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Self, God and Immortality: A Jamesian Investigation

Online ISBN:
9780823284863
Print ISBN:
9780823220700
Publisher:
Fordham University Press
Book

Self, God and Immortality: A Jamesian Investigation

Eugene Fontinell
Eugene Fontinell
Queens College, City University of New York
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Published online:
23 May 2019
Published in print:
1 January 2000
Online ISBN:
9780823284863
Print ISBN:
9780823220700
Publisher:
Fordham University Press

Abstract

Can we, who have been touched by the scientific, intellectual, and experimental revolutions of modern and contemporary times, still believe that we as individual persons are immortal? Indeed, is there even good cause to hope that we are? In examining the present relationship of reason to faith, can we find justifying reasons for faith? These are the central questions in this book, a compelling exercise in philosophical theology. Drawing upon the works of William James and the principles of American Pragmatism, the book extrapolates carefully from “data given in experience” to a model of the cosmic process open to the idea that individual identity may survive bodily dissolution. Presupposing that the possibility of personal immortality has been established in the first part, the second part of the book is concerned with desirability. Here, it is shown that, far from diverting attention and energies from the crucial tasks confronting us here and now, such belief can be energizing and life enhancing. The wider importance of the book lies in its pressing both immortality-believers and terminality-believers to explore both the metaphysical presuppositions and the lived consequences of their beliefs. It is the author's expressed hope that such explorations, rather than impeding, will stimulate co-operative efforts to create a richer and more humane community.

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