Overview

Death is one of those few topics that attract the attention of just about every significant thinker in the history of Western philosophy, and this attention has resulted in diverse and complex views on death and what comes after. In Meaning and Mortality, Adam Buben offers a remarkably useful new framework for understanding the ways in which philosophy has discussed death by focusing first on two traditional strains in the discussion, the Platonic and the Epicurean. After providing a thorough account of this ancient dichotomy, he describes the development of an alternative means of handling death in Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, whose work on death tends to overshadow Kierkegaard’s despite the undeniable influence exerted on himby the nineteenth-century Dane. Buben argues that Kierkegaard and Heidegger prescribe a peculiar way of living with death that offers a kind of compromise between the Platonic and the Epicurean strains.

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9780810132504

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Reviews

"""Buben's work is an interesting exploration of what it means to live authentically, that is, by acknowledging the truth of finitude and without fear of death."" --Journal of the History of Philosophy"

Buben's work is an interesting exploration of what it means to live authentically, that is, by acknowledging the truth of finitude and without fear of death. --Journal of the History of Philosophy

Author Information

Adam Buben is an assistant professor of comparative philosophy at Leiden University College in the Netherlands.

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