ABSTRACT
The belief in a life after death, be it from religious faith or logical deduction, has been a source of consolation to the dying and the bereaved since the early days of Christianity and even, longer ago, among the ancient Egyptians. This chapter outlines the approach of “rational argument” to the presentation of immortality. Immortality can be had only through one's actions or his children; but there can be no consciousness of personal survival because there is no personal survival. Thus immortality, survival of consciousness, requires some aspect or factor of his being to be other than physical or material, not subject to corruption or disintegration after death. The history of philosophy gives terms like “psyche,” “soul,” or “mind” to represent this part of human makeup. Platonists believe that this combination of psyche and soma is a union of two separate entities. Strict Aristotelians would see it as a duality of co-principles making up the one human being.
