Surviving Death (Carl G. Hempel Lecture) [Hardcover]

Mark Johnston (Author)

Book Description

Series: Carl G. Hempel Lecture | Publication Date: January 4, 2010

In this extraordinary book, Mark Johnston sets out a new understanding of personal identity and the self, thereby providing a purely naturalistic account of surviving death.

Death threatens our sense of the importance of goodness. The threat can be met if there is, as Socrates said, "something in death that is better for the good than for the bad." Yet, as Johnston shows, all existing theological conceptions of the afterlife are either incoherent or at odds with the workings of nature. These supernaturalist pictures of the rewards for goodness also obscure a striking consilience between the philosophical study of the self and an account of goodness common to Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism: the good person is one who has undergone a kind of death of the self and who lives a life transformed by entering imaginatively into the lives of others, anticipating their needs and true interests. As a caretaker of humanity who finds his or her own death comparatively unimportant, the good person can see through death.

But this is not all. Johnston's closely argued claims that there is no persisting self and that our identities are in a particular way "Protean" imply that the good survive death. Given the future-directed concern that defines true goodness, the good quite literally live on in the onward rush of humankind. Every time a baby is born a good person acquires a new face.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[P]acked with illuminating philosophical reflection on the question of what we are, and what it is for us to persist over time--on the relations among selves, persons, human beings, bodies and souls. -- Thomas Nagel, Times Literary Supplement



[Johnston] reveals himself to be an engaging wit, a swaggering polymath, and . . . a major talent. -- Jacques Berlinerblau, Chronicle of Higher Education



Surviving Death and Saving God both provided me with intellectual pleasure of a high order, even though I found many of the author's conclusions false and some morally repugnant. Johnston is the kind of atheist it's good for Christians to read, because he is intelligent, intellectually energetic, and serious about what he engages, and because he shows very clearly just where fastidiousness leads. -- Paul J. Griffiths, Commonweal



Mark Johnston's Surviving Death is an immensely interesting book. While it is not without technical discussions of issues in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and personal identity, it is also a very readable book--and one that, despite some modest technicality, lets its author's personality shine through. . . . Surviving Death is a provocative, engaging, and worthwhile book. It is certain to re-invigorate our thinking about the prospects that the good allows in relation to our mortality. -- J. Jeremy Wisnewski, Philosophy in Review

From the Inside Flap

"This outstanding book presents original and indeed brave views on a broad range of issues that are of compelling significance not only to philosophers but also to thinking people more generally. The argument proceeds with great subtlety and sophistication and shows a masterful grasp of philosophy, religion, and the arts. The book is also superbly written--pellucid, stylish, engaging, and at points richly humorous. A tour de force."--Michael Forster, University of Chicago

"This is a major and highly original work of philosophy that culminates in a fascinating argument that, without making any supernatural assumptions, one can literally survive bodily death. The book is elegantly written and the promise of a breathtaking conclusion pulls the reader along."--Alex Byrne, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 408 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; First edition (January 4, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691130124
• ISBN-13: 978-0691130125
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,004,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars To Survive Death, Rethink Your Identity, June 7, 2010

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Stephen Esser "steve_esser" (Villanova, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Surviving Death (Carl G. Hempel Lecture) (Hardcover)

Compared to his previous Saving God, Surviving Death is even more densely argued and is very difficult for non-philosophers. But I'm glad I got through it, since Johnston is an interesting thinker. I'll try to summarize.

In the book, Johnston looks for and finds a naturalistic sense in which a person could be said to survive death: a good person can truly identify with all of humanity by directing his or her actions in concert with this concern. He or she will then live on in the "onward rush of humanity."

Most people believe in an afterlife, where their personality lives on and justice is meted out in some fashion. Johnston points out that, even for the non-religious, death seems to pose some threat to the project of being good. It's not that one necessarily needs the incentive to be good, but that death is discouraging, and morality would seem to be greatly supported by an afterlife.

Johnston examines and rejects the various Christian efforts to make the notion of a future bodily resurrection coherent. Next, he rejects quickly the idea of an eternal soul, pointing out that while we can't rule it out, the preponderance of empirical evidence is against the idea.

Then Johnston enters into a lengthy discussion about what constitutes a self or a person and whether any such entity is a legitimate target for self-directed concern. He finds the common notions of person and self suspect, and determines that it is the unified "arena of presence and action" we seem to be at the center of, which is the leading candidate.

But does this arena of presence and action persist? We're well founded in saying it exists now, but Johnston argues we're not well-founded in saying this "I" will exist in the future (we can't bind it to an enduring substance). Therefore nothing justifies a future-directed self concern.

The practical implication of this conclusion is that there is no reason to favor one's own interests over another.

Johnston backs up to reconsider this surprising conclusion, and uses a variety of thought-experiments to try to break down the perceived connection of the present arena with the lifespan of a living body (these are clever).

Personal identity does not justify a future-directed concern. What's going on is that our (unjustified) disposition to direct concern to a future self constitutes our notion of personal identity (we have things backwards).

Here is the next key insight: we can change this disposition. If you change the disposition, you thereby change what it means to be a person. If the persisting self is determined to be unreal, and just how things seem to us, then we should alter our disposition.

So, to maximize the good, we should identify with the "onward rush of humanity" (a phrase used by John Stuart Mill). We would then, "quite literally", live on in this onward rush. And the good, then, could survive death.