This volume brings together fifteen scholarly essays that explore death and the afterlife-Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and beyond-as hermeneutical tools of philosophical reflection.

Just as philosophy has traditionally been considered a means of dealing with death, so too can death offer interpretive insights into philosophical discourse and broader socio-cultural phenomena. The contributions in this volume consist of both theoretical and practical essays. The theoretical essays explore how various philosophers have been influenced by the hermeneutic potential of death and the afterlife, while the practical consider how this reflective framework can illuminate contemporary phenomena, from expressions in fiction to religious traditions. These phenomena are not merely subjects to be interpreted, but frameworks through which religious, philosophical, cultural, and socio-political questions can be considered in a new light.

These contributions address such topics as human extinction, aesthetic representations of the afterlife, personal reflections on near death experiences, commercial exploitation of the afterlife, secular death acceptance and the science of life extension, and reincarnation. Contributors also draw on the work of various thinkers, including Gianni Vattimo, Karl Marx, Wilhelm Dilthey, Jan Patocka, Michel Foucault, and Édouard Glissant. The combination of theoretical and practical approaches, as well as its interdisciplinary scope and novel methodological approach, center this volume as essential reading for those interested in philosophical, literary, and social understandings of death and the afterlife.