A Brief History of Death

W. M. Spellman, Spellman, William M., William M. Spellman

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781780235042
  9781780232652
• eBook ISBN:
  9781780233055
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

A Brief History of Death offers a topical survey of views concerning death and its aftermath in the Western tradition, from prehistory to the present. It explores how humans understand and come to terms with the fact of mortality and looks at the physical and social aspects of death, how dying people are treated, how the dying conduct themselves in the knowledge of their approaching demise and how survivors choose to remember the dead.

W. M. Spellman examines the work of archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists to give insight into prehistoric perspectives on death through the interpretation of physical remains. He spotlights the great philosophical and scientific traditions of the West, or what can be termed the rationalist approach to end-of-life issues. The book also examines the major religious traditions that emerged during the so-called ‘Axial Age’ of the ancient world, focusing particularly on the centuries-long evolution of the Western Christian tradition. Three approaches to the meaning of death – negation of life, continuity in another form and agnosticism – are examined in both religious and secular-scientific contexts.

A Brief History of Death considers how we have died throughout history, both in the causes of death and in our varying attitudes to actions that lead to the deaths of fellow humans. The book provides a deeper context for contemporary debates over end-of-life issues, especially the emerging tension between longevity and quality of life.

REFERENCES

Introduction

1		Elaine Minamide, ed., How Should One Cope with Death? (Farmington Hills, MI, 2006), p. 5.
2		Bernard N. Schumacher, Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy, trans. Michael J. Miller (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 1–2.
3		Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. W. F. Trotter (New York, 1958), p. 17.
4		For a discussion of the transition from the traditional heart–lung or cardiopulmonary definition of death to the whole brain definition during the 1980s, see Vincent Barry, Philosophical Thinking about Death and Dying (Belmont, CA, 2007), pp. 16–18.
5		Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, in Marcus Aurelius and His Times (New York, 1945), p. 23.
6		For a review of contemporary materialism, see Keith Campbell, Body and Mind (South Bend, IN, 1986).
7		Corliss Lamont, The Illusion of Immortality, 5th edn (New York, 1990), p. 16.
8		Plato, The Republic, trans. Paul Shorey (Cambridge, MA, 1987), Book VII, pp. 119–23.
9		I Corinthians 15:19.
10		Hans Küng, Eternal Life? Life as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem, trans. Edward Quinn (New York, 1984), p. 52; Coleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History (New Haven, CT, 1988), p. 1; Arnold Toynbee, ‘Traditional Attitudes towards Death’, in Man’s Concern With Death, ed. Arnold Toynbee, Keith Mant and Ninian Smart (New York, 1969), pp. 59–62.
11		Animal and veterinary literature treats death solely as biological collapse. See Siri K. Knudsen, ‘The Dying Animal: A Perspective from Veterinary Medicine’, in Allen Kellehear, ed., The Study of Dying: From Autonomy to Transformation (New York, 2009), p. 27.
12		R. Albert Mohler Jr, ‘Modern Theology: The Disappearance of Hell’, in Hell Under Fire, ed. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (Grand Rapids, MI, 2004), pp. 16–41.
13		Tony Walter, The Eclipse of Eternity: A Sociology of the Afterlife (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 1–2.
14		Boyle quoted in Michael Hunter, Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1995), p. 230.

ONE: Preliminary Patterns

1		Barbara J. King, Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion (New York, 2007), p. 127.
2		William McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York, 1998), p. 46. L. S. Stavrianos, Lifelines from Our Past (Armonk, NY, 1992), pp. 19–22, describes the kinship basis of hunter-gatherer societies.
3		Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (New York, 2006), p. 9, argues that conflict was normative and that the social institution of warfare was in place by 50,000 BC.
4		Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization (Oxford, 2006), pp. 18, 74.
5		Wade, Before the Dawn, pp. 68, 140. For a wider discussion of !Kung attitudes towards death, see James Woodburn, ‘Social Dimensions of Death in Four African Hunting and Gathering Societies’, in Death and the Regeneration of Life, ed. Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 199–202.
6		Allan Kellehear, ‘What the Social and Behavioural Studies say about Dying’, in The Study of Dying: From Autonomy to Transformation, ed. Allan Kellehear (New York, 2009), p. 4.
7		Chris Scarre, ‘The Iceman: A 5000-year-old Murder Victim?’, in Brian M. Fagan, Discovery! Unearthing the New Treasures of Archaeology (London, 2007), pp. 40–41.
8		Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York, 1950), chapter Thirteen, p. 104.
9		King, Evolving God, pp. 1–28, discusses this concept under the heading ‘belongingness’.
10		Mike Parker Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial (College Station, TX, 1999), p. 146.
11		Theya Molleson, ‘The Archaeology and Anthropology of Death: What the Bones Tell Us’, in Mortality and Immortality: The Anthropology and Archaeology of Death, ed. S. C. Humphreys and Helen King (London, 1981), pp. 16–17; Pearson, Archaeology of Death, p. 148.
12		Allan Kellehear, A Social History of Dying (Cambridge, 2007), p. 15.
13		J. M. Roberts, History of the World (Oxford, 1993), p....

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• ONE Preliminary Patterns
• TWO Thinking Things Through
• THREE Extraordinary Narratives
• FOUR Adverse Environments
• FIVE Modern Reconsiderations
• Conclusion
• REFERENCES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INDEX