The Afterlife

The question of life after death has been perennially intriguing and hauntingly debated by mankind since time immemorial. It is an issue so deeply entrenched in religion, philosophy, and the existential fears and hopes in man. Whereas some traditions offer comforting visions of eternal life, others imply the end of existence. In philosophy, the question reaches the self, consciousness, and anything that might survive beyond the physical body. Does a soul persist beyond mortal death, or is the biological end of human life its real end? This essay will explore some of the many philosophical positions regarding the issue, including religious, materialist, and existentialist arguments, and question whether the possibility of an afterlife is compatible with our understanding of reality.

To many, the belief in life after death is inseparable from religious faith. Most major world religions-Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism among them-propose doctrines that affirm there is a life after death. One example, Christianity does posit an immortal soul that is either rewarded or punished after death, based on conduct during life in accordance with accepted moral behavior. Similarly, Islam teaches that the soul survives physical death into the afterlife, where it will be judged. Hinduism understands life after death in terms of reincarnation and the cycle of rebirth, wherein the soul undergoes numerous lives to liberation, or moksha, or nirvana in Buddhism. Religious accounts of the afterlife commonly depend upon metaphysical conceptions of a substance-a soul or spirit-that is supposed to exist independently of the body.

The most important figure in the history of Western philosophy, Plato, took such a view of an immortal soul in his *Phaedo*. According to Plato, the soul exists independently of the body and has always existed. At death, it departs the body to return to the realm of the forms. PLATO'S DUALISM-the belief in the separation of the material body and the immaterial soul-was foundational for much of Western philosophy and later for Christian theology. Not all philosophical traditions, however, accept the existence of an immortal soul or the possibility of life after death.

Materialism is the view that only physical matter exists and therefore no survival of any sort can occur after bodily death. To the materialist philosophers, such as Epicurus and Lucretius, death is merely the cessation of consciousness and experience. Epicurus believed that we should not fear death because once we die, we cannot suffer or fear anything since we no longer exist. This is because, in the case of materialism, there is no transcendent self to the body; consciousness is merely the product of the brain; hence, once the brain stops functioning, so does consciousness. From this perspective, the question of whether there is an afterlife might be considered basically meaningless, since life entirely depends on physical processes. The materialist theory proceeds in line with much of modern science, which fully views consciousness as a derivative from the neuron activity in the brain.

Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists have been increasingly supporting the idea that the mere functioning of the brain can identify our thoughts, memories, and sense of self. Where the brain dies, it would seem that with it, consciousness dies. From this perspective, life after death would be merely an illusion born out of people's real terror of death rather than any particular reality which could be observed. Existentialist philosophy approaches the question of life after death from a very different perspective.

Although it would be a mistake to say that existentialism across the board rejects the possibility of an afterlife, there are those among its representatives, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, who more strongly place the role of death in constituting human life. According to Sartre, the lack of an afterlife forms a part of the human condition. We are "condemned to be free," which, without the slightest hint of an afterlife, we have to assume the full responsibility for our choices in the here and now. Sartre's existentialism offers no hope in life after death, but it does maintain that the finality of death provides the ground for the meaning and urgency of life. Heidegger would also have believed that human beings are essentially "beings-toward-death." His philosophy is that one lives with a reality, or consciousness, of death, and it is this reality of death that forces man to confront his own finitude.

In Heidegger, death is nothing to be feared or overcome through fantasies about an afterlife; it is rather an integral part of what it is to live authentically. The real possibility of death enables us to live an intensely active and authentic life in the present moment. For existentialism, even the thought of the afterlife is nothing more than an escape from the unpleasant fact of one's finitude. Before the individual consciousness, the question of life after death - if anything, even more poignantly than ever - remains insistent, even as materialistic and existentialist ways of thinking seem to have virtually captured the day in the thinking of modern people.

Near-death experiences, reports of out-of-body experiences, and the mystery of consciousness itself continue to fuel speculations that some aspects of the self might survive bodily death. The "hard problem" of consciousness, most prominently raised by philosophers such as David Chalmers, asks how subjective experience could arise from physical processes in the brain. While Chalmers does not necessarily argue for life after death, the mystery of consciousness does suggest that there may be an aspect of the mind which is not explained by materialist science. Indeed, over the past decade or so, some philosophers and scientists have taken to considering possibilities of an afterlife in terms of quantum physics and information theory.

For example, physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff have advanced the rather radical hypothesis that consciousness is rooted in quantum processes in the brain. If this hypothesis is correct, and consciousness is indeed a quantum process, then it is at least theoretically possible that some aspects of consciousness might persist after physical death, although this is strictly speculative and highly unproven. Ultimately, whether there is life after death may never have an answer that can be stated with definiteness.

It touches deep metaphysical, ethical, and emotional concerns. For those who believe in life after death, it is comforting and a means of meaning-a hope to reunite again with loved ones and a fair judgment on good and evil beyond this earthly life. For those who do not, death has a way of imparting a deeper sense of the fleeting nature of life and of a need to live authentically in the present. Conclusion: The question of life after death has been approached from various philosophical angles.

Religious traditions provide visions of an afterlife based on the living of an immortal soul, whereas materialist perspectives deny any form of survival after death. Meanwhile, according to existentialist philosophy, death deeply sets the meaning of life. While it may still be too early for science to come up with a convincing theory, the mystery of consciousness does leave open the possibility that some aspects of human experience can survive physical death. Whether or not life extends beyond death, the manner in which we relate to this possibility greatly influences how we live the present.