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
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
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.
