Death and Dying : An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion

Description

The medicalization of death is a challenge for all the world's religious and cultural traditions. Death's meaning has been reduced to a diagnosis, a problem, rather than a mystery for humans to ponder. How have religious traditions responded? What resources do they bring to a discussion of death's contemporary dilemmas? This book offers a range of creative and contextual responses from a variety of religious and cultural traditions. It features 14 essays from scholars of different religious and philosophical traditions, who spoke as part of a recent lecture and dialogue series of Drake University’s The Comparison Project. The scholars represent ethnologists, medical ethicists, historians, philosophers, and theologians--all facing up to questions of truth and value in the light of the urgent need to move past a strictly medicalized vision. This volume serves as the second publication of The Comparison Project, an innovative new approach to the philosophy of religion housed at Drake University. The Comparison Project organizes a biennial series of scholar lectures, practitioner dialogues, and comparative panels about core, cross-cultural topics in the philosophy of religion. The Comparison Project stands apart from traditional, theistic approaches to the philosophy of religion in its commitment to religious inclusivity. It is the future of the philosophy of religion in a diverse, global world. Front Matter ....Pages i-viii Introduction: Death and Dying in Comparative Philosophical Perspective (Timothy D Knepper)....Pages 1-7 Front Matter ....Pages 9-9 Death in Ancient Chinese Thought: What Confucians and Daoists Can Teach Us About Living and Dying Well (Mark Berkson)....Pages 11-38 Secular Death (Amy Hollywood)....Pages 39-49 Negotiating Advance Directives in a Navajo Context (Michelene Pesantubbee)....Pages 51-61 The Cult of Santa Muerte: Migration, Marginalization, and Medicalization (Eduardo González Velázquez, Eduardo García-Villada, Timothy D Knepper)....Pages 63-76 Front Matter ....Pages 77-77 Christians Encounter Death: The Tradition’s Ambivalent Legacies (Lucy Bregman)....Pages 79-98 A Jain Ethic for the End of Life (Christopher Key Chapple)....Pages 99-113 The Ritualization of Death and Dying: The Journey from the Living Living to the Living Dead in African Religions (Herbert Moyo)....Pages 115-124 Death in Tibetan Buddhism (Alyson Prude)....Pages 125-142 Front Matter ....Pages 143-143 Jewish Perspectives on End-of-Life Decisions (Elliot N. Dorff)....Pages 145-167 Buddhism and Brain Death: Classical Teachings and Contemporary Perspectives (Damien Keown)....Pages 169-185 Ethical Engagement with the Medicalization of Death in the Catholic Tradition (Gerard Magill)....Pages 187-200 Islamic Perspectives on Clinical Intervention Near the End of Life: We Can but Must We? (Aasim I. Padela, Omar Qureshi)....Pages 201-225 Front Matter ....Pages 227-227 Comparative Conclusions (Allen Zagoren, Lucy Bregman, Mary Gottschalk, Timothy D Knepper)....Pages 229-248