The Mirror of Death: Hermeneutical Reflections on the Afterlife

Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte

FIVE SATURDAYS: August 23, September 6, 13, 27, October 4.
10 AM-12 PM Eastern US Time. See time zone converter if you’re in a different location.
A Zoom link will be provided on registration.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Death – and especially the presence of the dead – makes modern man and contemporary society highly uncomfortable. Interest in death is largely confined to efforts aimed at avoiding and overcoming it. The dead, meanwhile, have been systematically marginalized if not completely banished, with the bereaved becoming the focus of attention in the attempt to remove this macabre and unsettling reality of mortality from society. The notion of an afterlife has been subjected to an even more pronounced decline. Once central to theological and existential discourse, it has now been largely reduced to a simplistic dichotomy framed in terms of psychological consolation. This reductive lens – whether affirming or dismissive – has rendered the concept increasingly irrelevant, even within religious contexts.

This seminar seeks to counter(balance) the prevailing highly one-dimensional perspective on death and the afterlife. Philosophy, indeed, is uniquely positioned to undertake this task; not merely because, since antiquity, it has been considered as a learning how to die, but, more significantly, because the philosophical tradition of hermeneutics offers unique tools for understanding how death and the afterlife can deepen our grasp not only of philosophical inquiry – on how to philosophize – but of life itself. While these practices were much more central to the philosophical enterprise of the past, they have not vanished in recent decades. On the contrary, a diverse range of philosophers and cultural critics have deliberately drawn on the motifs of the afterlife to enrich and intensify their critiques of contemporary society. And this is not a coincidence, but a purposeful choice to give greater clarity to their critiques of certain societal dynamics. Jean-Paul Sartre’s assertion that ‘Hell is other people’, Giorgio Agamben’s reading of the dangerous derives of democracy as infernal death camps, Wolfgang Streeck’s analogy between capitalism and Limbo, and Bernard Williams’ bleak assessment of the boredom of monotonous paradisiacal repetitiveness, all represent contemporary examples of what can be identified as hermeneutical reflections of the afterlife.  

This seminar may be understood as an intellectual  Baedeker of the afterlife – a guide through the conceptual landscapes that have long structured reflections on death and what lies beyond. Through a critical engagement with figures such as Dante, Plato, Cicero, Montaigne, Sartre, Camus, Illich, Foucault, Agamben, Streeck, Rosa, and many others, we will explore the hermeneutical appropriation by these scholars of the various regions of the afterlife. These perspectives offer profound insight into the human condition, revealing how modern politics, interpersonal relations, the temporalities of life, capitalist economies, medicalization, systems of incarceration, wokism, and the pervasive experience of crisis acquire new and often unsettling dimensions when viewed through the lens of the afterlife.

Abbreviated schedule

Session I: Aemulatio; The Genealogy of Death 
Session II: The Cemetery; The Afterlife, A Short Genealogy 
Session III: Hell; Heaven
Session IV: Purgatory; Limbo of the Fathers
Session V: Limbo of the Children; Conclusion

Facilitator: Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte is a philosopher and writer. He has almost two decades of experience in teaching and research in numerous higher education settings: Edinburgh, Paris, Rome, and Bloemfontein (South-Africa) – where he still is a Research Fellow. He is the author of The Mirror of Death: Hermeneutical Reflections of the Realms in the Afterlife (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) and Limbo Reapplied. On Living in Perennial Crisis and the Immanent Afterlife (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); and co-editor of Purgatory: Philosophical Dimensions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).