The Eternal Pity: Reflections on Dying

The Eternal Pity: Reflections on Dying

edited by Richard John Neuhaus, 1946-2009, in The Ethics of Everyday Life (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000, originally published 2000), 197 page(s)

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Abstract / Summary
Drawing upon a vast range of human experience and reflection, The Eternal Pity: Reflections on Dying demonstrates how people try to cope with the inevitability of death. Different cultures, informed by religious beliefs and sometimes desperate hope, teach people to respond to their own death and the deaths of others in modes as various as defiance, stoic resignation, and unbridled grief. In addition to examples from literature, poetry, and religious texts, Father Richard John Neuhaus provides an intensely personal account of his encounter with death through emergency cancer surgery and reflects on how that encounter has changed the way he lives. While many writers have deplored the "denial of death" in our culture, The Eternal Pity shows how themes of death and dying are nevertheless perennial and pervasive. Society may be viewed as a disorganized march of multitudes waving little banners of meaning before the threat of nonbeing that is death. Some selections in this book depict people utterly surprised by their mortality; others highlight how the whole of one's life can be a preparation for what used to be called "a good death." For some, life is a relentless effort to hold death at bay; for others, death is, although not welcomed, reflectively anticipated. Nothing so universally defines the human condition as the fact that we shall die. The Eternal Pity helps us to understand how the prospect of death compels decisions about how we might live.
Field of Interest
Religion & Thought
Copyright Message
Copyright © 2000 by the University of Notre Dame
Content Type
General reference book
Duration
0 sec
Format
Text
Original Publication Date
2000
Page Count
197
Publication Year
2000
Publisher
University of Notre Dame Press
Place Published / Released
Notre Dame, IN
Subject
Religion & Thought, Social Sciences, Theology, Ethics, Philosophy, نظام اللاهوت, Théologie, al-Kalām, Theologie, תֵאוֹלוֹגִיָה, Teologia, Teología, الأخلاق, Éthique, Ethik, אֶתִיקָה, Ética, الفلسفة, Philosophie, Falsafa, פִילוֹסוֹפִיָה, Filosofía, Filosofia, Christian, Philosophy, Theology, Ethics
Series / Program
The Ethics of Everyday Life
Keywords and Translated Subjects
نظام اللاهوت, Théologie, al-Kalām, Theologie, תֵאוֹלוֹגִיָה, Teologia, Teología, الأخلاق, Éthique, Ethik, אֶתִיקָה, Ética, الفلسفة, Philosophie, Falsafa, פִילוֹסוֹפִיָה, Filosofía, Filosofia

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