Life After Death

For centuries philosophers have debated on monism and dualism, two different philosophical views of the human mind. philosophers have been trying to decipher whether the person is made up of the mind, the body or both. monists hold the belief that existence is purely based upon one ultimate "category of being" this means that either the person is made up of only the body or only the mind, hence two seperate entities. dualists hold the belief that existence is based upon the body as well as the mind and its mental properties.

Resurrection is believed in by Muslims, Jews and Christians, the idea is that God will raise the dead back to life at the end of time and then they will be judged, good-heaven, bad-hell. Therefore the idea of resurrection suggests that this life is the testing ground for the next life.immortality of the soul,  is the belief that the soul is a distinct and immortal entity within the body and that it can survive the death of the body and then ascend to the afterlife.In his dialogue Phaedo, Plato sets out a literary dialogue between Socrates and Plato and they discuss the ideas of death and the immortality of the soul. Socrates gives a number of arguments in favour of the immortality of the soul, “the soul is that which renders the body living”. Therefore, there must be some immortal soul which enters the body at birth and then the soul leaves at death.

Philosphers such as Kant explore dualistic beliefs such as immortality of the soul. Kanf established that our purpose in life is to attain the highest good (summon bonnum) in which virtue meets with happiness. He further elaborated that short lives are unable to achieve highest good, thus god allows us to survive death to give us a chance to realise this good. furthermore plato saw the body as a nuisance and a bind. it is not the real person, rather there was a soul which implemented intellect and emotion, rather the body is connected with sense pleasures, the soul with reason.

According to John Hicks 'Replica theory' if someone died and appeared in another place with the same meories and physical features, it would be logical to accept this is the same person who once exsited in another realm. Here, Hick is elaborating the monoistic theory of ressurection. Aristotle attemped to reinforce this and explain the importance of the soul in his book Amina. 1) intuitive- soul makes us get food 2) Locomotive- Soul enables body to move 3) intellectual- enables us to think. The soul does not exist without the body. The soul comes from the body and it gives reason to its exsitence.Renѐ Descartes argues that the existence of the true self can be known through reason, in his book Mediations, he attempts to prove his existence through his argument “I think, therefore I am” .He believed that this is therefore proof of humans as "thinking things" this means that knowledge is separate from the body. Therefore we have souls and are not just physical beings, so Descartes separates the body and soul – dualism, this could be interpreted that the soul lives on even if the physical body dies.