Customer Reviews

Death (Art of Living Series)

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This book is a deep and careful meditation on how the fragility of life affects us. What makes this book unique, is that it takes ideas from philosophy (such as Martin Heidegger, Thomas Nagel, and Lucretius) and from religion (such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Taoism), and interweaves them in meaningful ways that anyone can understand and pull meaning from. What May does in this book is present a wonderful - and sometimes personal - journey through some major themes and ideas of what death means to us and how it affects us, whilst drawing on different philosophical and religious views to add substance and perspective. The journey he takes the reader on gives them time to consider the implications for their own lives (there were several times when reading this book when I had to set it aside and think through what I had just read, not because it was difficult to understand, but because it was giving me a new way to look at and interpret what life meant). This is philosophy that has been humanized and made relevant for all of us.

One of the ways May gets us to ponder what life and death means, is by exploring what personal immortality might imply for how we would pursue life - how would being immortal affect how we lived? This exercise he presents to the reader adds to the insights of how we view and interpret mortal life.

If you want to explore and understand better how you think about and deal with death, then this book comes highly recommended. Regardless of your philosophical or religious orientation there is something here for all of us to learn from. You will not look at life the same way after.