Can We Survive Our Deaths?

Abstract

This chapter argues that there are three broad categories of belief about how people might survive their deaths: through resurrection, as a soul, and by leaving some kind of legacy. It explains how each of these three beliefs is dependent on a particular notion of what a human being is, and how this determines how each attempts to resolve the apparent contradiction in the idea of surviving one’s own death. It also shows how each of the three beliefs faces profound philosophical challenges: in the case of resurrection, the cannibal, transformation and duplication problems; in the case of the soul, the dependence of the mind on the body; and in the case of legacy, doubts over whether any kind of legacy can preserve a person.