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Thesis ‘What happens when we die?’ is a question most traditions would not have asked in that form

Kenneth Leung Chi-ho Fellow
· 7 replies · 362 views
DeathBuddhistIslamicJewishAl-GhazaliThe Buddha#afterlife#comparative-tables#cross-cultural-comparison#imported-framing
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Where it stands

I teach comparative philosophy and spend my time insisting on what doesn't line up. Here's a thesis about a table everyone likes.

Comparative tables of ‘what happens when we die?’ line up the traditions in neat rows: Platonic immortal soul, Epicurean dissolution, Vedantic rebirth, Buddhist rebirth without self, Confucian deferral, Islamic resurrection. It looks like many answers to one question.

Thesis: the question itself is framed in one tradition's terms, and several rows are answering a question they would not have posed.

‘What happens when we die?’ presupposes a ‘we’ that persists long enough for something to happen to it. Buddhism rejects that at the outset, which is why its cell always reads awkwardly. Confucianism deliberately declines the question. Epicurus would say nothing happens to us, because where death is, we are not. Even the Abrahamic rows differ on whether the question is about a soul's continuation or a whole person's restoration.

I'm not saying comparison is impossible. I'm saying a common question always carries some tradition's framing, and a good table should mark where a tradition would reframe or refuse the question, rather than squeezing an answer into the cell.

I expect objections, especially from traditions that answer the question straightforwardly.

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7 replies

For the thesis 3

  1. Arvind Poojary

    For Fellow

    For, from a Cārvāka sympathiser. The materialist row says ‘nothing’, but that isn't an answer to the question so much as a rejection of its premise. The verse attributed to them asks how a body reduced to ashes could ever return. There's no ‘we’ left to whom anything happens. The table makes it look like one option on a menu, when it's really a refusal of the menu.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Ayya Kusalañāṇī

    For Fellow

    For, from the Buddhist row. When I'm asked what happens when I die, I have to start by saying that the question already assumes too much. Kenneth's markers, ‘reframed’ or ‘declined’, would let our cell be honest instead of awkward.

    Helpful · 3
  3. Nadia Haddad

    For Fellow

    For, from palliative care. Epicurus helped me more than any table, and he'd refuse the question too: death is nothing to us, because where it is we are not. Whether that consoles is a separate matter. Most of my patients aren't asking ‘what happens’; they're asking whether it will hurt and who will be there.

Against the thesis 2

  1. Imam Bilal Hussain

    Against Fellow

    Against, at least for my tradition. Islam asks exactly this question and answers it plainly: the soul passes into an intermediate state, the barzakh, and then the whole person is raised for judgement. Al-Ghazālī even counted denial of bodily resurrection among the philosophers' errors that put them outside the faith. Our row is not squeezed; it was made for this question.

    Helpful · 3
    1. Kenneth Leung Chi-ho

      Fellow

      Imam Bilal, I accept that. My thesis should say ‘several traditions’, and Islam is one of the ones the question fits. Though even there, ‘what happens to us’ hides the dispute between those who stress the soul and those who stress the resurrected body.

  2. Rabbi Eliana Gutman

    Against Fellow

    Partly against. Judaism holds several answers at once: the Hebrew Bible's shadowy Sheol, later teachings about the world to come, and resurrection, which Maimonides made one of his thirteen principles and then had to defend himself for, because readers thought he'd spiritualised it away. So the question fits, but no single cell can hold our answer. The problem isn't the framing; it's the one-cell-per-tradition format.

    Helpful · 2

Other replies

  1. Kenneth Leung Chi-ho

    Fellow

    Revised thesis, with thanks: the question fits some traditions well (Islam, most Christian theology), fits others only with reframing (Buddhism, materialism, Epicurus), and is deliberately declined by one (Confucianism). Eliana's point about plural answers within one tradition is a further problem with tables, separate from framing. A good comparison marks all three.

    Helpful · 1