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  • Essay / Hume, Descartes and Nietzsche's views on immortality

    Immortality is one of the major apprehensions of humanity, although it has been mainly limited to religious customs. People have different opinions about immortality. Everyone defines immortality differently. For some it is about the survival of the astral body resembling the physical body, for others the immortality of the immaterial soul and finally the resurrection of the body. The basic definition of immortality is the unknown continuation of a person's existence, even after death. Immortality primarily referred to the soul because it does not die when the human body dies, but since they are both well connected, when the body dies, the soul dies too; therefore, immortality does not exist. Hume expands the evidence of experience and shows us that thought and consciousness depend on our bodily existence and; therefore, physical death must also indicate the death of the spirit. He shows this argument based on three elements: metaphysical themes, moral themes and physical themes. In a metaphysical theme, it says that mind, soul and spirit are equally unknown. That's why people have to find out through experience. He states: “But metaphysics alone teaches us that the notion of substance is totally confused and imperfect, and that we have no other idea of ​​any substance than as an aggregate of particular qualities, inherent in a something of unknown. Matter and spirit are therefore basically equally unknown; and we cannot determine what qualities may be inherent in one or the other. » (Hume, 97) With this he is trying to say that we have no idea whether the soul is essentially an immaterial or material substance. This is why he claims that perhaps thinking is something that the body does, which does not necessarily mean that it is separate from the body. For the middle of the paper, the entire body, nevertheless, if a foot, an arm or any other part of the body were amputated, I know that nothing would be taken from the mind” (Descartes, 476). He believed that the mind and the body cannot be the same material. He gives another argument that the body has an extension in space and as such it can be referred to physical things. But the mind has no extension and, therefore, it has no physical characteristics. Since the body has extension, but the mind does not, then the mind can be considered a separate material. In conclusion, there are many ways to prove that the soul and body are very well connected to each other and can never become detached. They both serve a single function and one of them cannot exist with another. So when the body dies, the soul dies too. Since the soul can die like the body, this means that the soul is mortal, which means that immortality does not exist..