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Life and Death

Life and death are inextricably intertwined, a fact noted by various religious and philosophical schools around the world. Life is an essential components in the dynamic of the world, but all life eventually dies. In broad terms, all life also comes from death, or from a lack-of-life, as if life were being created out of nothing. At some point in the past, it must indeed have been created out of lifeless material, and since that time life and death have alternated, the one creating or contributing to the creation of the next. The idea of the relationship between life and death is often expressed better in Eastern philosophy than in Western, which is less given to finding the unity in the world and more to differentiating between elements and behaviors.

The question of immortality is an ancient one and is key in philosophy and religion. Man lives a span of years and then dies, and probably from the very beginning of the human race men and women have wondered if there is something beyond death. Ashley Montagu writes, "Man, we reasonably assume, is the only living creature who entertains the idea of immortality" (Montagu 1). Much of religion is concerned with the notion of the afterlife and with the behavior in this life that leads to a certain kind of afterlife. Many ancient peoples showed their belief in immortality through burial customs that sent the departed individual to the afterlife with many of his or her possessions, presumably so they could be used there as well. Immortality as a concept is seductive, since we do not want the short span of our lives on earth to be all that there is and since we also want to feel that our life on earth has some deeper meaning and purpose. The idea of immortality has been addressed by many different philosophers either testing the evidence or speculating on the meaning of immortality, with some determining that there is life after death, some deciding that there is not, and some fin...

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Life and Death. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 13:20, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692700.html