HOW FAR DOES A LIFE EXTEND?

How does our life extend beyond our existence?

I start with a personal confession of belief. I am a humanist and a philosophical naturalist. As such, I believe that nature is all that there is and there is nothing outside of nature. I am, however, not quite a philosophical materialist. I am too enchanted with ideas. Ideas arise out of our material natures and our social activity but take on a life of their own as they interact with each other. I take seriously the influential role ideas play in guiding and inspiring life, but I don't believe in independent spirits. I am an atheist. I hold that what we believe and accept as true, even as such beliefs change and evolve, needs to be based on evidence. And I see no evidence of a divine custodian. Au contraire, I find compelling reasons that speak against the existence of a Supreme Being.

As a corollary to my naturalism and atheism, I do not believe in an afterlife. I aver that the mind is a product of biological functions, and once the body dies, so does the mind. No doubt, such a conclusion is unsettling to many. As Spinoza noted, the essence of all things is to persist in their existence, and this is most evident as an imperative constitutive of life. Death bluntly, utterly, frustrates this steadfast dynamic.

It is a function of the religions to provide answers to the disquieting reality of personal extinction. In the Western monotheistic traditions, there are variations on the portraits of heaven and hell all extending to eternity. The Eastern faiths start from a different framework, placing humanity within an ontological spectrum that includes all sentient creatures. Life cycles through time wherein the boundaries between life and death and the differences between humanity and other beings are less marked.

I am too firmly socialized in Western society, its values and consciousness to appropriate the metaphysical assumptions of the Eastern faiths, though I find their speculations fascinating, products of venerable traditions, and worthy of respect.

But here my confession veers further. Atheist that I am, I remain fascinated by religion, not in its doctrinal manifestation so much as in the philosophical questions it poses that seek to penetrate into the nature of existence, reality, and our relation to it. No doubt, my interest is a function not only of education but also of temperament. Some people are satisfied to live exclusively in the secular world, the practical realm, the world as it appears. For reasons of temperament, this has not totally satisfied me, and I have always sought for more, again within the constraints of my this-worldly naturalism, but nevertheless pushing against it.

In this regard, I recently reread a brief essay by the noted ethicist, Peter Singer. Entitled “Thinking About the Dead,” it caught my imagination for several reasons. The first is that Peter Singer, as I am, is a confirmed atheist and denies the existence of an afterlife. The second emerges from the conclusion that he reaches.

Singer's essay begins with a reflection on a book he is writing about his grandfather, a classicist, who died in the Holocaust. Among his grandfather's papers, he found one that relates to the question: what is a good life? His grandfather searched the classics and found a response in the writings of the Greek historian, Herodotus. Herodotus recounts how the sage, Solon, answers this question. Solon's concept of a happy life consists of ten elements. The last two are the ones that capture Singer's interest and my own. They are namely that the person so considered undergoes “the highest funeral honors” and receive “the preservation of one's own name through glorious commemoration by the citizens.”

Of interest in these two final criteria is that they occur after the biological life of the person is over. As with Singer, Solon did not believe in a literal life after death. But for Singer, Solon's inclusion of these two factors raises the question, as Singer states, “...does skepticism about a life after death force one to conclude that what happens after you die cannot make a difference to how well your life has gone?”

The most straightforward answer to this question is that once you can no longer experience your life, then what happens afterward makes no difference. But in Singer's view, and my own, the answer is not so simple. In search of an answer, it raises the further question as to whether we can understand a life as totally commensurate with a person's biological existence, or can we understand it as something more.

Singer gives an example to illustrate the latter, but I will provide my own. Let's say person “X” is a very accomplished academic in her field. She has authored several creative books and many learned articles, and she has developed a noteworthy reputation. Her contributions provide every reason that her work will have great influence in her field for decades to come and she will earn a deserved reputation for her achievements. She is about to retire after a long career, at which point she falls ill and dies. Let's also say that in her department she has had a peer, who out of extreme professional jealousy, spite, and animosity, initiates a campaign to denigrate the work of his colleague and destroy her reputation. He does whatever he can to demonstrate that she was a fraud, her work was not original and she plagiarized from other sources, nor was she as brilliant as people originally assumed. In great measure, this crusading colleague has been successful in destroying her reputation, thereby greatly diminishing her intellectual legacy and the lasting contribution she otherwise would have made to her field and succeeding generations.

The question can then be asked, though the scholar is dead, can we nevertheless say that her spiteful colleague has done great damage to her life? I would conclude that the answer is “yes.” I so conclude because we can understand the life of a person to encompass not exclusively her or his biological existence, but also what they produced, the contributions that influence others and society after they have died, as well as their reputations.

As Peter Singer notes with regard to his grandfather,

“Writing about my grandfather has forced me to think about whether it makes sense to believe that, in reading my grandfather's works and in bringing his life and thought to a larger audience, I am doing something  for him, and in some way mitigating, however slightly the wrong that the Nazis did to him.” 

The conclusion Singer reaches is that even though his grandfather is dead what happens to a person after his death, as Solon, observed, affects how well one's life goes. 

It may sound metaphorical, but in this sense a person lives on in their continuing influence, in the concrete effects they continue to have on the lives of others. This concept is not so strange or counter-intuitive It is quite natural for us to honor the lives of notable persons who lived long before, noting how their contributions continue to influence our lives even now. To the extent that they do, they continue, even in a small way, to live on through us. This is especially true of people whom we have known and loved and whose influence in our lives was deep and internalized.

With the passage of time, memories of the contributions of even great benefactors to humanity will fade like the ripples in the water created by the stone we have cast. Their contributions will be consciously gone. At that point, they will take their place in the expanding fund of the unremembered gestures and deeds of the entirety of humankind. Our appreciation at that point will be subtle, perhaps even mystical, as we contemplate that who we are now we owe to the collective aspirations and struggles, dreams, achievements, and contributions of all those who have gone before. It may even inspire in us feelings of gratitude.