The Meaning of Immortality in Human Experience: Including Thoughts on Death and Life Revised

Revisiting William Ernest Hocking

I came to Hocking's (1873 -- 1966) book, "The Meaning of Immortality in Human Experience" (1957) through a discussion on media. A friend and professor of philosophy asked whether the section of the book titled "Meanings of Life" would be suitable for undergraduate use to give an understanding of a pragmatic idealist approach to large philosophical questions. Among other things, my friend feared that students would find the 80 page length of the discussion daunting. I didn't know the book but was sufficiently intrigued that I ordered and read it.

I was interested through my prior experience with Hocking. I had read Hocking's most famous book "The Meaning of God in Human Experience" (1912) whose title is echoed in this book. Then I read the recent widely-praised philosophical memoir by John Kaag, "American Philosophy: A Love Story" which tells how the author found meaning in his life through his project of cataloging the contents of Hocking's large library in his former home in rural New Hampshire. My friend's question reminded me of Hocking and made me eager to revisit him in this book which was unfamiliar to me. Hocking, and this book in particular, is little-read today.

Hocking's book combines several earlier works. The first part consists of an expansion of his Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality delivered at Harvard in 1936 on the subject "Meanings of Death". The second part was based on a latter 1936 lecture at the University of Chicago titled "Meanings of Life" which my friend was considering having his students read. In 1942 Hocking gave another lecture at the University of California, "The Relativity of Death", which became the fifth of six parts of this book. Hocking expanded each of these lectures and added considerable additional material including an interlude on philosophical developments subsequent to 1942 and an Epilogue which is his attempt at a summation. The character of the book, combining various lectures on related subjects, makes the work repetitive and wordy. It is still moving and suggestive to read.

By his title, Hocking meant to suggest that the question of immortality was not an abstract question separate from day-to-day human life but instead arose from human experience just as in his 1912 book Hocking tried to show that the question of God arose intimately from human experience and not from abstract argument. Hocking points out that immortality is difficult to address because framing and considering the question depends in large part on one's philosophical commitments on some dryer and more basic philosophical issues. Hocking himself was a philosophical idealist, heavily influence by pragmatism, who believed that reality was spiritual or mental in character. This position was greatly out of favor when Hocking wrote, as he was aware; and it remains so.

The book is alternately obscure and difficult to follow in places and highly eloquent and thoughtful in other places. Large sections of the book are written for the general reader. These sections are followed by more analytical discussions more in the language of the academy and of professional philosophy. The book shows a suitable humility in dealing with the large question of its title. Popular understanding suggests that philosophers are concerned with "the meaning of life" but most, including idealistically and religiously inclined philosophers, know the perils of an approach to this question. Hocking nowhere attempts to prove immortality. He attempts to refine the nature of the question -- what might human immortality be like, if it existed, and what in human experience makes individuals concerned with it. Hocking thus explores the "meaning" of immortality and the source of its possible importance in our lives of finitude. Hocking combines his discussion of the human fascination with immortality with a discussion of whether it is possible that humans are in a sense immortal.

Among many other things, Hocking discusses the currently prevailing schools of philosophical naturalism and their approach to mind-body. He sometimes calls naturalism a "monistic" approach to philosophy in that it considers nature as, single, entirely of a piece, and subject fully to the laws developed by science and to nothing else. Under naturalism it would be difficult indeed to conceive of immortality. Hocking develops his own commitment to philosophical idealism by arguing that their may be a reality separate from our reality of time and space in which the human self takes part and that the conclusion that there is only a single reality subject to the rules of science is unjustified. He argues passionately that the search for meaning by individual human beings in their projects and relationships creates in its wake the feeling that reality is somehow responsive and leads beyond the world of naturalism. In some ways, I think Hocking's study ties in with the "possible worlds" arguments which receive attention in more contemporary, analytical metaphysics.

The section of the book on the "meaning of life" consists of an "Interlude" in which Hocking explores what makes individual lives meaningful, including such things as simply being alive, love, serving a good cause and fulfilling what one sees as one's purpose. Then, in a section called "Meanings of Life" Hocking tries to show how an individual approach to meaning in "spots" is insufficient. Hocking argues that meaning requires and understanding of the whole and an ability to separate one's empirical self in time from the subject self. He concludes this part with a discussion of mysticism and realism and how they might be related in trying to understand life.

This is difficult material outside the way most contemporary philosophers would approach these matters. It would be heavy going indeed for an undergraduate text and would require considerable time and guidance from the teacher to explore. For readers interested in large philosophical questions, this rare text is moving and worthwhile. As a reader with a strong interest in American philosophy of religion and in its pragmatic and idealistic elements, I was glad to learn of the book and to get to know it.

Robin Friedman