Surviving Death

Preface xi Chapter One: Is Heaven a Place We Can Get To? 1 Chapter Two: On the Impossibility of My Own Death 126 Chapter Three: From Anatta to Agape 189 Chapter Four: What Is Found at the Center? 241 Chapter Five: A New Refutation of Death 305 Index 379

Mark Johnston is the Walter Cerf Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and the author of "Saving God: Religion after Idolatry" (Princeton).

Honorable Mention for the 2010 PROSE Award in Theology & Religious Studies, Association of American Publishers "[P]acked with illuminating philosophical reflection on the question of what we are, and what it is for us to persist over time--on the relations among selves, persons, human beings, bodies and souls."--Thomas Nagel, Times Literary Supplement "[Johnston] reveals himself to be an engaging wit, a swaggering polymath, and ... a major talent."--Jacques Berlinerblau, Chronicle of Higher Education "Surviving Death and Saving God both provided me with intellectual pleasure of a high order, even though I found many of the author's conclusions false and some morally repugnant. Johnston is the kind of atheist it's good for Christians to read, because he is intelligent, intellectually energetic, and serious about what he engages, and because he shows very clearly just where fastidiousness leads."--Paul J. Griffiths, Commonweal "Mark Johnston?s Surviving Death is an immensely interesting book. While it is not without technical discussions of issues in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and personal identity, it is also a very readable book--and one that, despite some modest technicality, lets its author?s personality shine through... Surviving Death is a provocative, engaging, and worthwhile book. It is certain to re-invigorate our thinking about the prospects that the good allows in relation to our mortality."--J. Jeremy Wisnewski, Philosophy in Review "[Surviving Death and Saving God] constitute a remarkably thorough and convincing treatment of two extremely important religious issues, those of the perennial allurements of idolatry and the deeply menacing fact of death, to say nothing of the books' endorsement and defense of an arduous but richly inspiring ideal of the religious life. The books are a welcome corrective for some of the most seductive and prevalent distortions of religious thought and practice. I heartily recommend them to the reader who