Although most of the great philosophers have touched on the problem of death, few have dealt with it systematically or in detail. Frequently, as in the case of Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza, an author's views on the subject are known to us from a single sentence; and at almost all stages in Western history we are likely to discover more about the topic in the writings of men of letters than in those of technical philosophers. Whether this relative reticence on the part of philosophers should be attributed to a general lack of interest or to other causes is a moot point. Arthur Schopenhauer, who was the first of the major philosophers to deal extensively with the subject, declared that death is the muse of philosophy, notwithstanding that the muse is seldom avowed. And the existentialist philosophers from Søren Kierkegaard to the present have more or less...