Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2023
Chapter 6 is dedicated to examining an article by the Danish thinker, poet, and writer Poul Martin Møller, “Thoughts on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality.” This article represents the most substantial treatment of nihilism in Danish philosophy. Møller reviews some of the then recent works in German literature about the controversial issue of whether Hegel’s philosophy contained a theory of immortality. He claims not only that Hegel’s philosophy does not have a theory of immortality, but also, absent such a theory, that it leads to nihilism. Like Jean Paul, Møller believes that the denial of immortality would render human existence impossible. Møller’s argumentative strategy is to use a reductio ad absurdum to refute the view that denies immortality. To begin, he assumes the correctness of this view, and then tries to explore further what precisely it would mean to hold it. Then from this he deduces negative consequences, which demonstrate that the view must be abandoned as contradictory. He follows this strategy through many different spheres: the life of the individual, social and political relations, art, philosophy, science, religion, and so on. He claims that all these spheres would collapse into nihilism if the belief in immortality is denied.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.