Journal of Ethics , 2015

Immortality—living forever and avoiding death—seems to many to be desirable. But is it? It has been argued (notably by Williams, recently by Scheffler) that an immortal life would fairly soon become boring, trivial, and meaningless, and is not at all the sort of thing that any of us should want. Yet boredom and triviality presuppose our having powerful memories and imaginations, and an inability either to shake off the past or to free ourselves of weighty visions of the future. Suppose, though, that our capacities here are limited, so that our temporal reach is fairly significantly constrained. Then, I argue, these alleged problems with immortality will recede. Moreover, similar limitations might help us in the actual world, where life is short. If we cannot see clearly to its end points, both ahead and behind, life will seem longer.

Philosophy Compass , 2020

While most people believe the best possible life they could lead would be an immortal one, so-called "immortality curmudgeons" disagree. Following Bernard Williams, they argue that, at best, we have no prudential reason to live an immortal life, and at worst, an immortal life would necessarily be bad for creatures like us. In this article, we examine Bernard Williams' seminal argument against the desirability of immortality and the subsequent literature it spawned. We first reconstruct and motivate Williams' somewhat cryptic argument in three parts. After that, we elucidate and motivate the three best (and most influential) counterarguments to Williams' seminal argument. Finally, we review, and critically examine, two further distinct arguments in favor of the anti-immortality position.

Branding Books Across the Ages, 2021

This article analyses the publication history of Dutch translations of Madame Bovary within the wider context of Flaubert's reception more generally. In the decades following its publication, Madame Bovary was widely criticized due to its 'scandalous' subject matter. Gradually, these moralistic views gave way to a growing recognition of the novel as a modern classic. However, the immorality scandal continued to resonate with readers. We investigate how these diverging views on the novel informed the branding strategies employed by the publishers of its Dutch translations. Combining reception history, translation studies, paratextual analysis, and cultural sociology, we demonstrate how each publisher established a branding narrative that was informed by the status of the translator in question and that targeted a specific readership.

The questions we address are the following: Are we entitled to access life extension therapies? Must we draw the line at some point (say 120 years, the maximum life span so far, or maybe even earlier) and decide that that’s that and now we must die? Are there considerations that might make either living or making it possible to live after a certain ages immoral? Does justice require foregoing life extension therapies or does it require the development and application of these therapies?

Personality & social psychology bulletin, 2018

Many people believe in immortality, but who is perceived to live on and how exactly do they live on? Seven studies reveal that good- and evil-doers are perceived to possess more immortality-albeit different kinds. Good-doers have "transcendent" immortality, with their souls persisting beyond space and time; evil-doers have "trapped" immortality, with their souls persisting on Earth, bound to a physical location. Studies 1 to 4 reveal bidirectional links between perceptions of morality and type of immortality. Studies 5 to 7 reveal how these links explain paranormal perceptions. People generally tie paranormal events to evil spirits (Study 5), but this depends upon location: Evil spirits are perceived to haunt houses and dense forests, whereas good spirits are perceived in expansive locations such as mountaintops (Study 6). However, even good spirits may be seen as trapped on Earth given extenuating circumstances (Study 7). Materials include a scale for measuring ...

Continental Philosophy Review, 2000

This article examines immortality ideologies in Western philosophy as exemplified in the writings of Descartes, Heidegger, and Derrida, showing in each instance the distinctiveness of the ideology. The distinctiveness is doubly significant: it broadens understandings of the nature of immortality ideologies generally and deepens comparative understandings of the ideologies of the philosophers discussed. Pertinent writings of Otto Rank, the psychiatrist who first wrote of immortality ideologies, contribute in fundamental ways to the discussion as do pertinent writings of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, who elaborated and publicized Rank's thesis concerning immortality ideologies. The notion of an ideology, clarified in the beginning as an empirically unfounded belief structure, hence an illusion, is taken up briefly but pointedly at the end in the context of Rank's distinction between rational and irrational elements of the self as they are played out in the creations of the hero-artist. The article ends by examining his distinction in the context of the philosophic perspectives discussed, most notably the perspective of Heidegger.

2019

This paper discusses the desirability of an immortal life and considers Bernard Williams' concerns that we can only ever fulfill either the attractiveness condition or the identity condition that makes a continuous life desirable. It also considers John Martin Fischer's response that an immortal life isn't so bad when taking into account repeatable pleasures. However, the paper ultimately argues for the indeterminate desirability of an immortal life given its inconceivability and concludes that we ought instead to reserve our judgments.

Immortality and the Philosophy of Death (ed. Michael Cholbi), 2015

Williams’s famous argument against immortality rests on the idea that immortality cannot be desirable, at least for human beings, and his contention has spawned a cottage industry of responses. As I will intend to show, the arguments over his view rest on both a difference of temperament and a difference in the sense of desire being used. The former concerns a difference in whether one takes a forward-looking or a backward-looking perspective on personal identity; the latter a distinction between our normal desire to continue living and the kind of desire implied in desiring immortality. Showing that there is some sense of identity and desire that support Williams’s conclusion goes some way toward providing support for his argument, if not a full-fledged defense of it.

Society, 2013

Two sorts of motions, each natural in its own way, determine our lives. In one sort, our bodies metabolize food, heal wounds, regulate body temperature, maintain salt balance, distribute oxygen, remove toxins, and so on. These remarkable processes occur quite independently of our individual and collective abilities to understand them. Most of us, most of the time, remain blissfully inattentive to the rather automatic biological substructure on which our conscious activities depend. And yet these vital operations, in their complexity, coordination, and durability, compel our wonder whether we take them to be caused by nature's unmindful teleology (as Aristotle did), God's creative generosity (as Augustine did), or indifferent chemical mechanism (as any number of our contemporaries do). In the other sort of motions, our metabolism slows, eyesight weakens, bone density lessens, muscles slacken, skin loses elasticity, and, generally, our vital powers and processes become increasingly vulnerable to