This interdisciplinary study investigates the proposition that without belief in a hereafter (a post-mortem arena of divine judgment, reward, and punishment), the concept of justice is rendered fundamentally incomplete, performative, and ultimately false. Employing a mixed-methods framework that integrates philosophical analysis, quantitative sociological data, empirical psychological experimentation, and comparative theological exegesis, we demonstrate that the eschatological postulate functions as a necessary condition for the coherence of justice across multiple dimensions of human experience. The study draws upon (1) Kantian practical philosophy, which posits the immortality of the soul as a postulate of practical reason necessary for the highest good; (2) cross-cultural survey data from 87 countries demonstrating that belief in supernatural punishment independently predicts moral reasoning (Atkinson (3) experimental evidence showing that priming thoughts of divine punishment reduces selfishness and increases prosocial behavior (White et al., 2019; Laurin et al., 2012); (4) macro-level criminological data indicating that belief in hell negatively predicts national crime rates whereas belief in heaven positively predicts them (Shariff and (5) comparative theological analysis across Abrahamic, Dharmic, and philosophical traditions articulating the structural necessity of post-mortem judgment. We argue that the absence of eschatological accountability creates what Smilansky (2013) terms a "difficulty concerning compensation", a moral paradox wherein the gravest injustices become immune to rectification. The study's central finding is that the hereafter functions not merely as a religious consolation but as a logical precondition for justice to be thinkable as complete, non-performative, and morally serious. We conclude that secular attempts to ground justice without eschatology confront an ineliminable deficit that no immanent mechanism of human jurisprudence, however refined, can fully remedy. Keywords: eschatological justice, hereafter, practical reason, supernatural punishment, moral psychology, theodicy, post-mortem compensation, Kant's postulates, karma, divine judgment
Muhammad Dhiya Ulhaq (Fri,) studied this question.