Philosophical Approaches to Human Immortality

By: Muhammad Sa‘idi-Mihr Amir Divani
Various interpretations have been presented regarding human immortality. In this discussion, by immortality we mean the imperishability of humans after death of their body. Impersonal immortality is not the subject of this discussion. An example of impersonal immortality is the representation of immortality through our progeny and descendants. Various psychologists state that mental states such as preference of male children over female children and mental disorders such as discontentment due to lack of children originate from this feeling.
In addition, conviction of the legendary status of one’s name and memory among the living is another type of impersonal immortality. Humans regard endurance of their names, works, and progeny as the endurance of their selves. Some of those that regard humans as entirely corporeal and do not believe in human immortality, sometimes comfort themselves and others by impersonal immortality, yet the chief aspiration of humanity is not this type of immortality.
Because of the differences of opinion regarding the nature of humanity, personal immortality has been portrayed in various manners. Therefore, some portrayals are based upon the existence of the soul and its incorporeality and others, which do not advocate the incorporeal soul, depict human immortality solely in terms of the body. Herein, we have included some renditions that are not based on the existence of the soul:

1. Corporal Reanimation
Those who believe that the human essence is restricted to its material body and that the individual identity is determined through its respective body yet accept human immortality usually explain it as restoration of the dead or reassembly of the decomposed body through divine providence. Hence, we are faced with two opinions. One is the belief that the human body, which constitutes the entire identity of the individual, is annihilated after death and recreated by God at the Resurrection.1
The other is the belief that the human body in composed of both main and subsidiary elements. According to this belief, personal identity is related to the body’s main elements, which are constant throughout life and are not destroyed after death but are disjoined and shall be rejoined at the Resurrection.2
According to these two views, humans lack life until the Resurrection and they gain new life in the true sense of the term when they are resurrected.

2. Subtle or Ethereal Body
This theory pertains to those who believe in the soul’s independence from the body but do not regard it incorporeal. According to this belief, the soul is a subtle body that has no mass or weight but possesses some material qualities such as shape and size. The subtle body exists within the corporeal body throughout one’s worldly life. It departs the body after death and persists thereupon independent of the body.
As per this concept, life of the corporal body is not inherent; rather, it is essentially inanimate and acquires life through association with the subtle body whose life is intrinsic. The body that is continually changing throughout the life of the individual is the corporal anatomy. This anatomy is an excrescence upon the subtle or ethereal body and is shed at the time of death.3 This theory is grounded on contemporary spiritual research.
The common factor in these two theories is that they do not consider the incorporeal soul to be the origin of the identity and do not support an eternal soul. In the discussion on human nature, we have shown that the human constitution cannot be considered solely material and some of humanity’s states and conditions cannot be explained without the existence of a soul. Hence, the inaccuracy of these theories regarding immortality is made obvious.
The ensuing theories regarding immortality are based on the existence of a spiritual and immaterial aspect to humanity.

a. The Unincorporated [nāmutajassid] Soul
The first person to explicate and expound this theory was Plato. According to his perspective, the human soul, which belongs to the plane of divine and incorporeal beings, has existed before its body. After its fall, the soul became entangled in the tenebrous world of materiality. The body is only a tool for the soul in worldly life. After the death of the body, the soul returns to its original abode, which is free of material and body. When Socrates was asked how he should be buried, he replied: “As you please, provided I remain still with you, and do not make my escape elsewhere… as soon as the poison has operated I shall remain no longer here, but be transported to the mansions of the blest…”4
This perspective does not regard corporeal existence to have a share in human immortality. Advocates of this theory explain parapsychological phenomena in diverse manners.
A noteworthy point is that Plato’s theory regarding the existence of the human soul before creation of the material body is accepted among many Moslem mystics and philosophers; even so, the theory that the incorporeal soul is eternally severed from a material body is unacceptable to them.
Regarding severance from the divine plane, Jalāl ad-Dīn Mawlavī declares: Listen to the reed pipe (humanity) as it tells a story; It complains of separations.
That as I was severed from my true abode; Men and women wailed of my sorrow.5
In his renowned elegy, Ibn al-Sīnā (Avicenna) states: “A mighty and self-disciplined dove (the human soul) descended towards you (the natural world) from its lofty heights… I guess it has forgotten the covenants it had pledged in its homeland and the habitats that it was unwilling to leave…”
Of course, these two words can be interpreted differently, so that this passage does not signify the existence of a soul before its body but merely that the soul is a supernatural entity.
As we shall explain in the Qur’anic section, return of the soul without any material body at the Resurrection is not accepted by the Noble Qur’an. Therefore, even though various Muslim philosophers such as Ibn al-Sīnā (Avicenna) reached an impasse in attempting to prove the reattachment of the soul to a corporeal body, they would accept spiritual-material resurrection because of their faith in divine revelation. This acceptance signifies the clarity of the Qur’an in depicting the presence of a body in the afterworld, such that Muslim philosophers, who prefer divine revelation and utilize reason to explicate religious statements, regarded material presence in the afterlife a certainty. Humanity does not have a short-term relationship with the body; rather, the body is an integral part of the reality of humankind. If it is such that neither the body nor the soul can be disregarded in the nature of humanity, the interpretation of Ibn al-Sīnā must be challenged as to how it can be possible that there is no body in the span between this life and the next while there is a soul and human individual.

B. Metempsychosis (Reincarnation)
According to this tenet, which is advocated by most Indian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, only few humans continue their existence with an incorporal soul after death while most return to worldly life in a new form and body in successive cycles. This regenerative cycle of life and death continues without interruption until individuals are successful in purifying their respective souls of material restrictions, which is the only way to realize freedom from this unending cycle. Persons that cannot purify their souls shall perpetually remain in the cycle of corporal and worldly life.
There is a difference of opinion among advocates of this belief in whether the soul necessarily enters human bodies or may also enter animal bodies after disjunction of the soul and prior body. At any rate, the law that determines the manner of rebirth and causes transmigration of the soul into a superior or inferior body is called Karma. Karma determines the future life of each human.
This law states that our deeds, speech, and beliefs dictate our future fate and the connection between one’s current and subsequent body is justified in this manner. In their rebirth, the soul enters a body corresponding to the habits and ethical characteristics of the individual’s previous life. This is why religions that support this concept prohibit consuming meat and harassing animals. After death, evil humans are reincarnated within human fetuses that possess inferior social statuses or in weak or lowly bodies as the consequence of their deeds.
According to the concept of metempsychosis, persons who free themselves of the continuous cycle of rebirth shall live on in an absolute spiritual state and as long as they remain in the regenerative cycle, they endure spiritual-physical punishment.6
Proponents of this concept have presented many philosophic, dialectic [kalāmī], and empiric rationales. However, not only are these rationales unjustified but there are grounds that show the absence of demonstrability and invalidity of the doctrine of metempsychosis.
In the first place, one must ask, how can the sameness of a person at time A and time B be demonstrated? Each of us lives through stages whose material and psychological qualities differ; nevertheless, links called memories connect these stages to each other. The existence of memories validates the individual unity of a person. However, how can the concept of metempsychosis show the sameness of the soul in the two periods of A and B?
If the criterion is persistence of memories, in nearly all instances the individual has no recollection of previous existences. If the criterion is material persistence, again this is not applicable in metempsychosis because according to this concept, the individual is sometimes reincarnated as a woman, sometimes as a man, and sometimes as an animal.
If the criterion is similarity of psychological tendencies, the duality of individual X and individual Y who live at the same time cannot be justified. In other words, the problem is how much similarity in mental attributes demonstrates the sameness of two individuals.7 Consequently, the persistence of an individual identity in two time periods is not possible.
In the second place, the doctrine of metempsychosis is fundamentally fallacious because as we have stated in our analysis of the nature of death, death is traveling beyond the natural world not mere detachment of the body and soul. Accordingly, we cannot accept that the soul can be incarnated within a new body after disjuncture from its previous body and persist in the natural world. To state matters differently, in their essential evolution, humans pass through various stages—one of which is the stage of corporal attachment—and reach a state in which they no longer need the mundane world. Therefore, this doctrine is like the return of an adult to childhood or return from perfection to fault which is not acceptable.
In addition, the relationship of every soul with its body is unique. Thus, there cannot be a relationship between a soul and another body.
Various divine verses and narrations [riwāyat] of the Immaculates (‘a) do affirm the transformation of some humans into animal forms. Some of these verses state that God damns some people and they turn into apes or pigs. Additionally, various narrations state that some people shall be resurrected with faces much uglier than the faces of apes and pigs.
These statements do not affirm this doctrine of reincarnation since the issue of resurrection in the Hereafter is essentially different from the concept of metempsychosis, which is the return of the soul to the natural world after its disassociation from its previous body. Therefore, statements regarding manifestation of individuals in the afterworld in bodies that are formed of their worldly beliefs and actions—in other words, the manifestation of the reality of each human in the Hereafter—is unrelated to the concept of metempsychosis. The two main reasons for this are as follows: The supposed bodies that the concept of metempsychosis speaks of are not truly related to each other; however, the body that is the manifestation of actions is a body that has directly resulted from the self and its volitional beliefs and actions.
The successive bodies in the concept of metempsychosis are natural bodies; however, the body that is the manifestation of actions is not natural.
According to Jalāl ad-Dīn Mawlavī: So the resurrection of the envious on the Day of Judgment; Shall doubtless be in the form of wolves.
The resurrection of the avaricious carrion-eating scoundrel; Shall be in the form of a pig on the Day of Reckoning.
Fornicators shall have stinking private parts; Alcohol-drinkers shall have foul-smelling mouths.
The character that is predominant within your being; Must necessarily be the basis for your constitution at Resurrection.
One moment a wolf will spring from humanity; The next, a second Joseph shining as the moon.8
Notes:
1. - See: ‘Aẓud ad-Dīn-e ’Ījī, [Sharḥ-e] Muwāfiq (Commentary of Muwāfiq), vol. 8, p. 289.
2. - See: Allāmah Ḥillī, Sharḥ-e Tajrīd ul-I‘tiqād (Commentary of the Belief of Incorporeality), pp. 402-403.
3. - Murtaḍā Muṭaharī, Ma‘ād (Eschatology or Resurrection), p. 24.
4. - Plato: Complete Works, Phaedrus (Phaedon).
5. - Jalal ad-Din Mawlavī, Mathnavī-e Ma‘navī (Spititual Couplets), Book I, verses 1-2.
6. - Nass, John B., The Comprehensive History of Religions.
7. - John Hick, Philosophy of Religion.
8. - Jalal ad-Din Mawlavī, Mathnavī-e Ma‘navī (Spiritual Couplets), Book II, verses 1413-1415, and 1420-1421.