Are we accepting of death, or in denial of it? What insights can we gain from the ways death has been imagined, theorized, and organized throughout Western social and intellectual history that might help us respond meaningfully to the climate emergency? This interdisciplinary study begins with the role of tragedy in Greek antiquity and examines European attitudes toward death, especially their entanglement with colonial atrocities and politically organized killings. Drawing on the work of philosophers, sociologists, historians, and psychoanalysts, this is a resounding call to confront our responsibility for the lives of others—and the future of life itself—amid the existential threats of the Anthropocene.
This book combines Western history of death with sociology and philosophy to explore our approach to death. It examines sociological debates, the cultural construction of death and uses existential phenomenology and Freudian psychology to examine the search for meaning in our finite lives.
