SOC250Y1 Lecture : Lecture Feb 1/2012
Document Summary
Notes on the social genesis of hell and heaven. Hell a divinely or cosmically sanctioned place of torment either temporary or eternal for wrong-doers, the unrighteous, non-believers, etc. Shakespeare s hamlet the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will . Sartre s no exit (1944) hell is other ppl . All known societies and cultures establish complex social arrangements for dealing with death and for removing its potentially destabilizing consequences. Neanderthal burial practices ubiquity for the dead (food offerings, interment with wordly possessions) cremation and collection of bones rituals and ceremonies for the deceased funerary inscriptions ancestor cults. Netherworld or underworld the deceased pass below to a dark, dusty place, and participate in some form of ghostly quasi-existence or half-life as shades, phantoms. Life on earth is vastly superior, the true or real life death is therefore lamented.