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PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
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PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
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The Eternal Pity: Reflections on Dying.
Richard John Neuhaus (ed.)
(2000) Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press.
ISBN: 0268-02757-9 (pb). 181 pages. £12.95.
Practical Philosophy (Book Reviews) March 2001 Volume 4.1
Reviewed by: Susanne Gibson
In The Eternal Pity: Reflections on Dying John Neuhaus has put together an illuminating selection of readings from what is a huge body of literature on death and dying. The readings are drawn from a range of religious, philosophical and literary traditions and are divided into three sections: ‘Thinking about Dying: Twelve Classic Visions’, ‘When We Die’ and ‘When Others Die’. They include both the more and the less familiar, from John Donne and Wilfred Owen, to Alane Salierno Mason’s ‘Reconciliation of Unbelief’, which charts the death of a friend from AIDS. All of the readings in this collection contain something of value, although Ralph Abernathy’s very personal account of the burial of the very public figure Martin Luther King is especially poignant. The short introductions that Neuhaus provides at the beginning of each selection are also useful, setting them in context and providing some connections.
Neuhaus also provides a more substantial introduction to the collection as a whole, in which we learn something about the editor, in particular regarding his religious beliefs and his own experience of coming up against death. At a more general level, we learn about the Buddhist, Islamic, Judaic and Christian perspectives on death, all of which is presented in an accessible manner, although with a relatively disproportionate amount of space given to the exposition of Christian beliefs.
It is not, however, the bias towards the Judaeo-Christian tradition in both the introduction and the selected readings, nor the bias towards Catholicism within that that I found problematic. Any collection is bound to reflect the beliefs and values of its editor, and will be the better for it insofar as it gives us an insider’s view of what is best within that tradition. Rather, the problem lies with what is a misrepresentation and undervaluing of an alternative tradition, namely analytic philosophy.
Both the foreword written by the series editors (of which Neuhaus is himself one) and Neuhaus’s own introduction demonstrate an antipathy towards philosophy, and particularly towards contemporary analytic philosophy. The series editors claim that:
‘The dominant modes of contemporary ethical discourse and writing, whether conducted in universities or in independent ethics centers, are, by and large, highly abstract, analytically philosophical, interested only in principles or arguments, often remote from life as lived, divorced from the way most people face and make moral decisions, largely deaf to questions of character and moral feeling or how they are acquired, unduly influenced by the sensational or extreme case, hostile to insights from religious traditions, friendly to fashionable opinion but deaf to deeper sources of wisdom, heavily tilted toward questions of law and public policy, and all too frequently marked by an unwillingness to take a moral stand.’ (p. vi)
Although this might accurately describe contemporary moral philosophy as it is sometimes practised, it is an inaccurate appraisal of the discipline as a whole. It ignores, for example, the resurgence of interest in virtue and character-based ethics that has taken place over the last 10-15 years, and which now forms a substantial part of the available literature. In any case, the editors provide no evidence to back up this claim.
Similarly, Neuhaus suggests that modern philosophy has had very little to say about death, and even less of interest, and claims (p. 5) that this is because ‘Death is a surd, an irrational event, that inconveniently disrupts a world that is otherwise under rational control.’ It is true that there is a tradition in Western philosophy, from Epicurus through Lucretius to Wittgenstein, that says that one’s own death is not something that one can experience. A variety of conclusions is drawn from this observation, but I suggest that this in itself is to say something about death, and to attempt to get to grips with it, rather than, as Neuhaus claims, to push it to one side. In any case, there are others who have argued for an alternative perspective. The absence of any reference to the work of the American philosopher Thomas Nagel, for example, seems to me to be a glaring omission. Nagel takes issue with the Epicurean argument that ‘what you don’t know about can’t hurt you’, but by engaging analytically with that argument, rather than by dismissing or ignoring it. And this is the weakness in Neuhaus’s treatment of contemporary analytic philosophy: he rejects the value of this tradition, but without providing the rigorous arguments that analytic philosophy, for all its faults, demands. It is a shame that a collection that otherwise does a great deal to encourage the reader towards further thought and exploration signposts one avenue as not worth venturing along.
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