A review by callmeevan
Death and Immortality by Josef Pieper

5.0

Pieper is just brilliant. He has a way of bringing the strongest statement of a position to the fore to grapple with it adequately. He fruitfully dialogues with thinkers philosophical and theological, Catholic and non-. This book gives much clarity to the question, "what happens when a man dies?" Also fascinating that he puts the question of how to die at the center of all philosophical endeavor. Finally, though he takes "living language" and popular ideas and intuitions about death seriously, the book offered correction to some of my own unexamined assumptions about death which I had inherited from...well, from who knows where. For example I would previously not have objected to the concept of the immortal (vs indestructible or eternal) soul. The lingering difficulty for me is to see death as merited punishment; I tend to think it's true but I wanted more attention given to this question, and in particular the death of innocents who merit no punishment.