The Banishment of Death

Abstract

Leibniz upholds immortalism in its extreme form. Nothing ever really dies, for animals (and not only their souls) are indestructible except by God’s power. Eighteenth-century philosophers described Leibniz’s doctrine as exilium mortis or “the banishment of death”, which most of them rejected as an implausible, ridiculous, or even scandalous notion. In order to understand this negative reaction, this chapter reconstructs the German debate among Leibniz’s contemporaries and immediate posterity on such issues as: Is the banishment of death a novelty or just an updated version of some traditional belief? How can the living body preserve its own identity through the dramatic transformations caused by death? On the other hand, the general hostility that surrounded the banishment-of-death doctrine suggests that the denial of natural mortality was actually perceived as a threat to Christian dogma – which challenges the naive assumption that immortalist claims are mere expression of a philosopher’s pious concerns.