Fear of the dead, fear of death: is it biological or psychological?

Mortality ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 322-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
Keyword(s):  
Fear Of Death ◽  
The Dead

Re-examining Roman Death Pollution

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 5-27
Author(s):  
Allison L. C. Emmerson
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Variable Combination ◽  
The City

AbstractThe idea that the dead were polluting — that is, that corpses posed a danger of making the living unclean, offensive both to their own communities and to the gods — has long occupied a fundamental position in Roman funerary studies. Nevertheless, what that pollution comprised, as well as how it affected living society, remain subject to debate. This article aims to clarify the issue by re-examining the evidence for Roman attitudes towards the dead. Focusing on the city of Rome itself, I conclude that we have little reason to reconstruct a fear of death pollution prior to Late Antiquity; in fact, the term itself has been detrimental to current understandings. No surviving text from the late republican or early imperial periods indicates that corpses were objects of metaphysical fear, and rather than polluted, mourners are better conceived as obligated, bound by a variable combination of emotions and conventions to behave in certain, if certainly changeable, ways following a death.

scholarly journals Антропология смерти в творчестве Дмитрия Мережковского

2018 ◽  
Vol 167 ◽  
pp. 233-247
Author(s):  
Andrzej Dudek
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Dmitrii Merezhkovskii

Anthropology of deathin the works by Dmitrii Merezhkovskii Death-related images and thoughts belong to key motives in the works by Dmitrii Merezhkovskii. Biological and metaphysical aspects of death appear to be the most important issues in the analyzed texts. By means of placing plots and themes in various epochs Merezhkovskii revealed the universality of the fear of death and its importance as far as shaping human conscience is concerned. In fictional and essayistic texts either, the Russian writer stressed the importance of the attitude to the dead body, funeral ceremonies and graveyards. That motif focuses value-orien­tations and patterns of culture specific for various communities. Merezhovskii reveals mutual interdependence between death and culture: on one hand — death inspires to express the essence of human nature in cultural forms, on the other hand — death is considered a tool used in order to achieve ideological and political goals. Antropologia śmierciw twórczości Dymitra Mierieżkowskiego Śmierć to jeden z kluczowych motywów twórczości Dymitra Mierieżkowskiego. Wśród różnych obrazów śmierci i myśli o niej w omawianych tekstach istotną rolę odgrywają rozważania o biologicznych i metafizycznych aspektach śmierci. Uniwersalność doświadczenia lęku tanato­logicznego i jego znaczenie dla formowania świadomości człowieka podkreślana jest przez arty­styczne ujęcia ulokowane w kulturowej przestrzeni różnych epok. W utworach beletrystycznych i eseistycznych Mierieżkowskiego szczególne znaczenie mają fragmenty prezentujące rozmaite podejścia do martwego ciała, ceremonii pogrzebowych i cmentarzy. Motywy te ogniskują charak­terystyczne dla różnych zbiorowości orientacje wartościujące i wzory kultury. Między śmiercią i kulturą, jak pokazuje pisarz, istnieje dwustronna zależność: z jednej strony śmierć inspiruje do wyrażenia istoty natury ludzkiej w formach kulturowych, z drugiej — jest wykorzystywana doosiągania celów ideologicznych i politycznych.

“Death-Spectacles” in Quattrocento Life and Laude

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-31
Author(s):  
Gioia Filocamo
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
High Point ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
Religious Songs

Abstract In the fourteenth century a huge change took place in thinking about death: the kingdom of the beyond became full of dreadful suffering. This new mentality derives from the belief in Purgatory that took hold in the twelfth century, but reached its high point only in the fifteenth: the judgement of the dead would take place immediately after death. Prayers and money invested in order to obtain remission of sins encouraged the expansion of a true “economy of death” manageable from earth. The birth of the Observance movement inside the Mendicant Orders may be connected with this new sensibility, in which the faithful are more concerned with their personal salvation. The “death-spectacles” evoked by Girolamo Savonarola became lenses through which to look at life, but even before him many authors of laude – vernacular religious songs mainly composed for civic confraternities – express the same modern thought on death inspired by Holy Scripture, but excluding high poetic models. The common practice of “cantasi come …” – the reuse of music known with a different text now turned to fear of death – confirms the strong contiguity between life and death, read as a true “extension” of life.

scholarly journals II. Remarks on some Passages of the sixth Book of the Eneid

1790 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
James Beattie
Keyword(s):  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Future State ◽  
Present Purpose ◽  
The World ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Poor Peasant ◽  
Distinct Idea

The poetical beauties of Virgil's sixth book are great and many; and a most agreeable task it would be to point them out: but that is not my present purpose. Nor do I intend to draw a comparison of the sentiments of our poet with those of Homer, concerning a future state. From Homer, no doubt, Virgil received the first hint of this episode ; but the evocation of the ghosts, in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, is not in any degree so striking, or so poetical, as Eneas's descent into the world of spirits. Nor does the former exhibit any distinct idea of retribution. In it all is dark and uncomfortable. “I would rather, says the ghost of “Achilles, be the slave of a poor peasant among the living, “than reign sole monarch of the dead:” a passage blamed, not without reason, by Plato, as unfriendly to virtue, and tending to debase the soul by an unmanly fear of death.

Comparison of Attitudes toward Death and Dying among Nursing Majors and other College Students

1996 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanta Sharma ◽  
Rita Black Monsen ◽  
Bette Gary
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Nursing Students ◽  
Factor Structure ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Professional Socialization ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
The Body ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Contemporary Sample ◽  
The Dead

Recent studies of attitudes toward fear of death and dying among under-graduates have been sparse. Hoelter's Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS) [1] was developed among undergraduates to discern fear of death or death anxiety. The purposes of this study were to 1) examine the factor structure and reliability estimates of Hoelter's MFODS in a contemporary sample of college students and 2) compare the attitudes of nursing majors with those of other college students at a small liberal arts university in rural, southwestern Arkansas. It was hypothesized that the 1) attitudes of nursing majors would differ from those preparing for other careers and 2) attitudes of nursing majors and other undergraduates would differ at each level of student status (freshman through senior years). This was a descriptive study surveying attitudes among students who were recruited through cooperating faculty in courses serving all undergraduate majors. Informed consents were signed after review of the introductory information by the students. The sample consisted of 405 students, ages eighteen to sixty-four years (mean age 26 years); 27 percent were males and 73 percent females. Nursing students comprised 24 percent of the sample and were marginally different demographically from other students. The MFODS (a 42-item, pencil-and-paper instrument including a demographic questionnaire) was administered in one classroom session. Factor structure was derived using principal components analysis with varimax rotation and revealed eight subscales accounting for 21 percent of the variance. The total scale alpha reliability was .88, with eight subscale alpha reliabilities ranging from .75 to .85. The results of comparisons of nursing students with others revealed differences on three subscales and the total MFODS. Nursing students were less fearful of the dead, less fearful of being conscious while dead, and less fearful of being destroyed after death. Analyses of students by levels of student status revealed that freshman nursing students were most fearful of the dead and junior nursing students were most fearful of discovering a dead body. Other undergraduate freshmen were most fearful of events after death such as treatment of the body after death, being practiced on by medical students, being embalmed, being conscious in a morgue, and the thought of never being found after death. There were no significant findings among comparisons of nursing and other undergraduate majors by level of student status (freshman through senior). It was concluded the MFODS was a reliable instrument. Nursing students displayed significant attitudinal differences as compared to other students examined. Students who study nursing may bring greater acceptance of death and the dying process to health care arenas. Longitudinal comparison studies and qualitative analyses of attitudes were recommended to further elucidate professional socialization processes.

Reflections on the Fear of Death

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles David Axelrod
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Book Of The Dead

In contemporary thanatological writing, we often encounter the injunction to “practice death,” an idea based on the assumption that by reflecting on mortality one can overcome a fear of it. The same idea appears explicitly and implicitly in numerous ancient philosophical and religious texts, such as the Bardo Thodol (known to the English community as The Tibetan Book of the Dead), Plato's Phaedo, the writings of Epicurus, and certain segments of the Old Testament. This article explores the prescription to practice death in these sources in an effort to locate its inherent rationality.

scholarly journals Is profession associated with fear of death?

2014 ◽  
Vol 155 (31) ◽  
pp. 1236-1240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ágnes Zana ◽  
Barna Konkolÿ Thege ◽  
Imre Limpár ◽  
Eszter Henczi ◽  
Petra Golovics ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Medical Students ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Study Groups ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Factor Scores ◽  
Attitude To Death ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Few Data ◽  
The Relationship

Introduction: There are relatively few data on the relationship between professions and fear of death. Aim: The aim of the authors was to examine the association between profession and fear of death. Method: Physicians, medical students and other healthcare workers, priests, psychologists and non-healthcare workers (N = 1062) were asked about their attitude to death by means of the Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale. Results: Significant differences were found in the total and some factor scores among the study groups. Priests showed the lowest fear of death values. Scores on the Fear of the Dead Factor was the highest in psychologists and non-healthcare workers who had no contact with the dead and dying. Conclusions: Fear of death seems rather to be present in professions dealing less directly with the dead and dying. Orv. Hetil., 2014, 155(31), 1236–1240.

The girl and the ghost

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-164
Author(s):  
Per Fikse ◽  
Endre Eidsaa Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Existential Philosophy ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Difference

By guiding our attention to the emotional responses of a little girl and her darkly lit surroundings, Jude’s film explores human existence in the face of death. Informed by existential philosophy in the vein of Heidegger, this article investigates the difference between fear of death and fear of the dead.

Surplus-Population and the Political Economy of Fear

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 889-905
Author(s):  
Siyaves Azeri
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Individual ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The One ◽  
Surplus Population ◽  
Anxiety And Fear

Fear, of which the fear of death is a variation, can be analysed in its relation to forms of societies. Pertaining to Marx’s concept of ‘surplus-population’ and his analysis of the capitalist law of population, it is argued that the main source of anxiety and fear in capitalist society is the fear of life, which is expressed in the form of fear of the dead and of monsters. Capital posits the identity of every human individual through its law of population. What humans fear the most is the life that they live, which turns them into walking dead. Human’s fear of life is twofold: on the one hand, she fears from being posited a zombie, a piece within the pile of human trash, that is, the surplus-population; on the other hand, she is scared of the dead, capital the spectre, which vampire-like sucks upon living labour.

On the Rationality of Fear of Death

1976 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Walton
Keyword(s):  
Premature Death ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Complete Extinction ◽  
Rational Person ◽  
The Dead

This article discusses the bearing of some arguments on the rationality of death fear on the hypothesis of the secular conception of death, namely, that death entails complete extinction of consciousness. Variants of three arguments are evaluated: (1) If the dead experience nothing, and only the (broadly) painful is fearful, then death should not be feared; (2) Being deprived of something we desire is fearful, thus death, as a deprivation, might be rationally feared; (3) It is not rational to fear non-premature death because lifespan longer than the normal is not desirable for the rational person.

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