This book combines Western history of death with sociology and philosophy to explore our approach to death. It examines sociological debates, the cultural construction of death and uses existential phenomenology and Freudian psychology to examine the search for meaning in our finite lives.

Introduction

1. The Trouble with Death

2. Mortality and Tragedy in Greek Antiquity

3. Plato and the Immortality of the Soul

4. Death in the Second Millennium

5. Invisible Death

6. The Disclosure of Death

7. Precarious Life