Love Is Stronger Than Death by Peter Kreeft, first published in 1979, is a philosophical examination of this modern-day taboo even though we all have this “terminal illness”.
No one gets out of it alive.
One of the reasons for the book is that death is one of the three big questions, the other two being life and God. Kreeft makes the point that in this modern age that tries to do away with absolutes, “one absolute is left: death.” As such, “[d]eath gives life to the God-question”.
The text is deliberately short at just over one hundred pages. It is not in the form of a Socratic dialogue. It is organized into five chapters, looking at death from different angles or what the author calls the “faces” of death. We may not know in this life what is behind those faces but we have to start somewhere.
Each face is a clue to the next face, so the structure of the text is that of a journey, an exploration. The five chapters are:
1: Death as an Enemy
2: Death as a Stranger
3: Death as a Friend
4: Death as a Mother
5: Death as a Lover
Each chapter is broken down into short and easily digestable sub-sections. The sub-headings are included in the table of contents.
There is, of course, the Christian view but this is something this journey leads to at the end. Most of the arguments are based on common experience and observation. For example, in the first chapter, sub-sections include “Death Is Loss”, “Death Is Not Sleep” and “Death Is Inevitable”.
Although poetic views are considered, the author does not dismiss what death objectively is. It is not merely sleep and the discussion does not start with “Death as a Friend”. It can become a friend, which presupposes that it is an enemy in some respect. And even then, one still cannot entirely dismiss the “enemy” view either.
On balance, Kreeft writes with his usual succinctness. The text is easily accessible and it is a well-reasoned exploration of the subject which many are in denial about.
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