In Death: A Reader, Mary Ann G. Cutter explores prominent themes that emerge and reemerge in the history of ideas regarding the nature of death from prominent global perspectives that span ancient to contemporary discussions. Thirteen themes are presented in order to convey a sense of major views of death that are found in the philosophical and sacred literature of Asia, the Near and Middle East, and the West.

In this book, the author discusses the significance of death and immortality in ancient ethics with a focus on Plato's dialogues, Stoicism and Epicureanism. He also discusses how philosophical cosmology and theology have re-imagined immortality.

This book is a critical examination of the philosophical and moral issues in relation to human enhancement and the various related medical developments that are now rapidly moving from the laboratory into the clinical realm. The author also introduces the notion that death is a process rather than an event, as well as identifies philosophical and clinical limitations in the contemporary determination of brain death as a precursor to organ procurement for transplantation.

David Benatar mentions implications for how we as humans should think about many different things, including immortality and suicide, as well as how we may think about the deeper meaning in our lives. This book attempts to delve deeply into the big life questions about why we as humans are here and how we should live.

With chapters written by a wide range of experts in metaphysics, ethics, and conceptual analysis, and designed to give the reader a comprehensive view of recent developments in the philosophical study of death, this Handbook will appeal to a broad audience in philosophy, particularly in ethics and metaphysics.

Death, American Style is the first comprehensive cultural history to explore America's uneasy relationship with death over the past century. Arguing that death and dying may be our last major taboo, this book shows how death and dying became almost unmentionable words over the course of the last century.

There is one thing we can be sure of: we are all going to die. But once we accept that fact, the questions begin. This book examines the myriad questions that arise when we confront the meaning of mortality. Do we have reason to believe in the existence of immortal souls? Can we make sense of the idea of surviving the death of one's body?

The Philosophy of Death explores philosophical issues that surround death and provides an introduction to philosophical literature in general. Author Steven Luper asks a variety of fundamental questions such as: What is it to be alive, What does it mean for you and me to exist, Under what conditions do we persist over time, and when do we perish?

Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie -- man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing.

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.

Terminally ill patients in Israel are given the option to die in their own homes rather than in a hospital. They are also eligible for a state - funded home hospice team - doctor, nurse and social worker. Providing physical and mental support, the team assists the patients in parting from what is here and arriving there. They choose confronting death as a way of life and have an established protocol for how one should die. Still, every home they enter is a new story and a new challenge.

A comprehensive survey of how religions understand death, dying, and the afterlife, drawing on examples from Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Shamanic perspectives. Considers shared and differing views of death across the world's major religions, including on the nature of death itself, the reasons for it, the identity of those who die, religious rituals, and on how the living should respond to death.

This book of cultural history reinterprets earliest Mormonism by viewing it through the lens of founder Joseph Smith Jr.'s complex, intimate, and conflicted relationship with death and dying. The book also provides insight into the ongoing problem of the tragedy of early mortality through the eloquent and complex response to death that early Mormonism provided.

The Dalai Lama teaches about the truth of suffering, the Three Characteristics of Existence and the dissolution of the body's elements at death. Meditating on impermanence and the momentary changing nature of existence helps us appreciate the basic unsatisfactory nature of existence, and strive towards liberation. His Holiness encourages us to develop our awareness of death and move from gross understanding to more subtle levels.

In every culture throughout history, people have asked the same fundamental question about what will happen to them when they die. From the underworld to the light at the end of the tunnel, beliefs and experiences of death abound. And even though we cannot know for sure what happens to us after death, our understanding of the afterlife can have a profound impact on how we live. Beyond the Threshold is the first book to seriously examine the afterlife through the lens of both world religions and metaphysical experiences.

A wide-ranging anthology covering many religious, ethical, and spiritual aspects of death, dying, and bereavement in American society. What do various spiritual and ethical belief systems have to say about modern medicine's approach to the end of life? Do all major religions characterize the afterlife in similar ways? How do funeral rites and rituals vary across different faiths?

This book serves to provide healthcare professionals with the basic knowledge and greater awareness of practices and background on health beliefs in world religions. Topics that are discussed about religious traditions include views on sickness, health, birth and death.

With perspectives from all major religions, death and dying is discussed as well as what this means to those practicing each of those faiths. Each chapter offers quotes for literature from the respective scriptural traditions to explain dying and the process of death and the afterlife.

From a Jewish perspective, assisted death and terminal care questions are discussed.

This comprehensive study of the intersection of death and religion offers a unique look at how religious people approach death in the twenty-first century. Previous scholarship has largely focused on traditional beliefs and paid little attention to how religious traditions evolve in relation to their changing social context.

The death awareness movement provides a new language for speaking about death and dying by stressing death, dying and bereavement as meaningful human experiences beyond their medical context. This movement appears secular and detached from religion, although its advocates embrace spirituality. However, is this separation from religion realistic? Death and Dying, Spirituality and Religions refutes that view and undermines the popular opposition between spirituality and religion. .