Richard John Neuhaus, The Eternal Pity

1. What is the article by Richard John Neuhaus about?  How is his quotation from T. S. Eliot similar to a theme we found in Annie Dillard’s “The Wreck of Time”?

2. How, according to Neuhaus, does our culture differ from that of the Victorians when it comes to sex and death?

3. Neuhaus notes that we don’t talk much about death, but in fact a “measure of reticence and silence is in order.”  Explain.

4. What did Epicureans think about death?  What did the philosopher Miguel de Unamumo say about this view? 

5. What did the Stoics say should be our attitude toward death?

6. What was Plato’s view about death?

7. Why, according to Freud (and others), is our own death “unimaginable”?

8. What is the Hindu approach to death?

9. What is the Buddhist approach to death?

9. What is the Muslim approach to death?

10. What is the Jewish approach to death?  How does it differ from other views?  Consider, for example, its early understanding of death.  What is important?

11. Both Judaism and Christianity assert that death is not “natural.”  What does this mean?

12. Above, I asked about the early Jewish understanding of death.  How was that view about the importance of “the world” maintained in Christian thought?