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Immortality and The Modern Temper: The Ingersoll Lecture, 1961

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Hans Jonas
Hans Jonas
Affiliation:
New School for Social Research, New York, New York
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Extract

In the following reflections I shall start from what I consider an undeniable fact, namely, that the modern temper is uncongenial to the idea of immortality. It is that over and above the objections which the modern intellect entertains against it on theoretical grounds. These — which for brevity I will simply grant en bloc — are by themselves indecisive. As transcendental, the object of the idea — immortality itself — is beyond proof or disproof: it is not an object of knowledge. But the idea of it is. Therefore, the intrinsic merits of its meaning become the sole measure of its credibility, and the appeal of such meaning remains as the sole ground of possible belief — as certainly the lack of such appeal is sufficient ground for actual disbelief. But since what is meaningful depends, beyond the mere condition of logical consistency, largely on the dispositions and insights of the mind that judges it, we must interrogate these for their prevalent unresponsiveness as well as for any possible hold which the idea, even in its present eclipse, may still have, or reclaim, on our secularized estate. Thus an examination of the problem at this hour will be as much an examination of ourselves as an examination of the issue of immortality; and even if it should throw no new light on the latter, on which in more than two thousand years probably everything has been said there is to say, it may yet throw some light on the present state of our mortal condition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , January 1962 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1962

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References

1 Throughout Greek letters, from Homer to Plato, who marks the philosophic overcoming of the ideal but gives it eloquent expression in the words of Diotima: “Think only of the ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have run for their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would have died to save Admetus, or Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in order to preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that the memory of their virtues, which still survives among us, would be immortal? Nay, I am persuaded that all men do all things, and the better they are the more they do them, in hope of the glorious fame of immortal virtue; for they desire the immortal” (Symposium 208 c-d; tr. B. Jowett). Perhaps the loftiest statement of the ideal occurs in Pericles' Funeral Oration on the Athenian dead in the first year of the Peloponnesian war: “They received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all sepulchres, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes by. For the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men, and their story is not graven only in stone over their native earth, but lives far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives” (Thucydides, II 43; tr. A. Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth, p. 207). — Not long ago, I encountered the ancient sentiment unalloyed in (of all places) television when one of our astronauts-in-training, asked what had made him volunteer for the task, answered “Frankly, the chance of immortality; for this, I would willingly give my life.” Given with engaging simplicity, there was no doubting the candor of the reply. Events in the meantime may have caused some reflections on how much, besides the merits of dedication and ability, also opportunity and luck — and not only our own, but that of unknown others — rule over this kind of immortality.

2 In discussing why honor cannot be “the good”: it rests in those who bestow it rather than in him who receives it, whereas the good must be one's inalienable own; further, we seek it, i.e., the reputation of being good, as a confirmation of our being good, therefore from people who have good judgment, and adequate knowledge of us, and who accord honor to virtue — which on this admission stands as the primary good: Eth. Nic. 109s b 22–30.

3 Ginza, left, 31 (end): M. Lidzbarski (tr.), Ginzā. Der Schatz oder Das Grosse Buch der Mandäer. Göttingen 1925, p. 559Google Scholar, 29–32. In an Avestic source, this image addresses the soul thus: “I am, O youth of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, good conscience, none other than thine own personal conscience. … Thou hast loved me … in this sublimity, goodness, beauty … in which I now appear unto thee” (Hādōkht Nask 2.9 ff.).

4 The Hymn of the Pearl (or Hymn of the Soul) is a gnostic poem included in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostle Thomas: on text and interpretation cf. Jonas, H., The Gnostic Religion. Beacon Press. Boston 1958Google Scholar, ch. 5, pp. 112–129; for bibliography cf. ibid., p. 296.

5 Or: the Last Statue: the Coptic uses the Greek word ἀνδριάς.

6 Kephalaia V. 29, 1–6; XVI. 54, 14–24: Manichäische Handschriften der Staatlichen Museen Berlin. Bd. I: Kephalaia, 1. Hälfte. Stuttgart, 1940Google Scholar.

7 Gen. 6:6–7.

8 Sanhedrin 97 b; Sukkah 45 b.

9 Deut. 30:14.