Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Knowledge
with Jean-Philippe de Tonnac
Bayard Centurion, Oct 2004
Presentation
Sixty authors explore and question knowledge and beliefs about death and immortality across traditions and in the modern world. This original, general-interest encyclopedia is divided into two main parts:
– Part 1: The Journey of the Soul, or how the great civilizations and religions of humanity have represented death and the journey to the afterlife. With the collaboration of the best specialists (Jean Delumeau for Christianity, Michel Hulin for India, Jacques Brosse for Buddhism, Régis Boyer for Nordic civilizations, etc.)
– Part 2: The revolution of Western modernity, or how we have sacralized the body, reinvented an imaginary of immortality, hidden death… With the collaboration of numerous philosophers and psychoanalysts who question our relationship to dying and the hope of another life. With major names who synthesize our contemporary knowledge on the living and death (Axel Kahn, Jean-Claude Ameisen…), semiologists who describe the new imaginaries of death and immortality on our screens (cinema, video games…), sociologists who recount the evolution of funeral practices, the erasure of death in a modern, sanitized society that pays profane worship to the immortal body… doctors, moralists who return to the evolution of care for patients at the end of life, and euthanasia.
What the press says about it
"Impressive mapping of representations and conceptions of death across civilizations carried out by a team of historians, philosophers, biologists, psychoanalysts and sociologists..." Libération
“A colossal book on a par with the taboo it tackles… A monument of knowledge on a subject that has been the object of long repression since the end of the 18th century… This is the book to take to a desert island…” Le Figaro
“A vast fresco that begins with prehistory and the first rituals of death, ends with the most contemporary questions: the ritual void, accompanying the dying, euthanasia, the tinkering of beliefs, scientific research on cloning, cryogenics or cellular regeneration…” Le Monde
"Make no mistake, this is indeed an "Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Beliefs": nearly 1,700 pages of high intellectual quality served by strong pens, such as those of Umberto Eco, Edgar Morin, Jean Delumeau, Axel Kahn... Death and immortality from every angle and on every continent. Under all skies and gods." La Croix
"Death is a question that haunts us. Some sixty authors have compiled for this encyclopedia dedicated to it the sum total of knowledge and beliefs in different civilizations. Historians, philosophers, doctors, sociologists, ethnologists share their perspectives on what we generally do not see. A journey from which we do not return completely unscathed." Paris Match
"Amazing collection entitled Death and Immortality, Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Beliefs...open-mindedness is undeniable and eclecticism is laudable, having presided over the selection of the themes presented..." Page
"What happens today to death, mourning, eternity? Immersion in a fascinating tome... which covers everything we have thought about the passage from this world to the beyond, from the dawn of humanity to the era of the PlayStation..." Tribune de Genève