Introducing Several Books on Death

The most certain truth of our life is death. Yet we regard it as one of the most dubious truths. Man is the only being who knows that he dies, and perhaps, as one thinker has said, this is what has led to the building of the great human civilization. Death-awareness, death-thinking, suicide, the existence or non-existence of an afterlife, and death-anxiety have always been of interest to Western and Eastern thinkers in literature, philosophy, and psychology. In this post, I will try to introduce several books I have read in Persian on this subject.

Introducing Several Books on Death

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Death and Philosophy :

• Death and Immortality / translated by Mohsen Rezazadeh / Tehran: Sohrevardi Research and Publishing Office, 2001 / edited by Mostafa Malekian

This book deals with topics in the philosophy of religion that seek to prove or deny life after death. It contains six essays, the first three of which argue against the existence of an afterlife (essays by Russell, David Hume, and Antony Flew), and the other essays argue for it (essays by Plato, John Hick, and Geoffrey Olin), with a short critique added after each essay. The book is very good, and I definitely recommend it.

• Philosophy of Religion / John Hick / translated by Bahram Rad / edited by Baha'oddin Khorramshahi / Al-Hoda Publications
• The book has a section refuting reincarnation, which Hick articulates and critiques well.

• The Tragic Sense of Life / Unamuno / translated by Baha'oddin Khorramshahi / Nahid Publications

A strange book, full of information concerning various Christian thinkers and sects on the subject of death, with an existential approach. The chapter "The Helplessness of Reason" well unveils the inability to prove personal immortality and the weak arguments of philosophers on this topic.

• The Philosophy of Life and Death / M. V. Kamath / Ali Ahmad Bayat / Behjat Publications

Compiled in two parts: the first part examines death and the afterlife from the perspective of Eastern and Western religions, and the second part looks at the final stage of life for philosophers, literary figures, and politicians, from Plato and Jesus Christ to Hitler and Anne Boleyn.

• Death (A Collection of Essays) / Arghanoun Quarterly, Issues 26 and 27

A collection of essays by Western philosophers such as Bacon, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Camus, Heidegger, and Gadamer, among others. In each essay, we find an original and interesting point.

• Death / Todd May / Reza Alizadeh / Nashr-e Goman

At the beginning of the book, Todd May, by recounting a story by Borges, tries to explain death as a necessary and meaning-giving element to existence. The author's presupposition in this writing is a disbelief in the existence of an afterlife.

• Death-Thinking from Gilgamesh to Camus / written by Mehdi Kampani Zare / Negah-e Moaser / 2011

The book contains essays on death-thinking and examines the works of thinkers such as Heidegger, Camus, and Rumi. The best part of the book is the essay on Rumi. The remaining chapters are, at best, mediocre.

• The Myth of Sisyphus / Albert Camus / Mahmoud Soltanieh / Jami Publications, 2003 Camus considers the most important philosophical problem to be answering the question of whether, given the absurdity of the relationship between the world and man, we are permitted to commit suicide or not, and he conducts investigations into this.

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Death and Fiction :

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich / Leo Tolstoy / Translated by Soroush Habibi / Cheshmeh Publishing / First Edition 2010 The story of a man who contracts an incurable illness and progresses toward death. With particular artistry, Tolstoy depicts the stages a dying person goes through.

• Jean Barois / Roger Martin du Gard / Manouchehr Badiei / At the end of this novel, one of whose central themes is atheism and faith, the main character, a fervent atheist (Jean Barois), exhibits behavior in the face of death that is different from what he had imagined. Although....

• The Thibaults / Roger Martin du Gard / Abolhassan Najafi / Niloufar In this extraordinary four-volume novel, as the father of the main character (Antoine Thibault) approaches death and suffers excessive pain, Antoine and his brother Jacques decide to try euthanasia and ....

• The Bell Jar / Sylvia Plath / Goli Emami / Bagh-e Banoo Publishing

An autobiography concerning Plath's period of depression, her failed suicide attempt, and her hospitalization in a psychiatric institution.

• The Invention of Solitude / Paul Auster / Translated by Babak Tabraei / Ofogh In this work, American postmodern writer Paul Auster deals to some extent with the issue of death through the death of his father.

• Winter Journal / Paul Auster / Khojasteh Keyhan / Ofogh In this autobiography, Paul Auster sees death as near and offers some fascinating reflections on it.

• Seven Stories by Edgar Allan Poe / Edgar Allan Poe / Seyed Habib Gohari Rad / Shahr-e Khorshid Publishing 2007 Many of Edgar Allan Poe's best short stories are about death, one example of which I introduced. In this book, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" are of this kind. In fiction, there are other books that have depicted brilliant scenes of death: "Crime and Punishment," in which Raskolnikov contemplates the death of his victim. Or the harrowing death of Bovary in "Madame Bovary," or the suicide in "Anna Karenina," or the final pages of Stendhal's "The Red and the Black."

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Death and Psychoanalysis and Psychology :

• The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach / Bernard Spilka et al. / Mohammad Dehghani / Roshd Publications

The eighth chapter examines the relationship between religion and death from an empirical psychology perspective. Topics such as belief in an afterlife and the search for evidence of it, suicide and religion, and the impact of faith in boundary situations are among the most important subjects of this chapter.

• Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death / Irvin Yalom / Translated by Mehdi Ghabraei / Niko Nashr: Mashhad 2010 Yalom, an existential psychotherapist, considers the fear of death to be the source of the most important human anxieties, provides signs of it, and finally offers solutions for confronting it. Yalom also thoroughly dissects this subject in his book Existential Psychotherapy.

• Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near-Death Experiences of Children / Melvin Morse / Translated by Reza Jamalian / Ettela'at 1996

The book deals with near-death experiences (NDE) and those who have undergone these experiences, and examines the transformations in their lives after this experience. In the same context, in the book "The Psychology of Religion" by David Wulff, there is a short piece that presents the entirely materialistic explanations of Susan Blackmore. (Pages 826 to 832)