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Life Worth Living is an initiative of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School.
Life, Death, and Afterlife
Elon University
Course Description:
The themes of our course—life, death, and afterlife—provoke a number of centuries-old questions.
- Life: (1) Who do we answer to? (2) What does it mean for a life to go well? (3) What should we do when we fail? (4) What is the role of suffering in a good life?
- Death: (1) How do we talk about dying, death, and the dead? (2) What is death? (3) What characterizes a meaningful and dignified death as well as the opposite? (4) Is there such a thing as “good grief”? (5) How can thinking about death inform the way we live?
- Afterlife: (1) Is there life after death? (2) If one is to believe in an eternal afterlife, how might one characterize it? (3) Does an expectation of eternal life drain this life of all its meaning? (4) Is there a possibility for humans to achieve immortality, and if so, in what ways?
Many individuals throughout space and time have sought answers to these questions, some through a religious lens. This course will examine a diverse range of religious texts, traditions, and thinkers from the ancient world up to and including our own that discuss life, death, and the afterlife. As we learn from their ideas, we will reflect on how we might answer these questions (as listed above as well as others that emerge from these) for ourselves. The goal is not to arrive at any certainties on these topics, for such is impossible. Instead, our goal will be to continue asking questions as we wrestle together with the uncertainties of human life, the reality of death, and the possibility of an afterlife. To this end, this course is divided into three units aptly titled: Life (Unit I), Death (Unit II) and Afterlife (III). In addition to the course material and in-class sessions, each unit will also have at least one class session (or part of one) that is outside of the classroom including, but not limited to, a visit to a local funeral home and to the Animal Park at the Conservators Center; this will prompt students to think further about how questions of life, death, and the afterlife are always and everywhere pertinent.
