Where are the Dead?: Exploring the idea of an embodied afterlife

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Where are the dead? What are they doing? What kind of a process is dying? What relationships exist among the dead themselves, and between the dead and those in the world they have left behind? Modern philosophers argue that the idea of disembodied survival - to which many believers pay lip service - is incoherent, and that there can be evidence neither for nor against something incoherent. By contrast, this book argues, the idea of an embodied survival (albeit a form of embodiment differing from our present embodiment) makes perfect sense in itself and fits much better with the alleged evidence for post-mortem survival. Exploring post-mortem survival, Where are the Dead? uses a variety of empirical data, alongside mythological, legendary and purely fictional material, to illustrate how the less familiar idea of embodied post-mortem survival might actually ’work’ in some real afterlife environment. By asking questions about the nature and whereabouts of the afterlife, and about what it might be like to be dead, the book explores themes nowadays relatively neglected even in disciplines explicitly concerned with ideas about death, dying and life after death. Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface 1 Clarifying the question 2 What could it be like to die? 3 What might it be like to be dead? 4 Locating the afterlife 5 What would the dead be doing? 6 Between the living and the dead 7 Post-mortem identity and continuity 8 Eschatology and the future of the afterlife Select bibliography Index