Platonic Personal Immortality

I argue that Plato distinguishes between personal immortality and immortality of the soul. I begin by criticizing the consensus view that Plato identifies the person and the soul. I then turn to the issue of immortality. By considering passages from Symposium and Timaeus, I make the case that Plato thinks that while the soul is immortal by nature, if a person is going to be immortal, they must become so. Finally, I argue that Plato has a psychological continuity approach to personal identity. Thus, for Plato, a person becomes immortal by avoiding reincarnation and securing for themselves psychological continuity forever.     

Immortality and religious discourse

The future of humanity on this planet is not assured: we have reached a critical juncture in our history. Persistence in classical modes of thinking and acting will lead to growing problems and mounting crises; a new way of thinking is needed, joined with a new ethics and a new ethos. This presupposes a fundamental change in the way we perceive ourselves and our environment—a shift in the dominant consciousness of our time. The evolution of a “planetary consciousness” has become an objective precondition of approaching the future with confidence as well as responsibility. The Club of Budapest has been founded to promote this evolution through the insight and creativity of the artists, writers, spiritual leaders and young people who are its members and affiliates.     

Death and Immortality

The thought that consciousness fades into oblivion with death is, to many, inconceivable. The hope and desire for immortality is based not only on a fear of death and an inner desire for fulfilment, but on the revelation of God and the human response to it. Much of religion testifies to experiences of God as loving and personal. It is upon the truth of these claims that the hope of immortality becomes reasonable. Consciousness is empirically dependent on the body, dying with it. Nevertheless, it is logically feasible that consciousness can be ‘recreated’ and ‘rehoused’ by God in a ‘spiritual body’. As long as there are mental links between the different modes of being, even though there is a definite break, it is still possible to speak of the ‘same person’. Immortality becomes dependent upon an act of God, rather than being an innate property of humankind. Paradoxically, while death robs life of ultimate meaning, it also imparts meaning.     

修仙诗赏析

大概从春秋战国时开始,就有一些方士吹嘘说他们能炼制不死之药,鼓吹吃丹药可成为不死的神仙。自此以后,追求神仙长生术就成为许多皇帝的重要课题。其实,所谓神仙和长生药都是没有的,只不过是方士们骗取名利的一种手段而已。唐代诗人李贺就写过一首讽刺当时皇帝追求神仙长生术的诗:武帝爱神仙,烧金得紫烟。厩中皆肉马,不解上青天。针对炼丹成仙,明代人王廷相指出,清心寡欲,保证饮食卫生的营养,是养生的大道理。炼铝丹,变金石,吃了不死,与道理不相符合。服食金丹,非但无益于人寿,“反以戕生矣”。他曾写了一首从生死的辩证角度证明成仙虚妄性…     

The Immortality Requirement for Life's meaning

Many religious thinkers hold the immortality requirement, the view that immortality of some kind is necessary for life to have meaning. After clarifying the nature of the immortality requirement, this essay examines three central arguments for it. The article establishes that existing versions of these arguments fail to entail the immortality requirement. The essay then reconstructs the arguments, and it shows that once they do plausibly support the immortality requirement, they equally support the God-centred requirement, the view that God's existence is a necessary condition for life to be meaningful. The paper concludes by explaining why we should expect any argument for the immortality requirement also to constitute an argument for the God-centred requirement.     

Epicureanism About Death and Immortality

In this paper I discuss some of Martha Nussbaum’s defenses of Epicurean views about death and immortality. Here I seek to defend the commonsense view that death can be a bad thing for an individual against the Epicurean; I also defend the claim that immortality might conceivably be a good thing. In the development of my analysis, I make certain connections between the literatures on free will and death. The intersection of these two literatures can be illuminated by reference to my notion of a Dialectical Stalemate.     

Against the Tedium of Immortality

Abstract

In a well-known paper, Bernard Williams argues that an immortal life would not be worth living, for it would necessarily become boring. I examine the implications for the boredom thesis of three human traits that have received insufficient attention in the literature on Williams’ paper. First, human memory decays, so humans would be entertained and driven by things that they experienced long before but had forgotten. Second, even if memory does not decay to the extent necessary to ward off boredom, once-satisfied desires often return after a sufficient period of time. Eternity would always contain sufficient time for our desires to rejuvenate. Third, even if too many of our desires were satisfied but not yet rejuvenated, we can expect that human ingenuity would continue to invent new pursuits, pastimes, careers, and ways of life that would prevent us from becoming bored as we moved from one to another. Finally, I consider and respond to several objections, including the claims that as much variety as I propose to be put into an eternal life is inconsistent with having one character throughout one’s life and that the sort of character change and memory decay I postulate is inconsistent with personal identity.     

Existence Is Evidence of Immortality

The universe plausibly has an infinite future and an infinite past. Given unlimited time, every qualitative state that has ever occurred will occur again, infinitely many times. There will thus exist in the future persons arbitrarily similar to you, in any desired respects. A person sufficiently similar to you in the right respects will qualify as literally another incarnation of you. Some theories about the nature of persons rule this out; however, these theories also imply, given an infinite past, that your present existence is a probability‐zero event. Hence, your present existence is evidence against such theories of persons.     

Transcendence, Symbolic Immortality and Evil

Ernest Becker’s work addresses the implications that arise from being aware of our own mortality. Like Sartre, Becker recognises that human beings have the potential to transcend and look beyond their immediate situation, but his work also confronts the darker aspects of human existence that arise from our self-awareness. The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of Becker’s work and to show the potential of Becker’s theory of evil to inform a number of contemporary debates in the social sciences. Although Becker’s work directly examines why human beings can act so inhumanly towards one another, his theory is not altogether pessimistic. The paper concludes by arguing that Becker’s theory intended to create new possibilities for living in more creative and humane world.     

从"灵魂不死"到"肉体不死"——从思想之嬗变看道教神仙信仰之兴起

神仙信仰作为道教产生的重要源头之一,应出现于战国中后期.它的兴起,固然与此时医药学水平之提高、地理认知之拓展等物质方面的因素有密切的联系,但"肉体不死"思想的出现,则是其更重要的一个原因.而这一因素,又常常为人们所忽视.因此,在本文中,笔者着力探讨了道教信仰的一个重要组成部分--神仙信仰在战国时兴起的原因.     

试析陈撄宁仙学思想的内核

本文从陈撄宁所著文本材料出发,多方剖析了他的仙学思想的内核,并进一步阐论了他的仙学探索及其这种探索对内丹学的价值与贡献.     

Immortality and boredom: a response to Wisnewski

This article contributes to the ongoing debate initiated by Bernard Williams’ claim that, due to the non-contingent finitude of the categorical desires that give meaning to our lives, an immortal life would necessarily become intolerably boring. Jeremy Wisnewski has argued that even if immortality involves periods in which our categorical desires have been exhausted, this need not divest life of meaning since some categorical desires are revivable. I argue that careful reflection upon the thought-experiments adduced by Wisnewski reveals that they do not substantiate his proposal, and hence that a plausible reason for rejecting Williams’ position has not been provided.     

汉代乐府诗里的神仙信仰

道教以神仙信仰为贯穿道教文化发展过程的主线.而汉代仙风极盛,其神仙信仰在文学艺术活动方面的表现,主要是汉乐府游仙诗的创作.汉乐府分为贵族乐府、民间乐府和文人乐府三类.这三类作品中都有描写求仙问药、长生至乐的诗歌,充分体现出汉代社会神仙信仰的盛行以及前道教、道教一脉在秦至汉末时期的发展线索.