Could We Survive Our Own Deaths? (1998)
Antony Flew



Part I: The Great Obstacle
(a) Could we survive our own individual deaths? Surely it is obvious that we do not, that we could not? For is anyone prepared to contest the truth of the major premise in that most famous of all exemplary syllogisms: 'All men are mortal'; 'Socrates is a man'; and, therefore, 'Socrates is mortal'? Again, after some disaster when the 'Dead' and the 'Survivors' have both been listed, what logical space is left for a third category, 'Both'?

Nevertheless, in defiance of these apparent factual and logical impossibilities, most of us are probably at first inclined to agree with Butler - one of the two greatest philosophical talents to have graced the episcopal benches of the Church of England. In his Dissertation of Personal Identity Butler wrote: "Whether we are to live in a future state, as it is the most imp ortant question which can possibly be asked, so it is the most intelligible one which can be expressed in language."

Surely Butler was right? Suppose we read, for instance, The Koran. Can we not all understand perfectly well the gloating descriptions of the tortures which Allah is threatening to inflict on unbelievers and - for men only - the exciting promises of sexual ecstasies to be provided by compliant black-eyed houris? Of course we can. And since the future life in which these tortures are to be suffered or these ecstasies are to be enjoyed is supposed to be going to last forever, then dearly the question of whether or not we shall have it (and, if so, the consequent problem of ensuring that we shall pass it agreeably) is of quite overwhelming importance. For what are three-score years and ten compared with all eternity?

But surely, urges the sceptic, something crucial is being overlooked? For this future life is supposed to continue even after physical dissolution; even after the slow corruption in the grave or the swift consumption in the crematorium. Of course we can understand the Myth of Er in Book X of Plato's Republic or the Nordic stories of Valhalla. But to expect that after my death and dissolution such things might happen to me is to overlook that I shall not then exist. To expect such things, through overlooking this, is surely like accepting a fairy tale as history, through ignoring the prefatory rubric: 'Once upon a time, in world that never was . . .'?

{b} The previous subsection got us to the heart of the matter, by establishing two fundamentals. One of these is that the essence of any doctrine of personal survival (or personal immortality) must be that it should assert that we ourselves shall in some fashion do things and suffer things after our own deaths (forever).

The second fundamental which the four paragraphs of subsection (a) force us to face is this. Any doctrine of personal survival or personal immortality has got to find some way around or over an enormous initial obstacle. In the ordinary, everyday understandings of the words involved, to say that someone survived death is to contradict yourself: while to assert that we all of us live forever is to assert a manifest falsehood, the flat contrary of a universally known universal truth, namely, the truth that 'All men are mortal.' (Article Continues)




Part II A Possible Route round that Obstacle?



Part III. The Problem of Personal Identity