أسباب الخوف من الموت عند ابن مسكوية: دراسة فلسفية

Abstract EN

Ibn Miskawayh did not completely reject the issue of fear of death, rather he refused over-fear thereof, which brings psychological and physical harm to the one who suffers from.

he tried to show the most common causes of that fear which are adopted to justify it; those justifications are limited to five: some believe that the soul will be perished and decomposed with the decomposing of the body; some thought that death would inflict more pain than that inflicted by diseases; some people have fear of death because of their belief that they will be punished after death; some of them are puzzled over their unknown destiny after death; and the last category indexes those feel regret and sorrow over the money and worldly possessions they would leave behind after their death.

Miskawayh holds that all of these reasons are not acceptable justifications, describing them as fallacies, and arguing that these fears are the result of people›s ignorance of the reality of death, the truth of the soul as an immortal essence, the return after death and the other life, and most significantly, their ignorance of the mercy of the almighty Allah; he stresses that it is necessary that science and knowledge are used to uproot people›s ignorance, highlighting the importance of philosophy and religious knowledge and their roles in liberating man from fear of death.