Conclusion

Between the 1580s and the 1640s there was a reconfiguration of the discursive environment in which meditation on death and the afterlife was conducted. The conclusion traces this reconfiguration in writings by Montaigne, Bacon, and especially Descartes. In their different ways, all three writers contributed to a new pluralism of discourse surrounding death and the afterlife, one where philosophy and Christian remembrance of the last end, which had hitherto been regarded as one and the same discourse, or at least in close alliance, could no longer be assumed to reinforce each other.