuroscientists Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism (Snow Lion Publications, 1999).
The forty-two sins of ancient Egypt can be found in the Papyrus of Ani, one of the so-called Books of the Dead, and is available in various editions. The William McDougall quote is taken from his Modern Materialism and Emergent Evolution (Methuen, 1934) and is also cited by Corliss Lamont in his aforementioned The Illusion of Immortality. An important modern example of arguing that there must be immortality as there would otherwise be no justice is found in the philosopher Mark Johnston’s book Surviving Death (Princeton University Press, 2010). Modern Western philosophy has engaged little with the belief in reincarnation; Paul Edwards’s Reincarnation: A Critical Examination (Prometheus Books, 1996) is a significant exception.
The percentages of those in the United States and United Kingdom who believe in ghosts are from a 2009 Harris Poll and a 2007 Ipsos Mori poll, respectively. Recent research on the cognitive mechanisms responsible for our seeing ghosts can be found in the aforementioned The God Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life (Nicholas Brealey, 2010) by Jessie Bering, from which the later quote on the evidence of science is also taken. The reference to clergyman Joseph Glanvill is taken from Shane McCorristine’s Spectres of the Self: Thinking About Ghosts and Ghost-Seeing in England, 1750–1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Deepak Chopra’s view on ghosts can be found in his Life After Death (Rider, 2008) and James L. Garlow’s in his aforementioned Heaven and the Afterlife.
Martin and Barresi’s aforementioned The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self gives a good account of the origins and development of belief in a soul in the Western tradition. Two perspectives on out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences can be found in Susan Blackmore’s Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences (Prometheus, 1993) and Sam Parnia’s What Happens When We Die (Hay House, 2005). John Gray’s aforementioned The Immortalization Commission gives a good account of the early days of the Society for Psychical Research.
The Voltaire quote is taken from “The Soul, Identity and Immortality” in Paul Edwards’s aforementioned collection Immortality. Phineas Gage’s story is told, inter alia, in Antonio Damasio’s excellent book on the role of the whole brain and body in producing the mind, Descartes’ Error (Grosset Putnam, 1996), from which also the quote on hunger is taken. Damasio also features in the above-mentioned conversations with the Dalai Lama, Consciousness at the Crossroads. There are many other accessible accounts of the effects of brain damage on the mind available, such as, for example, the work of Oliver Sacks.
The Catholic Encyclopedia is available online. The Thomas Jefferson quote is taken from Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses by Thomas W. Clark (Center for Naturalism, 2007). The Jesse Bering quote is taken from his aforementioned The God Instinct.
Many works discuss the relationship between mind and body, for example Corliss Lamont’s book mentioned above; Anthony Flew’s The Logic of Mortality (Blackwell, 1987); many of the essays in the collection Immortality, edited by Paul Edwards (Prometheus, 1997); and Richard Swinburne’s The Evolution of the Soul (Clarendon Press, 1997). The problem for soul theorists of unconsciousness is an old one and well told in, for example, Eric T. Olson’s What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology (Oxford University Press, 2007). The Qur’an quote is from the translation by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford University Press, 2004). Duncan MacDougall’s weighing of the soul was reported in the New York Times on March 11, 1907; accounts are now widely available on the Internet and elsewhere.
CHAPTER 8: LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY
There are many accounts of the life of Alexander the Great available, varying from Robin Lane Fox’s eulogizing Alexander the Great (Penguin, 1974—the inspiration behind Oliver Stone’s biopic of Alexander) to the highly critical Envy of the Gods: Alexander the Great’s IllFated Journey Across Asia by John Prevas (Da Capo Press, 2004). Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past by Paul Cartledge (Macmillan, 2004) is a balanced recent addition.
Various writers have made a distinction similar to that between the biological and cultural forms of the Legacy Narrative. Robert Jay Lifton, for example, talks about the biological (or sometimes “biosocial”) mode compared to the cultural mode (see Living and Dying, with Jay Olson, Praeger, 1974), and Corliss Lamont distinguishes between the biological and the social and historical forms of immortality (in the aforementioned The Illusion of Immortality).
The words of Achilles, Sarpedon and Glaucus are of course all from Homer’s Iliad. I have mostly relied on the translation by Emile Victor Rieu (Penguin Class
ics, 1950/2003) but have also drawn on some of the many other translations available, for example, Samuel Butler’s (available online). I have also used Rieu’s translation of The Odyssey (Penguin Classics, 1946/1991).
The Ernest Becker quote about seeking to preserve immortality versus life is from the aforementioned Escape from Evil. Ernst Cassirer described humans as the symbolic animal in his 1944 An Essay on Man. The Gregory Nagy quote is from his essay “Poetic Visions of Immortality for the Hero” in Homer’s “The Iliad,” edited by Harold Bloom (Chelsea House, 1987). The Ernest Becker quote about heroism is from the above-mentioned Denial of Death. The Leo Braudy quote is from his brilliant The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (Vintage Books, 1997).
The Miguel de Unamuno quotes are from his extraordinary poetic-philosophical meditation on immortality The Tragic Sense of Life (in English by Macmillan, 1921). The John Milton quote, originally from his poem “Lycidas,” is taken from Illusions of Immortality: A Psychology of Fame and Celebrity by David Giles (Macmillan, 2000). The Corliss Lamont quote is of course from The Illusion of Immortality. The Morrissey and James Dean quotes are also taken from Giles’s Illusions of Immortality. Later quotes by Giles are from the same work. The Socrates quote is from Plato’s Symposium, translated by Benjamin Jowett and available in various editions, including online.
The relevance of the Herostratus syndrome to modern terrorism is explored in depth in Terrorism for Self-Glorification: The Herostratos Syndrome by Albert Borowitz (Kent State University Press, 2005—the alternative spelling of the name is not a typo but the Greek transliteration rather than the more usual Latinized version). Lionel Shriver’s magnificent novel We Need to Talk About Kevin (Serpent’s Tail, 2003) explores, among other themes, the role of celebrity culture in motivating a fictional high school massacre. The Zygmunt Bauman quote is from the aforementioned Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies. The Jean Rostand quote is from Pensée d’un biologiste (Stock, 1939).
