| 5883 | Pherecydes was the first to say that the soul is eternal [Pherecydes, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: As far as the literature tells us, Pherecydes of Syros was the first who pronounced the souls of men to be eternal. | |
| From: report of Pherecydes (fragments/reports [c.600 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Tusculan Disputations I.xvi.38 | |
| A reaction: Presumably before that it was the physical person who arrived in the Underworld. The Hindu tradition seems to require the soul to be very long-lived, if not eternal. Why did Pherecydes come up with this idea? |
| 7469 | There is no hereafter in the Book of Job [Anon (Job), by Watson] |
| Full Idea: The entire Book of Job is concerned with faith and suffering and inequality in a life where there is no hereafter (all the rewards promised to the Jews by their God are worldly). | |
| From: report of Anon (Job) (18: Book of Job [c.535 BCE]) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: It is extraordinary how such ideas can creep into the great religions, and then become taken for granted, as if no one had ever doubted them. |
| 7467 | The modern idea of an immortal soul was largely created by Pythagoras [Pythagoras, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: The modern concept of the immortal soul is a Greek idea, which owes much to Pythagoras. | |
| From: report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE]) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: You can see why it caught on - it is a very appealing idea. Watson connects the 'modern' view with the ideas of heaven and hell. Obviously the idea of an afterlife goes a long way back (judging from the contents of ancient graves). |
| 8233 | Imagine fire burning up your whole body, but not you [Anon (Cent)] |
| Full Idea: Focus on fire rising through your form from the toes up until the body burns to ashes, but not you. | |
| From: Anon (Cent) (Centring [c.500 BCE], 28) | |
| A reaction: Try very hard to persuade yourself that you are immortal, even if you are not. Hm. Zen Buddhism actually contains very little commitment to what is true or false. It explores interesting beliefs like children playing with toys. Very post-modern. |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
| Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
| From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |
| 20915 | The soul is destroyed with the body [Democritus, by Ps-Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Democritus says the soul is destructible, and is destroyed together with the whole body. | |
| From: report of Democritus (fragments/reports [c.431 BCE], A109) by Pseudo-Plutarch - On the Doctrine of the Philosophers 4.7.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the only belief possible for Democritus, since everything, including life and soul, is just the confluence of atoms, and they are regularly dispersed. This is the epitome of materialist philosophy. |
| 363 | Whether the soul pre-exists our body depends on whether it contains the ultimate standard of reality [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The theory that our soul exists even before it enters the body surely stands or falls with the soul's possession of the ultimate standard of reality. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 092d) |
| 146 | Soul is always in motion, so it must be self-moving and immortal [Plato] |
| Full Idea: All soul is immortal, for what is always in motion is immortal. Only that which moves itself never ceases to be in motion. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 245c) |
| 24037 | We all assume immortality is impossible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We do not wish for impossible things - for immortality, for instance. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1111b22) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this primarily means physical immortality, in contrast to the immortal gods, though Aristotle doesn't seem to believe that humans have an immortal part. |
| 20829 | Virtuous souls endure till the end, foolish souls for a short time, animal souls not at all [Stoic school, by Eusebius] |
| Full Idea: They say the soul of the virtuous man lasts until the breakdown of everything into fire, but that of fools only for a certain length of time. But the souls of the imprudent and irrational animals ae destroyed with their bodies. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Eusebius - Preparation for the Gospel 15.20.6-7 | |
| A reaction: We are half way to the Christian heaven as the reward for the good life. We just need to add hell…. |
| 6039 | Stoics say virtuous souls last till everything ends in fire, but foolish ones fade away [Stoic school, by ] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics say the soul of the virtuous man lasts until the breakdown of everything into fire, but that of fools only for a certain length of time. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by - fr 39 | |
| A reaction: This implies the existence of divine justice (such as King Lear hoped for). It is a shame that rational philosophers just invent doctrines because they would be rather nice. It brings out the logical positivist in me. |
| 7482 | Resurrection developed in Judaism as a response to martyrdoms, in about 160 BCE [Anon (Dan), by Watson] |
| Full Idea: The idea of resurrection in Judaism seems to have first developed around 160 BCE, during the time of religious martyrdom, and as a response to it (the martyrs were surely not dying forever?). It is first mentioned in the book of Daniel. | |
| From: report of Anon (Dan) (27: Book of Daniel [c.165 BCE], Ch.7) by Peter Watson - Ideas | |
| A reaction: Idea 7473 suggests that Zoroaster beat them to it by 800 years. |
| 5888 | Souls are born, since they are sensitive and inherited, so they must perish [Panaetius, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Panaetius says that whatever is born must perish, and souls are clearly born, as shown by the resemblance of children to their parents in disposition as well as body; also, anything sensible of pain is susceptible to sickness, and hence perishes. | |
| From: report of Panaetius (fragments/reports [c.145 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Tusculan Disputations I.xxxii | |
| A reaction: These seem to be rather good arguments. If we actually observe what someone's soul is like (through character) it seems rooted in a family and culture, and it certainly seems susceptible to disease. An empirical approach. |
| 5720 | Spirit is mortal [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Spirit is mortal. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.542) | |
| A reaction: This is asserted at an historical moment when immortality is beginning to grip everyone's imagination. |
| 5722 | For a separated spirit to remain sentient it would need sense organs attached to it [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: If spirit is immortal and can remain sentient when divorced from our body, we must credit it with possession of five senses; but eyes or nostrils or hand or tongue or ears cannot be attached to a disembodied spirit. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.624) | |
| A reaction: This is a powerful argument against immortality. If you are going to see, you must interact with photons; to hear you must respond to compression waves; to smell you must react to certain molecules. Immortality without those would be a bit dull. |
| 5725 | An immortal mind couldn't work harmoniously with a mortal body [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: It is crazy to couple a mortal object with an eternal and suppose that they can work in harmony and mutually interact. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.799) | |
| A reaction: An interesting thought, though not a terrible persuasive argument. A god would indeed be a bit restless if it were chained to a human being, but it would presumably knuckle down to the task if firmly instructed to do it by Zeus. |
| 23360 | Each of the four elements in you is entirely scattered after death [Epictetus] |
| Full Idea: Whatever was in you of fire, departs into fire; what was of earth, into earth; what of air, into air; what of water, into water. There is no Hades, nor Acheron. | |
| From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 3.13.15) | |
| A reaction: This sort of remark may explain why so few of the great Stoic texts (such as those of Chrysippus) survived the Christian era. |
| 5765 | The reward of the good is to become gods [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Goodness is happiness, ..but we agree that those who attain happiness are divine. The reward of the good, then, is to become gods. | |
| From: Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], IV.III) | |
| A reaction: Kant offered a similar argument (see Idea 1455). Most of us are unlikely to agree with the second premise of Boethius' argument. The idea that we might somehow become gods gripped the imagination for the next thousand years. |
| 1863 | If the soul achieves well-being in another life, it doesn't follow that I do [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Even if soul achieves well-being in another life, that doesn't mean I do or any other human being does. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli [1272]) |
| 23306 | Humans have a non-physical faculty of reason, so they can be immortal [Aquinas, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Aquinas infers from Aristotle that intellectual understanding is the only operation of the soul that is performed without a physical organ, so that only human souls, and not animal ones, can be immortal. | |
| From: report of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologicae [1265], I, q75, a3, resp) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Reason' | |
| A reaction: This shows why so many thinkers are desperate to hang on to dualism, of some sort. Interesting that he only claims partial dualism. |
| 2378 | Belief in an afterlife is based on poorly founded gossip [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge of man's estate after death, and its rewards, is a belief grounded upon other men's sayings that they knew it supernaturally, or they knew those, that knew those, that knew others, that knew it supernaturally. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 7831 | Spinoza's theory of mind implies that there is no immortality [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: A final (and for his contemporaries, dreadful) consequence of Spinoza's theory of the mind is that there is no personal immortality. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: For Spinoza's view of the mind, see Idea 4308. The denial of immortality would also seem to be a consequence of modern emergentist views of the mind, which is espoused by religious people looking for a compromise between dualism and science. |
| 21876 | After death, something eternal remains of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: This sounds contrary to Spinoza's monism of mind and body, but he seems to mean little more than that minds are reabsorbed into the whole. See Beth Lord's commentary [p.146]. Compare stoics on the subject. |
| 12912 | Immortality without memory is useless [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Immortality without memory would be useless. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1686.07.4/14 X) | |
| A reaction: I would say that having a mind of any sort needs memory. The question for immortality is whether it extends back to human life. See 'Wuthering Heights' (c. p90) for someone who remembers Earth as so superior to paradise that they long to return there. |
| 21296 | If all of my perceptions were removed by death, nothing more is needed for total annihilation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Were all my perceptions removed by death, and I could I neither think nor feel nor see nor love nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be enitrely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: 'A perfect non-entity'. How about that for an eighteenth century rejection of immortality of the soul? In the context, his point is that the has no enduring self, apart from this range of experiences. |
| 21797 | Immortality does not come at a later time, but when pure knowing Spirit fully grasps the universal [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The immortality of the soul must not be imagined as though it first emerges into actuality at some later time; rather it is a present quality. ...As pure knowing or as thinking, Spirit has the universal for its object - this is eternity. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion [1827], III: 208), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 10 'Death' | |
| A reaction: An unusual view of immortality, which challenges orthodoxy. The idea seems to be that 'pure knowing' is a grasping of the pure reason which embodies nature, which in turn is the nature of God. You enter eternity, rather than reside in it? |
| 2916 | The great lie of immortality destroys rationality and natural instinct [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 43) |
| 23902 | I attach little importance to immortality, which is an undecidable fact, and irrelevant to us [Weil] |
| Full Idea: You attach great importance to the reasoning about immortality. I myself attach little. It is a factual question, which cannot be decided in advance by any reasoning. And what does it matter to us? | |
| From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1937-04c) | |
| A reaction: I love 'what does it matter to us?'. The idea that our future bliss or misery depends on how we live now is an utterly wicked fiction, which derails attempts to live a proper life. |
| 7349 | Immortality based on judgement of merit was developed by the Egyptians (not the Jews) [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: The idea of judgement at death and immortality on the basis of merit were developed in Egypt before 1000 BCE. It is not Jewish because it was not in the Torah, and the Sadducees, who stuck to their texts, seemed to have denied the afterlife completely. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt II) | |
| A reaction: This is the idea considered crucial to religion by Immanuel Kant (Idea 1455), who should be declared an honorary Egyptian. To me the idea that only the good go to heaven sounds like sadly wishful thinking - a fictional consolation for an unhappy life. |
| 7354 | The main doctrine of the Pharisees was belief in resurrection and the afterlife [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: Belief in resurrection and the afterlife was the main distinguishing mark of Pharisaism, and thus fundamental of rabbinic Judaism. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt II) | |
| A reaction: Belief in an afterlife seems to go back to the Egyptians, but this development in Judaism was obviously very influential, even among early Christians, who initially seem to have only believed in resurrection of the body. |
| 6709 | Western religion saves us from death; Eastern religion saves us from immortality [Graham] |
| Full Idea: For Western minds, religion entails the belief and hope that we will be saved from death and live forever, but the belief of Eastern religions is that we do live forever, and it is from this dreadful fate that we must look to spirituality to save us. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.9) | |
| A reaction: Nice. I have certainly come to prefer the Eastern view, simply on the grounds that human beings have a limited capacity. I quite fancy three hundred years of healthy life, but after that I am sure that any potential I have will be used up. |
| 7818 | In Greek mythology only heroes can go to heaven [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: In Greek mythology only a hero like Hercules could hope to go to heaven (by becoming a god himself). | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (What is Good? [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This illustrates Nietsche's 'inversion of morality' most clearly, because Christianity says that the person most likely to go to heaven is the humblest person. |
| 7817 | To make an afterlife appealing, this life has to be denigrated [Grayling] |
| Full Idea: It is remarkable how much the life of this world has to be denigrated to make the promise of happiness after death appealing. | |
| From: A.C. Grayling (What is Good? [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be true of most religions, but it could be otherwise. Surely you want such a wonderful life to continue after death? But then you would not be obliged to do anything difficult to achieve immortality. Power comes into it... |
| 5505 | For Aristotle the psyche perishes with the body (except possibly 'nous') [Martin/Barresi] |
| Full Idea: In Aristotle's view, with the possible exception of 'nous' the psyche and all its parts come into being at the same time as its associated body; it is inseparable from the body, and perishes along with it. | |
| From: R Martin / J Barresi (Introduction to 'Personal Identity' [2003], p.8) | |
| A reaction: It is suggested that he thought there was only one 'nous', which all humans share (p.9). If he wants to claim that one part is immortal, he doesn't have much evidence. If psyche is the form of the body, it is bound to perish. |
| 7468 | In ancient Athens the souls of the dead are received by the 'upper air' [Watson] |
| Full Idea: An official Athenian war monument of 432 BCE says the souls of the dead will be received by the aither (the 'upper air'), though their bodies remain on earth. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.05) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing. Did they think anything happened when they got there? There are also ideas about Hades, and the Isles of the Blessed floating around. |