Abstract
The book concludes by taking the consequences of a naturalistic afterlife one final step further: from cultural evolution of our species to the biological evolution that includes us and the rest of life. To complete a symmetry that was begun in Chap. 2 with the analysis of Philip Larkin, we turn to another great artist who was an unbeliever, Johannes Brahms, reflecting on his settings of texts from Ecclesiastes as part of the last set of songs he wrote before his death. This book of the Bible is, like Larkin’s “Aubade,” often taken as a lament of hopelessness. But there is more at play here. One way to interpret the texts Brahms set is as a call to embrace the entire community of life on earth, not just that of humans. One can also interpret them as a call to confront injustice. With all this in place, the book closes with a résumé of major points and a final statement of the value of recognizing a naturalistic afterlife.
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Harmon, D. (2017). Evening Songs. In: A Naturalistic Afterlife. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57978-8_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57978-8_9
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