Abstract

The attitude of an individual, a society or even a civilization towards life and death, the perception, sensations, thinking, and understanding the life and death is based on their philosophy of life. Changes in their worldviews will necessarily change their attitudes towards life and death. We are witnessing a time in which the reality of death is transformed into a state where overvaluing life and postponing and even forgetting death have become desired and dominant norms. Death is not seen as shedding light on life, a part of life or even the sap of life anymore. The relationship between life and death is gradually breaking, and the gap between the two is growing, making suffering and death meaningless, scary, something to be ignored and to be postponed as long as possible. Yet, when the pain and suffering become unbearable, death should be performed immediately to end the suffering. When the individual considers him/herself as “autonomous,” he/she becomes the sole authority on life, making the death into a personal design whose time, way, and state is under his/her own control; thus, putting the death outside the divine destiny. The value of life becomes the quality of life. This study aims to analyze the relationship between modernity and religion with a specific interest in the reality of death by focusing on the so called “secularization paradigm,” considering the multi-dimensional nature of the process of secularization in terms of the phenomenon of death.

Authors and Affiliations