This book offers a sustained argument against eternal, contented personhood; the idea that we live forever and should wish to live forever.

The prevalent depiction of a positive afterlife is that of a continued, unchanged consciousness. But this simplified depiction has implications that the believer in an afterlife seems unwilling to explore. Imagining how nice it would be to live a few thousand years is common; fully cognizing what it would mean to live for many billions of years less so. The difference is not merely one of scale but a shift from exciting potentiality to gruellingly redundant actuality.

The book contends that the notion of eternal bliss is incompatible with our humanity. So there is a dilemma - one must either change fundamental aspects of who we are (including our memory, ability for enjoyment, and our interactions with others) that define our very personhood or deny the possibility of eternal happiness.

Personal Identity and the Impossibility of Eternal Happiness is essential reading for all scholars, researchers and advanced students of philosophical theology and the philosophy of the self.

Dr C.M. Lorkowski is a Teaching Assistant Professor at Ball State University. He is also the author of Atheism Considered : A Survey of the Rational Rejection of Religious Belief (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).