A Brief History of Death

W. M. Spellman

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

As humans, death—its certainty, its inevitability—consumes us. We make it the subject of our literature, our art, our philosophy, and our religion. Our feelings and attitudes toward our mortality and its possible afterlives have evolved greatly from the early days of mankind. Collecting these views in this topical and instructive book, W. M. Spellman considers death and dying from every angle in the Western tradition, exploring how humans understand and come to terms with the end of life. Using the work of archaeologists and paleoanthropologists, Spellman examines how interpreting physical remains gives us insight into prehistoric perspectives on death. He traces how humans have died over the centuries, both in the causes of death and in the views of actions that lead to death. He spotlights the great philosophical and scientific traditions of the West, which did not believe in an afterlife or see the purpose of bereavement, while also casting new light on the major religious beliefs that emerged in the ancient world, particularly the centuries-long development of Christianity. He delves into three approaches to the meaning of death—the negation of life, continuity in another form, and agnosticism—from both religious and secular-scientific perspectives. Providing a deeper context for contemporary debates over end-of-life issues and the tension between longevity and quality of life, A Brief History of Death is an illuminating look at the complex ways humans face death and the dying.

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