The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy

Religious Studies, 2023

All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of particular religious traditions may avail where generic philosophical solutions fall short. With attention to the boredom and narcissism critiques, intimations of deathlessness in Śāntideva's radical altruism, and recent Christian debates on the soul and the intermediate state, I propose two criteria for a coherent religion-specific belief in immortality: (1) the belief is supported by a fully realized religious tradition, (2) the belief satisfies the demand for self-transcendence as well as for self-preservation. Where self-transcendence and self-preservation are kept in balance, and where the whole idea rests upon the lattice-work of a fully realized religious tradition, immortality is a fitting object of belief. Moreover, such belief is compatible with considerable speculative freedom concerning matter and spirit, body and soul, and personal identity over time.

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.

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.

In the Insanity Defence Woody Allen claims that when we say humans are mortal we are obviously not complimenting them. It is difficult to contradict great comedy, of course, but if what I argue holds, Allen is wrong on this account. Mortality is a complimentor at least something for which we should be gratefulsince life without it threatens with disaster. To live without death also means living in the universe in its more hostile stages under conditions where there can be no meaningful life. In this way, immortality is worse than death. In addition, I argue that no matter how carefully we qualify the conditions that make up immortality the old problem of death resurface. I therefore conclude, with a nod towards Voltaire, that if death did not exist, it would have been necessary to invent it. ARTICLE HISTORY Downloaded by [UiT Norges arktiske universitet] at 23:43 17 December 2017 2 H. A. HOLMEN Downloaded by [UiT Norges arktiske universitet]

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.

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.

If, as Marcuse once said to Habermas, "it is better to live than not to live, " does it follow that living forever would be best? 1 At times, Marcuse seemed to think so. Habermas quotes him as saying that "the idea that death is part of life is false, and we should take much more seriously Horkheimer's notion that it is only with the elimination of death that humanity could be truly free and happy. " 2 As Habermas points out, this comment was made when Marcuse was mourning the death of his wife. Yet suffering is not only a private experience. Empathy, which Marcuse identified as the foundation of morality, is what enables us to feel what others feel. 3 If, then, critical theory develops out of the capacity for empathy and seeks to eliminate the causes of suffering so as to create the social conditions for happiness, and if death is considered a cause of suffering, full human happiness would seem to require the elimination of death. This conclusion was in fact drawn by Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse, but it was a philosophical rather than scientific conclusion.

2023

Introduction: Michael Cholbi's book "Immortality and the Philosophy of Death" offers a profound examination of the notion of immortality and its philosophical ramifications. Cholbi goes beyond surface-level discussions and delves deep into the paradoxes associated with immortality, assesses the significance of mortality, and scrutinizes death as a form of harm. This review intends to build upon the previous analysis by providing a comprehensive evaluation of the book's primary arguments, shedding light on their strengths and weaknesses in greater depth.