The notion of an afterlife seems central to the Abrahamic religions, as well as to other traditions. The language of heaven, paradise, and, one might think more tenuously, the Kingdom has been taken to designate a state of post-mortem existence. This state is hoped for by adherents of the traditions in question, and might well be seen as the most desirable outcome of human existence, a divine reward for a life well lived.

This much is entirely familiar, and even where the religious traditions in question have been rejected, aspects of belief and imagery concerning the afterlife persist in popular consciousness. Once these are interrogated with any degree of seriousness, however, philosophical questions force themselves upon us. Heaven is often thought of as a state of unending life; but doesn't this sound boring (as Bernard Williams once asked, in a striking witness to the best philosophical questions being simple ones)? Some people believe in a disembodied afterlife, others in the resurrection of the body, still others in both (the deceased person lives first as a disembodied soul and only later are they resurrected). All of these positions provoke worries about personal identity; in virtue of what is the inhabitant of paradise the same person as the one who once walked the earth? Finally, how does the afterlife relate to the moral character and actions of its inhabitants during their earthly lives; and can we make sense of the notions of eternal reward and punishment?

For all their apparent importance, as posing prima facie serious difficulties for a central aspect of religious belief, the profile of these and other questions about the afterlife has been relatively low within analytic philosophy of religion. Paradise Understood is a welcome attempt to make good this deficiency. Arising out of the Immortality project at the University of California, Riverside, the collection (as its name suggests) brings together a number of essays concerned specifically with the philosophy of heaven (whilst purgatory makes cameo appearances, the concept of hell – surely in urgent need of philosophical interrogation – only gets serious discussion in a chapter on negative emotions in paradise). The collection will be a useful addition to the shelves of any philosopher of religion, and combines essays from established names in the field with contributions from scholars earlier in their careers. Topics range from the epistemic and moral qualities of persons in paradise, through to the salvation of animals and difficulties with the notion of resurrection.

From this reviewer's perspective some of the most interesting pieces are those bringing historical material into dialogue with contemporary discussions. So, for instance, Katherin Rogers's essay ‘Anselmian Meditations on Heaven’ challenges the image of Anselm's account of the beatific vision as a static, and frankly unattractive, one. On Rogers's reading of Anselm, the blessed can take joy in one another. It is a vision which resonates with another medieval, Bernard of Cluny, who wrote memorably of the ‘social joys’ of heaven (in De Contemptu Mundi). As we'll see presently, more remains to be said about society and the afterlife.

Another innovative engagement with the history of philosophy is Rachel Lu's discussion of the question whether virtues are operative in heaven. Seemingly esoteric, this topic in fact touches on the connection between present-day moral character and eternal destiny, and so on the coherence of a given narrative of salvation. Lu addresses this with attention to thinkers from Cicero onwards, and the result is both readable and thought-provoking. Similarly, Timothy Pawl and Kevin Timpe's essay on growing in virtue, a theme addressed by the authors in previous work, asks whether such growth might be a feature of paradisal life.

The twin themes of sociality and morality point towards an absence in the collection which in turn serves to indicate the distance between philosophical discussions of the afterlife and the eschatologies of both academic theology and lived religion. Over the past half-century, most notably in Christian theology but also amongst Jewish and Islamic thinkers, there has been an increase in attention paid to the manner in which eschatological hope has a political dimension. Within Christianity, for example, this revival has been organized around the concept of the Kingdom. No longer understood solely in terms of the post-mortem destiny of individuals, the Kingdom is viewed, with biblical warrant, in terms of God's restoration of the whole of creation. In particular, human society, torn apart by the sins of injustice and oppression, is to be healed in the Kingdom, which is both present in anticipation and yet to come in its fullness.

Now, philosophically, there is the question whether this renewed theology of the Kingdom, which is couched in scriptural terms taken by earlier generations to refer to an afterlife, coheres with belief in an afterlife, and if so how it does. What is the relationship between the ultimate destiny of individuals and the here-and-now work of transforming the world? Far from being idle philosophizing, these questions arise out of lived religion. If sermons, hymnody, and the general thrust of religious life are de-emphasizing ‘pie in the sky when you die’ (as Joe Hill once put it) is there any way of still seeing an ongoing hope for life after death as integral to religious life?

Although there is a section on the political and social dimensions of paradise (addressing, amongst other things, the question of the place of non-human animals in the afterlife), the topics I've touched on here do not feature in it. This is by no means a disaster – there is only so much room in any given book, and the themes which do get an outing are current among philosophers. Yet this last observation is worth emphasizing: the syllabus for Paradise Understood is very much written by philosophers. The questions are philosophers' questions –for instance ‘will there be scepticism in heaven?’, not I imagine a question anybody has ever asked a rabbi on their deathbed. Philosophers' questions need not be fruitless and once asked must be dispatched, either through being answered or through being deflated. Once this has been done, however, we might be left with the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus suspecting that the things that really matter have yet to be touched upon. This is certainly true when the subject under consideration is the afterlife. After we've cleared up the epistemology and metaphysics of the blessed, and supplied identity conditions for resurrected bodies, there remain not only the issue of how heaven relates to the earthly pursuit of justice, but also the deep human themes of grief, loss, continuing bonds, unfulfilled hopes, shattered dreams, the fear of death, prayers to saints, and vigils for the dead. Thoughts and concerns about these and other topics arise naturally out of the lived experience of death in a religious context. No philosophy which does not engage with them can fully claim the title of a philosophy of religion. That Paradise Understood does not advance into this territory cannot be held against it, but it would be good if it could be viewed as a ground-clearing exercise enabling others to do so.