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Eternal Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2010

Extract

I Fear you will be disappointed in what I have to say. For I am going to talk about those who, though they have said ‘There is a way to eternal life’, have then gone on to explain that what they mean does not imply that there is a way to a life that endures for ever or even a life after death. It is plain that those who do this take from the words ‘There is a way to eternal life’ a part of their meaning which has been and still is to very many people of very great importance. Nevertheless between those who when they speak of a way to eternal life are thinking of a life after death which endures for ever, and those who when they speak of eternal life give to their words a meaning which carries no implication as to whether there is a life after death, there is a link, in that both are seeking a remedy against a sort of despair which comes not merely from the thought of death but from a disappointment with life together with the thought that it ends in death.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1968

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References

page 241 note 1 Quoted by Fingarette, Herbert, The Self in Transformation (London, 1963), p. 221Google Scholar.

page 242 note 1 Ethics, pt. v, prop, xxiii.

page 242 note 2 Ethics, pt. v, prop, xxxiv, note.

page 242 note 3 Ethics, pt. v, prop.

page 246 note 1 The Varieties of Religious Experience (London, 1902), pp. 390-1Google Scholar.

page 246 note 2 Mysticism and Philosophy (London, 1961), p. 309Google Scholar.