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PRESCIENCE AND AN EARLY DEATH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2019

Andrew Oberg
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Abstract

Death's inevitability is not in question, but its mystery is one that is equally unavoidable and the questions we are likely to have about what then unanswerable. Traditionally we have tended to be concerned with what – if anything – might happen to us personally after we pass away, but that is not our question here. Rather we wish to contemplate what a knowledge of what will happen to the others in our lives may do to us while we are yet living. If we could know before we die the events that will befall our loved ones and/or our communities how might we react? Would that knowing be a comfort or a curse? Moreover, what might our contemplation on this query teach us about death more generally? Such is our concern in the discussion below.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 18 , Issue 53 , Autumn 2019 , pp. 31 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2019 

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References

Notes

1 Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 1985), p. 607Google Scholar.

2 While I believe we must take such things with a large grain of salt, the dates given for King Josiah's life are c. 649-609 bce, and the years for his reign are listed as 641/640 to 610/609 bce; see ‘Josiah’, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah> [accessed 25 July 2018].

3 For some details, see ibid.

4 Tanakh, II Kings 22:13, p. 606.

5 ‘Josiah’.

6 Ibid.

7 Tanakh, II Kings 23:29-30, p. 609.

8 Scheffler, Samuel, Death and the Afterlife, ed. and intro. Kolodny, Niko (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Stein, Edith, On the Problem of Empathy, 3rd rev. edn, trans. and intro. Stein, Waltraut (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989), p. 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Her Wikipedia page can be found here: ‘Edith Stein’, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Stein> [accessed 13 August 2018].

11 Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. O'Brien, Justin (London: Hamish Hamilton-Penguin Books, 1955/2005), p. 6Google Scholar.

12 Critchley, Simon, Very Little… Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Cyril Schäfer with Ruth McManus, ‘Memento Mori and Tourist Encounters with Authentic Death in European Ossuaries’ and Iitaka, Shingo, ‘Tourism of Darkness and Light: Japanese Commemorative Tourism to Paradise’, in Kaul, Adam and Skinner, Jonathan (eds) Leisure and Death: An Anthropological Tour of Risk, Death, and Dying (Louisville, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2018), pp. 163-89 and 141-59Google Scholar, respectively.