Philosophy and Death | Bernard Williams

Dying is bad. What could be worse? Bernard Williams's answer: not dying. He describes the "tedium of immortality," an infinite stretch of time that would exhaust the engagement of finite creatures like ourselves. Immortality would have to meet two conditions in order to be desirable. First, the life that goes on forever would have to be *mine*: change my character enough, and change it enough times, and perhaps life could continue to engage the person that I become, but that person wouldn't be me. And second, this immortal life would have to be one that I could look forward to having. Williams argues that no conception of immortality meets these two conditions. But is he right?

That's the topic we discuss in the fourth week of my online course, Thinking about the End: Philosophy and Death.

https://eganphilosophy.com/thinking-a...
https://eganphilosophy.com/

#philosophy #death #immortality #bernardwilliams

0:00 Introduction
0:30 The Makropulos Case
2:17 Categorical desires and the badness of death
4:06 Arguments against immortality
8:18 Responses to Williams
10:45 Immortality and the meaning of life
12:53 Closing