This collection contains twenty-one thought-provoking essays on the controversies surrounding the moral and legal distinctions between euthanasia and "letting die." Since public awareness of this issue has increased this second edition includes nine entirely new essays which bring the treatment of the subject up-to-date. The urgency of this issue can be gauged in recent developments such as the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands, "how-to" manuals topping the bestseller charts in the United States, and the many headlines devoted to Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who has assisted dozens of patients to die. The essays address the range of questions involved in this issue pertaining especially to the fields of medical ethics, public policymaking, and social philosophy. The discussions consider the decisions facing medical and public policymakers, how those decisions will affect the elderly and terminally ill, and the medical and legal ramifications for patients in a permanently vegetative state, as well as issues of parent/infant rights. The book is divided into two sections. The first, "Euthanasia and the Termination of Life-Prolonging Treatment" includes an examination of the 1976 Karen Quinlan Supreme Court decision and selections from the 1990 Supreme Court decision in the case of Nancy Cruzan. Featured are articles by law professor George Fletcher and philosophers Michael Tooley, James Rachels, and Bonnie Steinbock, with new articles by Rachels, and Thomas Sullivan. The second section, "Philosophical Considerations," probes more deeply into the theoretical issues raised by the killing/letting die controversy, illustrating exceptionally well the dispute between two rivaltheories of ethics, consequentialism and deontology. It also includes a corpus of the standard thought on the debate by Jonathan Bennet, Daniel Dinello, Jeffrie Murphy, John Harris, Philipa Foot, Richard Trammell, and N. Ann Davis, and adds articles new to this edition by Bennett, Foot, Warren Quinn, Jeff McMahan, and Judith Lichtenberg.

What made some 700 men and women in the Yorkshire town of Kingston-upon-Hull, in the years 1837 to 1900, decide to suffer no longer "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and take their own lives? In this study, the author seeks to uncover the experiences that drove people to suicide; to analyze how suicide was understood by victims, by their families and friends, and by legal and medical authorities; to study how the presumed causes of suicide and the meanings of suicide changed over time and in response to changed social circumstances; and to see what "suicide narratives" elicited by coroners' inquests can tell us about Victorian life, beliefs, and values in general.
The book is based on an unprecedentedly complete and comprehensive collection of inquest files covering the entire Victorian era in Hull (most coroners' files have not survived or exist only in fragmentary form). Hitherto, suicide in the Victorian period has been examined only on a national basis; where local evidence has been used, it has come chiefly from London. Through the testimony of relatives, neighbors, friends, and even the deceased (by means of suicide notes), the author has been able to get closer to the experience of suicide and its social construction than has been possible in any previous study.
The framework within which the author evaluates the paths to suicide is the life cycle. By placing each suicide in its local socioeconomic context, and by examining each stage in the life course for each sex and for different social levels, the author has been able to assess causation factors with great confidence. He establishes arguments (such as the importance of declining wages and job security for older men and the loss of a marital partner for either sex) more securely than have earlier studies, and puts some new arguments on the agenda (such as the importance of the presence or absence of interpersonal ties and the influence of Poor Law policy).

lluminated by a profound yet humorous vision, Lifting the Taboo explores the specific relationship women of many colors, cultures, ages, and sexual orientations have to their own deaths, their attitudes towards loss, and their disposition to their role as primary care-givers to the dying.

Specifically, the book weighs the implications of breast cancer and examines in detail Alzheimer's Disease which, contrary to popular myth, can in several significant ways be perceived as a women's disease. Investigating mothers' responses to children's deaths, Sally Cline establishes that women's relationships to death are intricately connected to the experience of giving birth. They are, she argues, therefore psychologically and emotionally different from those of men. Cline goes on to examine women's roles and responses to AIDS and suicide, women's sexual relationships while dying, how society views widows as leftover lives, and women's radical work in hospices and death therapy, as well as their roles as female funeral directors.

This work aims to explore experience of loss, change and grief, and foster positive attitudes towards teaching and learning about these issues. It outlines the different beliefs and practices associated with death and dying, and aims to help adults understand how children grieve. Suggestions are provided of ways in which adults might include teaching about loss and change within the school curriculum, and ways in which professionals educating and caring for children can collaborate in their work.

"Pet Loss and Human Bereavement" deals with the human/companion animal relationship and what happens when that bond is broken. The contributors to the book acknowledge the significance o the relationship and the grief involved when a pet dies or is terminally ill. The contributors' approach covers multidisciplinary care that can be given by veterinarians, psychiatrists, social workers, philosopher-ethicists, and others.

Topics include guidance for dealing with owners of terminally ill or recently deceased animals; the rights of animals to humane treatment; and the right of owners to find acceptance of their bereavement, respect for their emotional ties to their pets, and positive resolution of their grief.

Several years ago in Rajasthan, an eighteen-year-old woman was burned on her husband's funeral pyre and thus became sati. Before ascending the pyre, she was expected to deliver both blessings and curses: blessings to guard her family and clan for many generations, and curses to prevent anyone from thwarting her desire to die. Sati also means blessing and curse in a broader sense. To those who revere it, sati symbolizes ultimate loyalty and self-sacrifice. It often figures near the core of a Hindu identity that feels embattled in a modern world. Yet to those who deplore it, sati is a curse, a violation of every woman's womanhood. It is murder mystified, and as such, the symbol of precisely what Hinduism should not be.
In this volume a group of leading scholars consider the many meanings of sati in India and the West; in literature, art, and opera; in religion, psychology, economics, and politics. With contributors who are both Indian and American, this is a genuinely binational, postcolonial discussion. Contributors include Karen Brown, Paul Courtright, Vidya Dehejia, Ainslie Embree, Dorothy Figueira, Lindsey Harlan, John Hawley, Robin Lewis, Ashis Nandy, and Veena Talwar Oldenburg.

This collection contains twenty-one thought-provoking essays on the controversies surrounding the moral and legal distinctions between euthanasia and "letting die." Since public awareness of this issue has increased this second edition includes nine entirely new essays which bring the treatment of the subject up-to-date. The urgency of this issue can be gauged in recent developments such as the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands, "how-to" manuals topping the bestseller charts in the United States, and the many headlines devoted to Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who has assisted dozens of patients to die. The essays address the range of questions involved in this issue pertaining especially to the fields of medical ethics, public policymaking, and social philosophy. The discussions consider the decisions facing medical and public policymakers, how those decisions will affect the elderly and terminally ill, and the medical and legal ramifications for patients in a permanently vegetative state, as well as issues of parent/infant rights. The book is divided into two sections. The first, "Euthanasia and the Termination of Life-Prolonging Treatment" includes an examination of the 1976 Karen Quinlan Supreme Court decision and selections from the 1990 Supreme Court decision in the case of Nancy Cruzan. Featured are articles by law professor George Fletcher and philosophers Michael Tooley, James Rachels, and Bonnie Steinbock, with new articles by Rachels, and Thomas Sullivan. The second section, "Philosophical Considerations," probes more deeply into the theoretical issues raised by the killing/letting die controversy, illustrating exceptionally well the dispute between two rival theories of ethics, consequentialism and deontology. It also includes a corpus of the standard thought on the debate by Jonathan Bennet, Daniel Dinello, Jeffrie Murphy, John Harris, Philipa Foot, Richard Trammell, and N. Ann Davis, and adds articles new to this edition by Bennett, Foot, Warren Quinn, Jeff McMahan, and Judith Lichtenberg.

Rarely heard about in our society are caregivers' thoughts and feelings about life, death, and dying and how they act on those feelings. "For the Living: Coping, Caring and Communicating with the Terminally Ill" provides an in-depth, qualitative look at the experiences of oncology healthcare professionals as they work with terminally ill patients. Through a series of recorded and edited interviews, the author explores the social and cultural dynamics that affect physicians, nurses, and social workers routinely encountering mortality and loss. What death and the prospect of dying mean to these individuals should not be taken lightly.

Where are the dead? What are they doing? What kind of a process is dying? What relationships exist among the dead themselves, and between the dead and those in the world they have left behind? Modern philosophers argue that the idea of disembodied survival - to which many believers pay lip service - is incoherent, and that there can be evidence neither for nor against something incoherent. By contrast, this book argues, the idea of an embodied survival (albeit a form of embodiment differing from our present embodiment) makes perfect sense in itself and fits much better with the alleged evidence for post-mortem survival. Exploring post-mortem survival, Where are the Dead? uses a variety of empirical data, alongside mythological, legendary and purely fictional material, to illustrate how the less familiar idea of embodied post-mortem survival might actually 'work' in some real afterlife environment. By asking questions about the nature and whereabouts of the afterlife, and about what it might be like to be dead, the book explores themes nowadays relatively neglected even in disciplines explicitly concerned with ideas about death, dying and life after death.

Zygmunt Bauman's book is a brilliant exploration, from a sociological point of view, of the "taboo" subject in modern societies: death and dying. The book develops a new theory of the ways in which human mortality is reacted to, and dealt with, in social institutions and culture. The hypothesis explored in the book is that the necessity of human beings to live with the constant awareness of death accounts for crucial aspects of the social organization of all known societies. Two different "life strategies" are distinguished in respect of reactions to mortality. One, "the modern strategy," deconstructs mortality by translating the insoluble issue of death into many specific problems of health disease which are "soluble in principle." The "post-modern strategy," is one of deconstructing immortality: life is transformed into a constant rehearsal of "reversible death," a substitution of "temporary disappearance" for the irrevocable termination of life. This profound and provocative book will appeal to a wide audience. It will also be of particular interest to students and professionals in the areas of sociology, anthropology, theology, and philosophy.

Aimed at health care professionals and their colleagues, ministers of religion and funeral directors, this comprehensive work of reference describes the complex procedures required when someone dies. The information should be of value to all those who are concerned with the correct handling of situations as diverse as fatal mass disasters and the rites that are associated with those who hold unfamiliar religious beliefs. The guide is in three parts: legal and technical aspects; considerations for the living, care of the dying, and death with dignity; and religious, ethnic and cultural aspects of dying and death. The author combines medico-legal facts and practical, sensitive advice.

"A child's suicide pitches you into a hellish place of fragmentary images, the deepest depression imaginable, efforts to destroy yourself, and an almost complete break with what's happening in the world around you. That was my experience. I wish it upon no one." The essays of The Loneliest Places began as a chronicle of Rachel Dickinson's life after her son's suicide. The pieces became much more. Dickinson writes the unimaginable and terrifying facts of heartbreaking loss. In The Loneliest Places she tells stories from her months on the run, fleeing her grief and herself, as she escapes to Iceland and the Falkland Islands-as far as possible from the memories of her dead son, Jack. She frankly relates the paralyzing emotion that sometimes left her trapped in her home, confined to a single chair, helplessly isolated. The tales from these years are bleak and Dickinson's journey home, back to her changed self and fractured family, is lonely. Conjuring Emily Dickinson, however, she describes how hope was sighted, allowed to perch, and then, remarkably, made actual.

A study of the way in which death is socially organized in the city of Belfast. It analyzes the responses to 415 deaths registered here in 1981, tracing the social, medical, legal, religious and political responses made to those deaths from the time death was pronounced to the time of disposal.

'I have quite a bit of understanding of white man's ways, but it is difficult for me to understand this one.' An Australian Senate committee investigation of the Northern Territory's Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995, the first legislation in the world that allowed doctors to actively assist patients to die, found that for the vast majority of Indigenous Territorians, the idea that a physician - or anyone else - should help end a dying, suffering person's life was so foreign that in some instances it proved almost impossible to translate. The Good Death Through Time asks how such a death became a 'thinkable'-even desirable-way to die for so many others in Western cultures. For centuries a good death - the 'euthanasia' - meant a death blessed by God that might well involve pain, for suffering was seen as ultimately redemptive. But in the Victorian age, when doctors started to treat the dying with painkillers as well as prayers, a painful death came to be thought of as an aberrant, dehumanising experience. As this book explores, the modern idea that a good death should be painless spurred sometimes troubling developments in palliative medicine as well as an increasingly well-organised assisted dying movement. Delving into what euthanasia activists, doctors, lawyers, religious leaders and lay people have thought and felt about dying, The Good Death Through Time shows that understanding the radical historical shift in Western attitudes to managing dying and suffering helps us better grasp the stakes in today's contestations over what it means to die well.

Revisioning War Trauma in Cinema: Uncoming Communities uses philosophy and critical theory to examine films that participate in debates concerning trauma and representation. Our book reflects upon films that invent, rather than represent the moment history breaks down. It proposes a 21st century way forward across problems of trauma, inheritance, and representation into exceptional communities of artistic invention. Revisioning War Trauma involves a confrontation with death and the hole that trauma exposes. We build our subtitle from a play on words, namely the "un-coming" as a resistance to jouissance and as a limit to cultural demands. Uncoming also refers to the traumatic departure of figures in the films from their homes and their symbolic places. As always already in the process of departure, characters in the films our book discusses embody the hemorrhaging of imaginary belonging that nationhood compels. The book uses psychoanalytic theory as a framework and a robust language that allows us to speak about what evades sense. Our book also engages with other post-modern theories of disaster and politics to examine how trauma might serve as an opportunity to foreground an aesthetics and politics of difference. Each chapter is a close reading of a film that critically examines a cinematic screen that allows for the emergence of what history fails to transmit.

Guided by the Spirits is a case study of youth suicide in the Sault Sainte Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Written by a member of the tribal community, this study focuses on qualitative methods, indigenous experience, and collaborative approaches to explore the social and historical significance of youth suicide in an Ojibwa community. Guided by the Spirits combines traditional methods of analysis, extracts of interviews and field notes, and creative ethnographic writing to present the relationships between culture, history, identity, agency, and youth suicide. This book is a must read for lay readers, policy makers, and researchers who seek a window into contemporary Native American life as well as a critical interpretation of youth suicide in indigenous societies.

Death comes to all, and yet death is not the end. For some, death is the beginning of unending bliss, for others, unending despair. In this latest edition of the bestselling book One Minute After You Die, Pastor Erwin W. Lutzer weighs the Bible’s words on life after death. He considers:

• Channeling, reincarnation, and near-death experiences
• What heaven and hell will be like
• The justice of eternal punishment
• Trusting in God’s providence
• Preparing for your own final moment

Though the afterlife is shrouded in mystery, the Bible does peel back the curtain. Dr. Lutzer will help you understand what is on the other side.

May the reality of eternity quicken and comfort you today.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This volume provides a series of illuminating perspectives on the timings of death, through in-depth studies of Shakespearean tragedy, criminal execution, embalming practices, fears of premature burial, rumours of Adolf Hitler's survival, and the legal concept of brain death. In doing so, it explores a number of questions, including: how do we know if someone is dead or not? What do people experience at the moment when they die? Is death simply a biological event that comes about in temporal stages of decomposition, or is it a social event defined through cultures, practices, and commemorations? In other words, when exactly is death? Taken together, these contributions explore how death emerges in a series of stages that are uncertain, paradoxical, and socially contested.

Throughout history, the nature and mystery of death has captivated artists, scientists, philosophers, physicians, and theologians. This eerie chronology ventures right to the borderlines of science and sheds light into the darkness. Here, topics as wide ranging as the Maya death gods, golems, and seances sit side by side with entries on zombies and quantum immortality. With the turn of every page, readers will encounter beautiful artwork, along with unexpected insights about death and what may lie beyond.

New to this third edition on the psychology of death are chapters on how we construct death; death in adolescence and adulthood, including suicide; physician assisted death, regret theory and denial; new approaches to the role of death anxiety; terror management theory; and edge theory.

This book takes a critical glance at the ways in which we attend to the corpse, tracing a trajectory from encounter toward considering options for disposal: veneered mortuary internment, green burial and its attendant rot, cremation and alkaline hydrolysis, donation and display, and ecological burial. Through tracing the possible futures of the dead that haunt the living, through both the stories that we tell and physical manifestations following the end of life, we expose the workings of aesthetics that shape corpses, as well as the ways in which corpses spill over, resisting aestheticization. This book creates a space for ritualized practices surrounding death: corpse disposal; corpse aesthetics that shape both practices attendant upon and representations of the corpse; and literary, figural, and cultural representations that deploy these practices to tell a story about dead bodies-about their separation from the living, about their disposability, and ultimately about the living who survive the dead, if only for a while. There is an aesthetics of erasure persistently at work on the dead body. It must be quickly hidden from sight to shield us from the certain trauma of our own demise, or so the unspoken argument goes. Experts-scientists, forensic specialists, death-care professionals, and law enforcement-are the only ones qualified to view the dead for any extended period of time. The rest of us, with only brief doses, inoculate ourselves from the materiality of death in complex and highly ritualized ceremonies. Beyond participating in the project of restoring our sense of finitude, we try to make sense of the untouchable, unviewable, haunting, and taboo presence of the corpse itself.

In contextualizing the Dutch funerary practice in its wider legal, national and local governance framework, this book describes the historical context for current practices, provides data on trends in burial and cremation, and examines recent developments including natural burial, increasing religious diversity and changing national legislation. Chapters provide an overview of funerary history and contemporary practice, alongside photographs, charts and tables of key information. Topics explored include: the death care industry; the Corpse Disposal Act; a typical funeral including funeral costs and insurance; cemetery and crematorium provision; and, the practices, technicalities and legalities of burial and cremation. The book also analyses and illustrates the commemorative practice of public mourning events related to World War II, the Holocaust and the MH17 plane crash. This book provides a broad frame of reference on funeral practices, making it a useful resource for academics, policy makers and practitioners interested in the historic, legal, technical and professional aspects of the funerary industry.

Structured around a personal account of the illness and death of the author's partner, Jane, this book explores how something hard to bear became a threshold to a world of insight and discovery. Drawing on German Idealism and Jane's own research in the area, The Aesthetic Experience of Dying looks at the notion of life as a binary synthesis, or a return enhanced, as a way of coming to understand death. Binary synthesis describes the interplay between dynamically opposing pairs of concepts - such as life and death - resulting in an enhanced version of one of them to move forward in a new cycle of the process. Yet what relevance does this elegant word game have to the shocking diagnosis of serious illness? Struggling to balance reason with sense, thought with feeling, this book examines the experience of caring for someone from diagnosis to death and is illustrated with examples of the return enhanced. The concluding chapter outlines how the tension of Jane's dying has been resolved as the rhythmic patterns of the lifeworld have been understood through the process of reflecting on the experience. This creative and insightful book will appeal to those interested in the medical humanities. It will also be an important reference for practising and student health professionals.