Death and Dying

The medicalization of death is a challenge for all the world's religious and cultural traditions. Death's meaning has been reduced to a diagnosis, a problem, rather than a mystery for humans to ponder. How have religious traditions responded? What resources do they bring to a discussion of death's contemporary dilemmas? This book offers a range of creative and contextual responses from a variety of religious and cultural traditions. It features 14 essays from scholars of different religious and philosophical traditions, who spoke as part of a recent lecture and dialogue series of Drake University's The Comparison Project. The scholars represent ethnologists, medical ethicists, historians, philosophers, and theologians--all facing up to questions of truth and value in the light of the urgent need to move past a strictly medicalized vision.This volume serves as the second publication of The Comparison Project, an innovative new approach to the philosophy of religion housed at Drake University. The Comparison Project organizes a biennial series of scholar lectures, practitioner dialogues, and comparative panels about core, cross-cultural topics in the philosophy of religion. The Comparison Project stands apart from traditional, theistic approaches to the philosophy of religion in its commitment to religious inclusivity. It is the future of the philosophy of religion in a diverse, global world.

The medicalization of death is a challenge for all the world's religious and cultural traditions. Death's meaning has been reduced to a diagnosis, a problem, rather than a mystery for humans to ponder. How have religious traditions responded? What resources do they bring to a discussion of death's contemporary dilemmas? This book offers a range of creative and contextual responses from a variety of religious and cultural traditions. It features 14 essays from scholars of different religious and philosophical traditions, who spoke as part of a recent lecture and dialogue series of Drake University’s The Comparison Project. The scholars represent ethnologists, medical ethicists, historians, philosophers, and theologians--all facing up to questions of truth and value in the light of the urgent need to move past a strictly medicalized vision.

This volume serves as the second publication of The Comparison Project, an innovative new approach to the philosophy of religion housed at Drake University. The Comparison Project organizes a biennial series of scholar lectures, practitioner dialogues, and comparative panels about core, cross-cultural topics in the philosophy of religion. The Comparison Project stands apart from traditional, theistic approaches to the philosophy of religion in its commitment to religious inclusivity. It is the future of the philosophy of religion in a diverse, global world.

Chapter 1. Introduction: Death and Dying in Comparative Philosophical Perspective (Timothy D. Knepper).- Part 1. Death And Religion.- Chapter 2. Death in Ancient Chinese Thought: What Confucians and Daoists Can Teach Us about Living and Dying Well (Mark Berkson).- Chapter 3. Secular Death (Amy Hollywood).- Chapter 4. The Cult of Santa Muerte: Migration, Marginalization, and Medicalization (Eduardo González Velázquez).- Chapter 5. “To Die in Peace”: Negotiating Advance Directives in a Navajo Context (Michelene Pesantubbee).Part 2. Medicalization and Religion.- Chapter 6. Christians Encounter Death: The Tradition’s Ambivalent Legacies (Lucy Bregman).- Chapter 7. A Jain Ethic for the End of Life (Christopher Key Chapple).- Chapter 8. The Ritualization of Death and Dying: The Journey from the Living Living to the Living Dead in African Religions (Herbert Moyo).- Chapter 9. Death in Tibetan Buddhism (Alyson Prude).- Part 3: Bioethics and Religion.- Chapter 10. Jewish Perspectives on End-of-Life Decisions (Elliot N. Dorff).- Chapter 11. Buddhism and Brain Death: Classical Teachings and Contemporary Perspectives (Damien Keown).- Chapter 12. Ethical Engagement with the Medicalization of Death in the Catholic Tradition (Gerard Magill).- Chapter 13. Islamic Perspectives on Clinical Intervention Near the End of Life: We Can but Must We? (Aasim I. Padela).- Part 4: Comparative Conclusions.- Chapter 14. Comparative Conclusions (Lucy Bregman).