Description
CAMBRIDGE Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy 2011 Edition by Bernard N. Schumacher, Translated by Michael J. Miller
This book contributes to current bioethical debates by providing a critical analysis of the philosophy of human death. Bernard N. Schumacher discusses contemporary philosophical perspectives on death, creating a dialogue between phenomenology, existentialism and analytic philosophy. He also examines the ancient philosophies that have shaped our current ideas about death. His analysis focuses on three fundamental problems: (1) the definition of human death, (2) the knowledge of mortality and of human death as such, and (3) the question of whether death is 'nothing' to us or, on the contrary, whether it can be regarded as an absolute or relative evil. Drawing on scholarship published in four languages and from three distinct currents of thought, this volume represents a comprehensive and systematic study of the philosophy of death, one that provides a provocative basis for discussions of the bioethics of human mortality. Table of contents :- Part I. Human Personal Death: 1. Introduction; 2. Biological death; 3. So-called 'personal death'; 4. The anthropological challenge of neocortical death; 5. Ethics as the criterion for defining death; 6. Diversity of definitions of death in a secular ethic; 7. Conclusion; Part II. Theory of Knowledge about Death: 8. Scheler's intuitive knowledge of mortality; 9. Heidegger's being-towards-death; 10. Is mortality the object of foreknowledge?; 11. Inductive knowledge of death and Jean-Paul Sartre; 12. Knowledge of mortality is inseparable from the relation to the other; 13. Death as the object of experience; Part III. Does Death Mean Nothing to Us?: 14. The 'nothingness of death': Epicurus and his followers; 15. Discussion of experientialism and the need for a subject; 16. Death: an evil of privation; Conclusion.