The Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the

LMU in Munich online at www. History of Philosophy.net. Today's episode, Bright Ideas, Illuminationism.

What do you expect to happen to you after you die?

Perhaps you do not believe in an afterlife and think there will be nothing at all.

Or maybe you adhere to the traditional Christian options of hell, purgatory and heaven, destinations

that receive the ultimate travel guides in Dante's divine comedy.

I myself am hoping to be reincarnated.

If I get to be a human again, I'd like to host another podcast, but without tackling such

an enormous topic.

I could do a series on dentistry called the history of

gaps without any philosophy. If I return as an animal, of course you know what I'd

like to be. Just in case I'm leaving behind a very long scarf for my future

self.

This idea that the soul will live on but pass into a different body is sometimes called

trans-migration, or met metam psychosis and it features now and again in the history of philosophy.

We probably associate it especially with the Indian tradition but also with the ancient Pythagoreanans.

It is usually taken as a sign of their influence that in the Fido and other dialogues, Plato

has Socrates speak of human souls being reborn into non-human animal bodies.

In the Islamic world, the doctrine of transmigration was itself reborn among the

illuminationists.

Very few philosophers or theologians had embraced it before Suhrovadi, the founder of illuminationism, and even he was tentative on the subject.

Invoking not only the sages of India and Greece, but also his own Persian forefathers, in his most important

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