Political Theory on Death and Dying

Political Theory on Death and Dying provides a comprehensive, encyclopedic review that compiles and curates the latest scholarship, research, and debates on the political and social implications of death and dying.

Adopting an easy-to-follow chronological and multi-disciplinary approach on 45 canonical figures and thinkers, leading scholars from a diverse range of fields, including political science, philosophy, and English, discuss each thinker’s ethical and philosophical accounts on mortality and death. Each chapter focuses on a single established figure in political philosophy, as well as religious and literary thinkers, covering classical to contemporary thought on death. Through this approach, the chapters are designed to stand alone, allowing the reader to study every entry in isolation and with greater depth, as well as trace how thinkers are influenced by their predecessors.

A key contribution to the field, Political Theory on Death and Dying provides an excellent overview for students and researchers who study philosophy of death, the history of political thought, and political philosophy.

Erin A. Dolgoy is assistant professor of philosophy and assistant professor of politics & law at Rhodes College. Her work has been published in Perspectives on Political Science, Utopian Studies (with Kimberly Hurd Hale), and Political Science Reviewer (with Kimberly Hurd Hale). She is co-editor (with Kimberly Hurd Hale and Bruce Peabody) of Short Stories and Political Philosophy: Power, Prose, and Persuasion (2019).

Kimberly Hurd Hale is associate professor of politics at Coastal Carolina University. She is author of Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis in the Foundation of Modern Political Thought (2013), The Politics of Perfection: Technology and Creation in Literature and Film (2016), and co-editor (with Erin A. Dolgoy and Bruce Peabody) of Short Stories and Political Philosophy: Power, Prose, and Persuasion (2019).

Bruce Peabody is professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He is the co-editor (with Gloria Pastorino) of Beyond the Living Dead: Essays on the Romero Legacy (2021), co-editor (with Kimberly Hurd Hale and Erin A. Dolgoy) of Short Stories and Political Philosophy: Power, Prose, and Persuasion (2019), and co-author (with Krista Jenkins) of Where Have all the Heroes Gone: The Changing Nature of American Valor (2017).