Estar Con Los Muertos

Philosophy, Socrates asserted, is the art of dying. Burial, with its rituals, is the oldest documented cultural-symbolic practice: all humans have developed techniques for caring for and relating to the dead. Hans Ruin's premise in this work is that we can explore our lives with the dead as a transcultural existential a priori from which the basic forms of historical consciousness emerge. Caring for the dead is not only the symbolic handling of mortal remains; it also points to a political space in which the bond between the dead and the living holds societies together. There is no social sphere entirely separate from that shared with the dead. Learning to live is learning to inhabit this space responsibly. Through an interdisciplinary analysis that combines philosophy and cultural and social history, the author brings us closer to the phenomenon of death and its importance as a cultural fact that affects all human beings.