Dictionary of the History of Ideas :: :: University of Virginia Library

In order to be a satisfactory solution to the problems
arising in connection with the fact of death, immor-
tality must be first a “personal” immortality, and sec-
ondly it must be a “pleasant” one. Only pleasant and
personal immortality provides what still appears to
many as the only effective defense against the fear of
death. But it is able to accomplish much more. It
appeases the sorrow following the death of a loved
one by opening up the possibility of a joyful reunion
in the hereafter. It satisfies the sense of justice outraged
by the premature deaths of people of great promise
and talent, because only this kind of immortality offers
the hope of fulfillment in another life. Finally, it offers
an answer to the question of the ultimate meaning of
life, particularly when death prompts the agonizing
query, “What is the purpose of this strife and struggle
if, in the end, I shall disappear like a soap bubble?”
(Tolstoy, A Confession, 1879).

It is important to realize, however, that the notion
of a pleasant immortality for all and sundry runs coun-
ter to the sense of justice which otherwise plays such
a prominent role in man's claim to immortality. While
it was felt that it would be an “injustice” if man were
condemned to total annihilation, it did not make sense
that evil men should enjoy the same privileges in the
hereafter as did the good ones. Thus we find in all
doctrines of immortality some restrictions as to the
enjoyment of a blissful afterlife, be it a permanent
exclusion from it of those guilty of crimes, or a merely
temporary one, allowing for rehabilitation, expiation,
or purification. The main difficulty with personal im-
mortality, however, is that once the naive position
which took deathlessness and survival after death for
granted was shattered, immortality had to be proved.
All serious discussion of immortality became a search
for arguments in its favor.

The three main variants of the idea of immortality
are the doctrine of reincarnation, or transmigration of
the soul, the Platonic theory of the immortality of the
soul (which also admits the possibility of transmigra-
tion), and the Christian doctrine of resurrection of the
body, which includes “Platonic” immortality. Histori-
cally they seem to have appeared in the Western world
in that order. But we shall begin with the doctrine
of the immortality of the soul as expounded by Plato,
partly because his position was the best argued, and
because it is around it that in subsequent times most
serious discussions revolved.

I. IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

1. Plato. The two basic premises of Plato's doctrine
of the immortality of the soul are a radical dualism
which sees man as a composite of a material body and
an incorporeal soul, and the assertion that the soul,
and not the body, is the essential, the true man. The
soul is not only totally independent of the body, but
it is of divine origin and only an unwilling guest in
the body. This is what makes Plato define death as a
liberation of the soul from the bodily “prison.” The
probable source of this view is the Orphic “soma-
sema,” the body is the prison (of the soul). Whether
it is this view of the soul which leads to the notion
that the soul is the essential person or the other way
around, is impossible to determine. In any case, when
Crito asks Socrates how he wants to be buried, the
latter expresses surprise that his listeners apparently
still did not get the main point of his discussion,
namely, that it is the Socrates who is now conversing
with them, and not the corpse he will soon become,
who is the real Socrates (Phaedo 115C-D).

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Plato advances the following arguments for the
immortality of the soul: (1) the argument from remi-
niscence. Man has certain ideal concepts as well as
some knowledge of a priori (e.g., mathematical) truths
which could not have been derived or been acquired
through experience (Phaedo 72A-77A; Meno 81B-86B).
Thus we must have acquired them before this life
began, which indicates that the soul is prior to the
body. But this would prove only the preexistence of
the soul, not its immortality, although the latter is made
more plausible if preexistence is true. The case for
immortality is strengthened, however, when we con-
sider that in order to apprehend the eternal “Ideas”
or “Forms,” the soul must itself be eternal for “noth-
ing mortal knows what is immortal.”

(2) Argument from the “fact” that the soul is the
principle of life: the soul, whose essence is life (vitality)
and thus the very opposite of death, cannot be con-
ceived as dying any more than fire can be conceived
as becoming cold. This argument (Phaedo, 100B-107A)
is based on Plato's arbitrarily equating “soul” as the
principle of life with soul as the bearer or originator
of mental and emotional activity. Moreover, to hold
that as the principle of life the soul is the “Idea” of
life and, as such, deathless and eternal has no bearing
on the immortality of the individual soul, since the
“Idea” of a thing is, according to Plato himself, very
different from its individual manifestation.

The same unwarranted equation of the two meanings
of soul underlies the third argument, (3) the soul as
self-moving, which states that since the soul moves
itself and is the source of movement and life, it must
be immortal because that which moves itself is incor-
ruptible and ingenerable (Phaedrus 245C-246A).

(4) The soul as “simple.” Plato argues that the soul
must be immortal since it is “simple” and incorporeal.
An incorporeal substance is “naturally” incorruptible,
and “simple” means that it is uncompounded and
therefore incapable of dissolution (in the sense of falling
apart; Kant has later argued that even if it has no
“extensive quality,” it nevertheless possesses “intensive
quality” and can therefore dwindle to nothingness “by
a gradual loss of power”).

Plato himself was well aware of the inadequacy of
his arguments for the immortality of the soul (and this
may be taken as a proof that he never doubted its
truth). He admitted that the divine origin of the soul
as well as the existence of eternal “Ideas” require
further investigation (Phaedo 107B). His former pupil,
Aristotle, rejected these basic assumptions on which
Plato's doctrine of immortality of the soul rested.
Aristotle held that the soul is one with the body as
its “form” (which term is quite different from Platonic
sense of “Form” or “Idea”). There is no necessity for
the separate existence of Ideas, because “the shape of
a bronze sphere exists at the same time as the bronze
sphere exists,” but it is not at all certain that “any form
survives afterwards” and “the soul may be of this sort”
(Metaphysics 1070a).

But while he was quite positive in his denial that
the soul could survive in its entirety, Aristotle spoke
of the possibility of survival of the intellectual part
of it. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear what he meant
by the term “pure intellect”: on the one hand he
described it as a capacity, but then there are passages
where he speaks of it as if it were an incorporeal
substance. Clearly, only the latter could be conceived
as immortal. What Aristotle may have had in mind
is that if not the whole soul, then at least man's active
intellect is of divine origin (since he spoke of it as
coming from the “outside”) and as such can be said
to be eternal. But this is not the immortality of the
soul as Plato conceived it. Not only does Aristotle seem
to be contemptuous of this doctrine (Nicomachean
Ethics 1111b), but most of his commentators beginning
with Alexander of Aphrodisias, and particularly Aver-
roës, were of the opinion that “The Philosopher” did
not believe in any kind of individual immortality.

2. Descartes. For almost two thousand years, few
new arguments were propounded in favor of the doc-
trine of the immortality of the soul until Descartes
turned his attention to the problem. In the meantime
the reintroduction to the Western world of Greek
philosophical works, in particular those of Aristotle,
by Arabic scholars about the middle of the twelfth
century, brought with it the first serious threat to the
universally accepted belief in immortality, since these
works, and the commentaries on them, contained
shocking but well-reasoned arguments against immor-
tality of the soul.

The reaction among Christian philosophers to this
threat was exemplified by Siger of Bradant in the
twelfth century, and set the pattern for the next six
hundred years. This reaction considered in the distinction
between the truth of reason and the truth of faith.
Although on rational grounds the immortality of the
soul is, at best, doubtful, human reasoning must yield
to the divinely revealed truth as set forth in the Holy
Scriptures.

Descartes shared the view of the religious apologists
about the morally disastrous effects of disbelief in the
immortality of the soul. In Part V of the Discourse
on Method, he wrote that “next to the error of those
who deny God... there is none which is more effec-
tual in leading feeble minds from the straight path of
virtue than to imagine that... after this life we have
nothing to fear or to hope for, any more than the flies
or the ants” (Haldane and Ross, trans. throughout).

640

He asserted that “our soul is in its nature entirely
independent of the body, and in consequence it is not
liable to die with it. And then, inasmuch as we observe
no other causes capable of destroying it, we are natu-
rally inclined to judge that it is immortal.” How did
he justify the first assertion? Harvey's discovery of the
circulation of the blood gave Descartes the idea that
both animal and human bodies might be regarded as
“machines.” But, although, according to Descartes,
there is no real difference between a machine and a
living organism, man is much more than just a body.
For he is able “to reply appropriately to everything
... said in his presence” and “act from knowledge,
whereas the animal can do so only from the disposition
of its organs” (Discourse, Part V). What this means is
simply that man alone “thinks.” Thinking, however,
was conceived by Descartes rather broadly to include
“all that we are conscious as operating in us... will-
ing, imagining, feeling” (Principles of Philosophy, I, IX).
And “all that is in us and which we cannot in any
way conceive as pertaining to the body must be attrib-
uted to our soul” (Passions of the Soul, I, IV).

Since the idea that something material may be
endowed with thought is not contradictory and must
have been known to Descartes (it was the view of the
Greek atomists and presented with eloquence by
Lucretius), what were his reasons for attributing
thought to an immaterial soul apart from his commit-
ment to religious dogma? The “proof” that there is
a soul totally independent of the body appears as a
by-product of his revolutionary approach to the prob-
lem of a criterion of certainty. In the Discourse (Part
IV) he describes how he arrived at what he claimed
to be rock-bottom certainty of the cogito ergo sum—“I
am thinking, therefore I exist”: “... I saw that I could
conceive that I had no body, and that there was no
world nor place where I might be; but yet that I could
not for all that conceive that I was not.” Thus he
concluded that he was “... a substance the whole
essence and nature of which is to think, and that for
its existence there is no need of any place, nor does
it depend on any material thing; so that this 'me,' that
is to say, the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely
distinct from the body... and even if the body were
not, the soul would not cease to be what it is.”

The strength of the above argument in favor of a
soul entirely distinct from the body derives from the
ease with which everyone can follow it, and from the
familiarity with the experience described therein, be-
cause everyone at one time or another did have the
impression of being a disembodied “spirit.” The main
objection to Descartes' conclusion is his unwarranted
equating of “me” with the soul. It is a far cry from
the reasoning that “while trying to think everything
false, it must needs be that I, who was thinking this
was something” to the conclusion that this something
was the incorporeal soul, that it was entirely distinct
from the body, and thus will survive bodily death.

It is interesting that Descartes sometimes appears
to have been more concerned with proving the exist-
ence of the soul than with the search for ultimate
certainty. Having been advised by his friend, the
mathematician Father Mersenne, that his cogito, ergo
sum is not an original discovery since it can be found
in Saint Augustine's The City of God (XI, 26), Descartes
defends himself in a letter to Andreas Colvius (Novem-
ber 14, 1640) by pointing out the difference between
them: “The use I make of it is in order to show that
that 'I' which thinks is an immaterial substance which
has nothing corporeal about it.”

Descartes' difficulties in attempting to explain how
such two radically different substances as the immate-
rial soul and the extended body could interact, since
they obviously do interact, are well known. In them-
selves, they do not invalidate the notion of an incorpo-
real and immortal soul. But he must have felt in the
end that to prove it may be as impossible as to solve
the problem of the interaction between body and soul.
It is significant that he changed the original subtitle
of his Meditations from “In which the existence of God
and the Immortality of the Soul are demonstrated” to
“In which the Real Distinction between Mind and
Body is demonstrated.” But this does not mean that
Descartes gave up his deep conviction that the soul
was immortal.

The belief in immortality did not have to rely on
rational proofs. As early as the ninth century, the Irish
monk John Scotus Erigena held that personal immor-
tality cannot be proved or disproved by reason. A much
more forceful, detailed, and influential statement of the
same position was made by Pietro Pomponazzi in his
De immortalitate animae (1516). After having examined
various arguments in favor of immortality and dis-
cussed several sets of objections to them, he concluded
that the question should be regarded as a “neutral”
one since man's natural reason was not strong enough
either to demonstrate or to refute immortality of the
soul. Pomponazzi added, however, that the question
of the immortality of the soul had been answered
affirmatively by God himself as reported in the Holy
Scriptures. This is, in essence, a reiteration of the
position advanced by Siger of Brabant. Pomponazzi's
conclusion was interpreted by some of his contem-
poraries, and many modern historians have agreed with
them, as implying that Pomponazzi. himself did not
believe in the immortality of the soul. Nevertheless,
the imputation of hypocrisy in Pomponazzi has very
little real evidence to support it.

641

In any case, in spite of the position that the truth
of immortality of the soul should be based on faith
and revelation, and asserted on this ground alone,
philosophers continued to seek proofs of immortality.
However, Descartes' fiasco made it clear to some that
a radically new approach had to be tried, the more
so because of new arguments against immortality.

The most cogent and influential were those advanced
by David Hume. According to Hume, the doctrine of
immortality is suspect since it is so obviously favored
by human desire. Man would not cling so tenaciously
to this belief if he did not fear death. But the very
fact of this fear points rather in favor of the assumption
that bodily death brings with it also the end of the
conscious personality. Since “Nature does nothing in
vain, she would never give us a horror against an
impossible event.” But what is the point of making
us afraid of an unavoidable event? Hume answers that
without the terror before death, mankind would not
have survived. Moreover, why does Nature confine our
knowledge to the present life if there is another? All
the arguments from analogy to nature, Hume dismisses
as being rather “strong for the mortality of the soul.”
Finally, “What reason is there to imagine that an
immense alteration, such as made on the soul by the
dissolution of the body, and all its organs of thought
and sensation, can be effected without the dissolution
of the soul?” (“Of the Immortality of the Soul,” Unpub-
lished Essays [1777], pp. 401-06).

The last argument was, in essence, the one advanced
also by the French Encyclopedist d'Alembert and by
the materialists, La Mettrie, Cabanis, and d'Holbach.

3. Kant. The most notable attempt to provide a new
basis for ascertaining immortality of the soul, was
Kant's “moral” argument. His starting point was that
man is not only a rational but also a moral being, and
that human reason has two functions, one “speculative”
or theoretical (“pure reason”), and the other concerned
with moral action (“practical reason”). In his Critique
of Pure Reason (1781; revised 1787), Kant showed that
God, freedom, and immortality are ideas which specu-
lative reason can form but cannot prove. They are,
however, “postulates” of “practical reason,” that is,
they “are not theoretical dogmas but presuppositions
which necessarily have only practical import... they
give objective reality to the ideas of practical reason
in general.” Thus the immortality of the soul must be
true because morality demands it. In his Critique of
Practical Reason (1789), Kant argued that the highest
good (summum bonum) is the union of happiness and
virtue. But while happiness can be attained in this life,
perfect virtue (“holiness”) cannot and requires, there-
fore, that the existence of man be prolonged to infinity.
Thus there must be another, future life. Later on, Kant
modified this argument somewhat by stating that we
are required by moral law to become morally perfect.
But “no rational being is capable of holiness at any
moment of his existence. Since, however, it is required
as practically necessary, it can be found in a progress
which continues into infinity.... This infinite progress,
however, is possible only if we assume an infinitely
lasting existence of the same rational being (which is
called the immortality of the soul)” (Critique of Practi-
cal Reason, trans. L. W. Beck [1949], pp. 225-26).

Unfortunately, there is no absolute necessity that
reality will yield to moral demands unless, of course,
we assume that the world is ruled, as Kant asserts,
“with great wisdom” and with a purpose which in-
cludes the moral perfection of man. This, too, however,
can be “proved” only as a postulate of practical reason.
No wonder, then, that Kant's moral argument for
immortality of the soul failed to impress even his
admirers.

4. Some Recent Philosophical Arguments. The in-
fluential French philosopher, Henri Bergson, the
Englishman, John McTaggart, and the German, Max
Scheler, were probably the most notable twentieth-
century thinkers who opposed the predominant anti-
immortalist trend of the nineteenth century, and
argued in favor of immortality. All three embraced
more or less the position that we cannot form a correct
judgment on the issue of immortality because we do
not know all the relevant facts about mental life.
Bergson felt that to consider man as limited to his
bodily frame is “a bad habit of limiting consciousness
to a small body and ignoring the vast one.” He argues
that the only reason we can have for believing in the
extinction of consciousness at death is that we see the
body become disorganized. But this reason loses its
force if it can be shown, as Bergson believed, that
almost all of consciousness is independent of the body
(Time and Free Will [1913], p. 73). But if the “mental
life overflows the cerebral life, survival becomes so
probable that the burden of proof comes to lie on him
who denies it” (ibid.). Max Scheler took a similar posi-
tion and declared that the burden of proof (onus
probandi) falls on those who deny immortality.

McTaggart, however, was much more of an old-
fashioned metaphysical idealist. He believed that “all
that exists is spiritual,” that reality is rational and
external, and that time and change are only apparent.
Death is not the end of the self, even though it deprives
the spirit of an apparent finite body.

Basic to the views of all three philosophers is their
conviction that the self—the unchanging, unifying core
of man's personality—is not identical with the body
and not wholly dependent on the brain, since it controls
and drives the body in ways which are not native to

642

it. The body gives to the self merely a location and
an opportunity to act. This is also the view of William
Ernest Hocking, and of Gabriel Marcel who essentially
repeats Socrates' assertion that “I am not my body.”
William James, however, held that even if the “soul”
may be the function of the brain, this does not at all
exclude the possibility that it continues after the brain
dies. According to James, this continuity is, on the
contrary, quite possible if we think of their relation
as one of “functional dependence,” that is, if the brain
just fulfills a “permissive” or “transmissive” function.

In addition to the sometimes very subtle arguments
for the immortality of the soul advanced by philoso-
phers, there are several less sophisticated ones. Among
them are the following.

A. Argument of “General Consent.” This argument
is simply that the universality of the belief in immor-
tality is evidence of its truth. Others see such evidence
in the universal desire for immortality. However, both
arguments are fallacious, if for no other reason than
the fact that such a belief is neither universally held
nor is immortality universally desired. Moreover, no
matter how intense and widespread such desire may
be, there is no guarantee that the object of a desire
must actually exist or be realized.

In addition, it must be pointed out that what is
actually desired (although far from being a universal
wish) is not the immortality of the soul but “deathless-
ness”: most people would rather go on living indefi-
nitely, and the belief in an immortal soul is merely
a “compromise,” a “second best” for those who are
reluctant to face the prospect of total extinction but
know that death is inevitable.

B. Argument that Cessation is “Inconceivable.” The
difficulty of imagining one's own demise has been
used, among others, by Goethe as an argument for
immortality: “It is quite impossible for a thinking being
to imagine nonbeing, a cessation of thought and life.
In this sense everyone carries the proof of his own
immortality within himself” (Johann Peter Eckermann,
Conversations with Goethe, 1852). He tries to compen-
sate for the obvious weaknesses of this “proof” by
taking refuge in the difficulties of proving immortality.
“As soon as one endeavors to demonstrate dogmatically
a personal continuation after death, one becomes lost
in contradictions” (op. cit.). But Hume has disposed
of this excuse by asking why, if man is indeed immortal,
he does not have a clearer knowledge of it.

C. Mystical “Evidence.” As a counterargument
against the above, Jacques Maritain affirms that there
is in man “a natural, instinctive knowledge of his im-
mortality.” The question is whether this “instinctive
knowledge” is not the very same psychological phe-
nomenon of disbelief in one's mortality that we have
referred to above. But Maritain may have in mind
certain experiences which, for the lack of a better
word, we can call “mystical,” like those described in
Goethe's Wilhelm Meister: “During some sleepless
nights, especially, I had some feelings... as if my soul
were thinking unaccompanied by the body.... The
grave awakens no terror in me; I have eternal life.”
But this and similar experiences are strictly “private”
insights and, as such, not very convincing. Sometimes
they are not convincing even to those who have such
“revelations,” especially since they are counter-
balanced by other experiences recently emphasized by
some “existentialists.” For example, Karl Jaspers speaks
of the “awareness of fragility,” and Heidegger speaks
of the “experience of progressing toward death.”

What is needed, then, in order to make immortality
credible would be empirical, publicly verifiable evi-
dence, without which the subjective feeling of one's
indestructibility will have great difficulties in over-
coming the formidable obstacle voiced by Omar
Khayyam that “... of the myriads who/ Before
us passed the door of Darkness/ Not one returns to
us....”

D. Spiritism and Psychical Research. It is precisely
because it claims to offer empirical proof that the dead
do survive, and can be communicated with, that
“Spiritualism” (or “Spiritism”) exercises a strong ap-
peal to more people than is usually realized. “Spirits”
and the doctrine of Spiritism were revived in the
United States in 1844, in Hydesville, New York, where
mysterious happenings occurring in the farmhouse of
the Fox family were assumed by the members of the
family to be due to the “spirits” of people, now dead,
who had previously occupied the house. The “experi-
ences” of the Fox sisters, who claimed to be able to
communicate with these spirits, served as a basis for
the book of a Frenchman, Léon Rivail (who assumed
the spirit-inspired name of Allan Kardec), entitled Le
Livre des esprits, which is considered the “bible of
Spiritism.”

There are two schools of Spiritism. The one preva-
lent in Anglo-Saxon countries believes in a single
embodiment of the soul. The other, popular in Latin
countries, follows Kardec who teaches multiple incar-
nation. Both posit the existence of an “astral” body
which is conceived as an infinitely fine matter, or subtle
fluid, which envelops the immaterial soul. It is said
to be observable when a person dies and the soul
reverts from the carnate to the disincarnate state. This
“visibility” as well as the communication between the
living and the dead (by means of the tapping of a
three-legged table or the utterances of medium in
trance) is the “proof” of immortality which the spirit-
ists offer. And since immortality is thus for them a

643

proven fact, they claim that they bring it down to earth
as a purely naturalistic phenomenon and not something
that involves supernatural intervention or magic. The
idea of an astral body had been entertained by several
early church fathers. Thus Tatian speaks of an ethereal
body which envelops the soul, and Irenaeus maintains
that the soul retains the imprint of the body like water
which retains the shape of the receptacle in which it
froze.

The obvious criticism of the spiritist doctrine of
immortality is that although there may be mental and
even physical paranormal phenomena, it is quite far-
fetched to assume that they are caused by the spirits
of the dead. Moreover, not only are the messages from
“beyond the grave” uniformly trivial, not to say
asinine, but all the mediums have been so far exposed
as frauds, even by sympathetic investigators of the
“occult” world. The more serious among the students
of these strange phenomena assert only that they are
the result of the hidden or neglected powers of the
mind, that these point to the mind's independence of,
and mastery over, the body, which renders the hypoth-
esis of its survival after death not only plausible but
even probable.

More recently, experimental studies of these unusual
powers of the human psyche have been undertaken,
of which those of J. B. Rhine of Duke University have
received the most publicity. Without necessarily deny-
ing the existence of “extrasensory perception” (ESP),
critics point out that it may be superfluous to assume
a spiritual entity in order to explain parapsychological
powers and that these are not more spectacular or
uncanny than other psychological capacities which are
taken for granted.

E. Conclusion. It has become clear from our brief
survey of the arguments for immortality that they are
perhaps sufficient to reinforce an already existing con-
viction, but not good enough for someone skeptical
about the possibility of survival after death. Nor is the
position that the burden of proof lies on those who
deny immortality particularly persuasive.

William James noted that on this subject there are
two kinds of people, “those whom we find indulging
to their hearts' content in the prospects of immortality,
and... those who experience the greatest difficulty
in making such a notion seem real to themselves at
all. These latter persons are tied to their senses...
and feel a sort of intellectual loyalty to what they call
hard facts” (The Will to Believe [1897], p. 40). But
today, even among the first kind, we find rather a hope
of immortality than a firm belief in it.

Several causes of the erosion of the immortalist's
position have been suggested, among them the general
decline of religious beliefs, the refutation of “proofs”
of immortality by materialist philosophers, and scien-
tific data showing the dependence of mental phenom-
ena on the brain. Another reason could well be that
many may not really care about it. If this is so, it would
signify a radical change in attitudes not only toward
death but also toward life.

II. RESURRECTION

Bodily reconstitution combined with the immortality
of the soul has been the universally accepted version
of immortality in the Western world for almost two
thousand years. Only recently (1968) Pope Paul VI
reaffirmed this doctrine, thus categorically repudiating
all attempts to interpret it symbolically.

The Christian view of the immortality of the soul
differs significantly from the Platonic in that it is some-
thing which results from divine grace, whereas for the
latter, immortality is a “natural” endowment of each
and every soul. As Pope Paul formulated it, “We be-
lieve that the souls of all those who die in the grace
of Christ, whether they must still be purified in Purga-
tory or whether from the moment they leave their
bodies Jesus takes them to Paradise, are the people
of God in the eternity beyond death which will be
conquered on the day of resurrection when these souls
will be reunited with their bodies” (Time, August 1968).

Most of those who accept this position as well as
those who consider it unacceptable in such literal terms
are unaware that the belief in the resurrection of the
dead antedates Christianity. It is an integral part of
the Zoroastrian eschatology and it is found among the
Jews prior to Jesus' time. Although, according to
Josephus Flavius, the sect of the Pharisees believed
“that every soul is incorruptible, but that only the souls
of the good pass over to other bodies,” and thus appear
to have believed in transmigration rather than resur-
rection, Saint Paul (Acts 23:6) attributes to them the
latter belief.

Generally speaking, the idea of the resurrection of
the body is not at all strange if we consider that, like
the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, it was a
reaction to the popularly held somber vision of post-
mortem existence in Sheol or Hades. Man is no more
content with a sad conclusion to the drama of his
existence than he is with this existence being an un-
mitigated calamity. Moreover, the awakening moral
conscience demanded not only punishment but also
rewards for one's actions in this life. And what better
reward for a decent life could there be than restoration
to life?

Significantly, however, what Saint Paul had been
preaching seems to differ from the later, official Cath-
olic doctrine. Not only did he speak of the resurrection
of the body (resurrectionem corporis) and not of the

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flesh (resurrectionem carnis), but he insisted that the
body will be resurrected in a new, changed form. Twice
in I Corinthians he says, “We shall all be changed.”
In his view, God will recreate man not as the identical
physical organism that he was before death but as a
“spiritual body” (soma pneumaticon) endowed with
the characteristics and the memory of the deceased.

Yet such a view of resurrection may have been trou-
blesome. Skeptics doubted that Jesus had risen from
the dead at all, and in order to convince them, it was
imperative to be able to say that the disciples did
recognize Him because He was physically exactly the
same—“flesh and bones”—(sarka kai ostea, Luke
24:29). Obviously, such a positive identification would
not have been possible in the case of a changed, “spir-
itual” body. In any case, the early church fathers did
reshape the Paulinic view of resurrection to conform
to these requirements.

This raises, however, the thorny question as to the
condition in which the body will be resurrected, e.g.,
as it was at the time of death, or in its youthful
splendor. Another perhaps even more serious problem
was whether, on the day of the Last Judgment, the
souls which were in Purgatory or Paradise awaiting
that decisive hour would indeed rejoin the right bodies.
The officially accepted answers to these and other
problems are those of Thomas Aquinas.

Concerned as he was with proving the truth of
resurrection, Aquinas was attracted to Aristotle's view
that the person is the living human body. And faced
with the necessity of asserting the immortality of the
soul, he had, however, to show that it was a substance
or, in his terminology, “something subsistent.” There-
fore, in his commentary to Aristotle's De anima,
Aquinas tries to interpret Aristotle's remark that the
intellect exists separately as meaning that “the princi-
ple of intellectual operation which we call the soul
is both incorporeal and subsistent.” Only in this way
was a “synthesis” of the Aristotelian and the Platonic
positions possible. And only if such synthesis could be
accomplished and the unity of body and soul demon-
strated can bodily resurrection, and not merely im-
mortality of the soul, be asserted as man's true post-
mortem destiny. On the other hand, only if the soul
is an incorporeal substance will it survive death and
be available for the reunification with the resurrected
physical body. That it will find the identical former
body is, according to Aquinas, quite certain because
the truth of resurrection is vouchsafed by the Holy
Scriptures. He argues further that since man is created
for happiness, and since it is unattainable here on earth,
there must be an afterlife where this goal will be
attained. But the whole man, body and soul, is destined
for happiness. Thus only resurrection, and not mere
immortality of the soul, would fulfill this promise. And
if the soul would not return to the very same body
it left at death, it would not be true resurrection.

Modern man has considerable difficulty in accepting
the doctrine of literal resurrection of the body. As
Edwyn Bevin points out, “For many people today, the
idea of a literal resurrection of the body has become
impossible” (The Hope of a World to Come [1930], p. 53).

III. REINCARNATION

Various forms of this doctrine are transmigration,
metempsychosis, palingenesis, and rebirth. It does not
necessarily imply the eternity of the soul since
Buddhism, which teaches reincarnation, denies it. The
belief that the soul of a dead individual reenters im-
mediately (or as in the Tibetan book of the dead, the
Bardo Tödol, after 49 days) that of a newborn child
eliminates the difficulty of visualizing a totally disem-
bodied soul and the question of its destiny after it leaves
the body. The doctrine of reincarnation seems to have
originated in India, possibly in prehistoric times. Many
primitives in various parts of the world believe that
man possesses several souls, one of which reincarnates
in a descendent of the deceased, a notion which may
have been suggested by the sometimes striking resem-
blance between a child and his dead relative. It is
interesting, however, that no traces of the belief in
reincarnation can be found among the ancient Egyp-
tians or the Assyro-Babylonians. There is also no hint
of it in Homer, or Hesiod, and no mention of it in
the Old Testament. Among the Jews we find it much
later, and the sect of the Pharisees which adopted it
had been obviously influenced by their Greek contem-
poraries. In Greece itself, the doctrine of reincarnation
was first taught by Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C.
and is usually assumed to be of orphic origin. Some
scholars, however, claim that the doctrine was
“invented” by Pherecydes of Syros and base their
opinion on a passage in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations.
Others point out that to trace it to Orphism of which
little is known is to beg the question of an even earlier
source.

It is tempting to seek it in the influence of Indian
thought if it were not for the difficulty of finding
concrete evidence for such a connection. Moreover,
there is a basic difference between the Hindu version
of the doctrine and that of Pythagoras. While the latter
considers successive reincarnations as the opportunity
for the purification and perfection of the soul, for the
Hindus, Brahmanists and Buddhists alike, reincarnation
represents merely a continuous repetition of the
suffering and misery of earthly existence. It is tied in
with the doctrine of cosmic eternal recurrence and the
periodic disappearance and reappearance of humanity

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during which the soul transmigrates without end. And
while, for the Hindu, salvation consists in an escape
from the wheel of rebirths, in the Greek version the
soul is ultimately united with God.

In the Western world, the doctrine of reincarnation
has never achieved popularity. The Pythagorean
brotherhoods were secret societies, and subsequently
only sectarian and heretical movements like the Jewish
Cabalists, the Christian Gnostics, and the Cathars
embraced it. It fared somewhat better among philoso-
phers. Aside from Pythagoras, one has to mention
Empedocles and, in particular, Plato who gave a more
or less systematic account of the doctrine of the trans-
migration of the soul in several of his dialogues (Gorgias
525C-526B; Phaedrus 248A-B; Phaedo 82A, 113E,
114A-B; Republic X, 614C-625A; Theaetetus 117A;
Timaeus 91D, 92A-B). Plotinus incorporated this doc-
trine into his philosophical system. Soon thereafter it
was completely displaced by the Christian doctrine of
resurrection. It reappears again in the Renaissance
among the Italian Platonists of the fifteenth century,
in the Cambridge Neo-Platonists in the seventeenth
century, and is sympathetically considered by Giordano
Bruno, and later on by Leibniz. Even the skeptical
Hume felt that if there were immortality, “metem-
psychosis is the only system of this kind that philosophy
can hearken to” (“Of the Immortality of the Soul,”
op. cit.). In the twentieth century, McTaggart argued
in its favor, and C. J. Ducasse considers it the most
plausible hypothesis.

Apart from metaphysical considerations, what are
the most important arguments for reincarnation? Here
again we have to distinguish between the Hindu and
Western proponents of this doctrine. In the West it
is but one of several answers to the question of man's
post-mortem destiny, and unless it is accepted un-
critically, it adds the burden of proving multiple incar-
nations of the soul to the already sufficiently taxing
task of proving its immortality. In Hindu thought, for
which (with the exception of a few materialist philoso-
phers) the immortality of the soul is axiomatic, its
reincarnation is most often equally so. And if one
should, nevertheless, want proofs, these are usually
based on the soul's “obvious” immortality. Thus the
leading contemporary philosopher (and ex-president)
of India, S. Radhakrishnan, advances the following
argument: since souls are eternal, and since their nor-
mal condition is to be associated with a body which
is perishable, it is plausible to assume that in order
for the soul to remain in its normal condition, it must
inhabit an unending succession of bodies.

But the Western mind is not impressed and prefers
empirical proofs. Among these, one of the favorite
arguments is the undeniable fact that some children
exhibit certain instinctive capacities, and a few are
even geniuses at a very early age. This is supposed
to prove that there must be reincarnation, since other-
wise the possession of such extraordinary gifts remains
totally uncomprehensible.

Another argument is the occurrence of the phenom-
enon known as déjà vu. But the most popular and
supposedly clinching argument is that some people
apparently remember their previous existences, some-
times without extraneous help, though usually under
hypnosis.

The obvious counterarguments, as far as genius in
children and the déjà vu phenomena are concerned,
is that although they are difficult to explain, the re-
course to such an extreme as the preexistence and
reincarnation of the soul seems unjustified. And re-
garding people who claim to remember their previous
lives, not only can the information elicited not be
reliably verified, but such people are exceedingly few
and far between.

It remains to mention the reply of the adherents of
the reincarnation doctrine to the last counterargument.
They contend that death is a traumatic experience of
such a force that it seriously affects or obliterates
memory. But this argument tacitly assumes the immor-
tality of the soul, since only in such a case can one
speak of the consequences of the traumatic experience
of death. And while dying may well be traumatic for
many, on all available evidence it appears to be the
last experience of a person.

Substitute Immortalities. Some of those who bring
forth arguments against immortality of the soul (or
resurrection of the body) propose other kinds of
“immortality,” thus giving this term a broader and
often misleading meaning. There is, first of all, what
may be called the doctrine of impersonal immortality:
the spirit, or mind of man, is not destroyed at death
but returns to and merges with the universal or divine
Soul, or mind. This is the possible meaning of Aris-
totle's hint about the eternity of the active intellect.
The main representatives of this view are Averroës,
Bruno, Spinoza, and the German and English romantic
poets and philosophers of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Of this kind of immortality, Ma-
dame de Staël remarked somewhat sarcastically that
“if the individual inner qualities we possess return to
the great Whole, this has a frightening similarity to
death.”

Another kind of “immortality” which is intended to
console, as well as to justify death, is “biological”
immortality of our germ plasm (genes). The prospect
to live on in one's children has, however, lost much
of its comforting power since the realization that man-
kind itself will some day disappear, and particularly

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now that the atomic and hydrogen bombs have made
such an outcome not infinitely remote but a very real
and even immediate possibility. It might not neces-
sarily affect Santayana's “ideal” immortality which is
reminiscent of Goethe's view that the “traces on one's
earthly days cannot be erased in Aeons.” Nor would
it affect what is known as “cosmological” immortality,
according to which our energy-matter does not cease
to exist but is only transformed and dispersed. But to
both of these “immortalities,” Madame de Staël's criti-
cism equally applies. Of course, many people would
be satisfied with mere “social” or “historical” immor-
tality—to have left traces of one's passage on earth
in the form of an artistic achievement, scientific dis-
covery, or other remarkable accomplishments. “How
can he be dead, who lives immortal in the hearts of
men?” asks Longfellow in speaking of Michelangelo.
This was the meaning of immortality for the great men
of Ancient Rome. In modern times, this kind of
“immortality” was first suggested by M. J. de Con-
dorcet in his Outline of the Progress of the Human
Mind, and, with particular force, by Ludwig
Feuerbach. The least ambitious immortality would be
to live on for a short time in the memory of one's family
and friends. Very probably this is the only kind of
“immortality” that the overwhelming majority of peo-
ple will ever have. But for many people, this is not
a completely satisfactory thought.