ANTHROPOLOGY OF DEATH

Abstract

This paper discusses the anthropology of death from a theological viewpoint. Historically, death has been defined as the separation between body and soul. However, this definition is anthropologically and existentially insufficient. Death is a theme belonging primarily to anthropology and secondarily to eschatology. Anthropologically, death is the human possibility par excellence. It is constantly present and means the end of human beings in their bodily, worldly, and social dimensions. Death is the end of the human pilgrimage, in its spatial, temporal, and historical dimension, an unrepeatable event that we both suffer and accept. It is the last act of the history of human freedom and can be seen as an event that reaffirms our existence that, with death, achieves definiteness.