On Being Mortal Part 2: Medical Approaches

Given that most of us in SOFiA are in our 70s or 80s, it seems strange that death and mortality play such a small role in our writings. In what follows, your Editor attempts to fill this void and to come to grips with the fact that we are not immortal and that life will come to an end for us all. Many thinkers regard exploring death as like staring at the sun; something that’s impossible to do. However, the aim in this review is to build up a picture of what it means to be mortal, a biological creature with a limited lifespan, an individual that faces its own death, by surveying what literature, medicine, psychotherapy and theology have to say about it.