Cheating Death
What if someone were truly good, a follower of, per Johnston, “the command of agape or radical altruism,” and cared about everyone as if they were herself? That pattern of self-concern would make her a higher-order individual; not quite Humanity, but something like it. If someone conforms to the demands of agape and regards the interests of others as she regards the interests of herself, then she will survive by being partly embodied by those others. She would then “quite literally, live on in the onward rush of mankind,” Johnston writes.
From “Cheating Death: Philosophers Ponder the Afterlife,” by Alex Byrne (Boston Review, Jan/Feb 2012)
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