Comfort in Annihilation: Three Studies in Materialism and Mortality

• Authors: Liam Dempsey , Byron Stoyles
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper considers three accounts of the relationship between personal immortality and materialism. In particular, the pagan mortalism of the Epicureans is compared with the Christian mortalism of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. It is argued 1) that there are significant similarities between these views, 2) that Locke and Hobbes were, to some extent, influenced by the Epicureans, and 3) that the relation between (im)mortality and (im)materialism is not as straightforward as is commonly supposed.

Keywords

EN

Immortality; Materialism; Epicureans; Annihilationism; Locke, John; Hobbes, Thomas

• Publisher: Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie
• Journal: Forum Philosophicum
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 119-140

Dates

published

2010

Contributors

author

Liam Dempsey

• Trent University

author

Byron Stoyles

• Trent University

References

• Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Gutenberg Project, published online April 12, 2009. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1001/1001-h/1001-h.htm.
• Almond, Philip C. Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
• Barnes, Jonathan, and Mario Mignucci, eds. Matter and Metaphysics: Fourth Symposium Hellenisticum. Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1988.
• Bennett, Jonathan. Locke’s Philosophy of Mind.” In The Cambridge Companion to Locke, edited by Vere Claiborne Chappell, 98–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
• Burns, Norman T. Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
• Calvin, John. “Psychopannychia.” In Tracts Relating to the Reformation, edited and translated by Henry Beveridge, 3:413–490. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1851.
• Calvin, John. Tracts Relating to the Reformation. Vol. 3. Edited and translated by Henry Beveridge. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1851.
• Chappell, Vere Claiborne, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
• Dempsey, Liam. “‘A Compound Wholly Mortal’: Locke and Newton on the Metaphysics of (Personal) Immortality.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19, no. 2 (2011): 241–264. doi:10.1080/09608788.2011.555161.
• Dempsey, Liam. “Thinking-Matter Then and Now: The Evolution of Mind-Body Dualism.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 26, no. 1 (2009): 43–61.
• Descartes, René. Correspondence. Edited by Charles Ernest Adam and Gérard Milhaud. Paris: Presses Universitaires du France, 1947.
• Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Translated by Robert Drew Hicks. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Epicurus. “Letter to Herodotus.” In Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, translated by Robert Drew Hicks, 2:564–613. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Epicurus. “Letter to Menoeceus.” In Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, translated by Robert Drew Hicks, 2:648–659. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Farrington, Benjamin. “The meaning of ‘persona’ in De Rerum Natura III.58.”, Hermathena, 85 (1955): 3–12.
• Overton, Richard. Mans mortalitie. Edited by Harold Fisch. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1968.
• Fowler, Don. “Review of Philip Mitsis’ Epicurus’ Ethical Theory: The Pleasures of Invulnerability.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 113 (1993): 169–174. doi:10.2307/632410.
• Fraser, Alexander Campbell. Locke. London: William Blackwood and sons, 1890.
• Hobbes, Thomas. Thomas White’s De Mundo Examined. Translated by Harold Whitmore Jones. London: Bradford University Press, 1976.
• Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668. Edited by Edwin M. Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.
• Hobbes, Thomas. The Elements of Law. In Thomas Hobbes Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, edited by J. C. A. Gaskin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Hume, David. Of the Immortality of the Soul. In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and the Posthumous Essays, edited by Richard H. Popkin. Cambridge: Hackett, 1983.
• Johnston, David. “Hobbes’s Mortalism.” History of Political Thought 10, no. 4 (1989): 647–663.
• King, Peter. The Life of John Locke. Vol. 1. London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830.
• Locke, John. The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered. Edited by John C. Higgins-Biddle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
• Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
• Locke, John. Life and Letters of John Locke: With Extracts from his Journals and Common-place Books. Edited by Peter King, London: Bohn, 1858.
• Long, A. A., and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
• Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. Translated by W. H. D. Rouse and revised by Martin Ferguson Smith. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.
• Marshall, John, “Locke, Socinianism, ‘Socinianism’, and Unitarianism.” In English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, edited by M. A. Stewart, 158–161. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• McCann, Edwin. “Locke’s Philosophy of Body.” In The Cambridge Companion to Locke, edited by Vere Claiborne Chappell, 56–88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
• Phillipson, N. T., and Quentin Skinner, eds. Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Rowe, William L. Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2007.
• Sedley, David. “Epicurean Anti-Reductionism.” In Matter and Metaphysics, edited by Jonathan Barnes and Mario Mignucci, 295–327. Naples: Bibliopolis, 1988.
• Snobelen, Stephen D., “William Whiston, Isaac Newton, and the crisis of publicity.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 35, no.3 (2004): 573–603. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2004.06.008.
• Snobelen, Stephen D. “Socinianism, heresy and John Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity.” Enlightenment and Dissent 20 (2001): 88–125.
• Stewart, M. A. ed. English Philosophy in the Age of Locke. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Straus, Leo. Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis. Translated by Elsa M. Sinclair. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.
• Tuck, Richard. “The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes.” In Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, edited by N. T. Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, 120–138. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Walker, D. P. The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
• Yolton, John W. Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

Notes

EN

This paper is written with equal contributions from both authors. Byron Stoyles is primarily responsible for the sections focusing on Epicurus and Liam Dempsey for the sections focusing on Locke. Both authors contributed to the sections focusing on Hobbes.

Identifiers

DOI

10.5840/forphil201015121

URI

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=53739337&lang=pl&site=ehost-live

URI

http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=forphil&id=forphil_2010_0015_0001_0119_0140