The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality Notes - Bernard Williams

Short Summary

This paper argues both that death is usually undesirable/bad but that immortality, in whatever form, is never desirable. Death is bad because it usually frustrates desires one might want to fulfill. Immortality is never desirable because it would either result in boredom, or, eliminate one’s identity. This applies for all kinds of immortality: like perpetual life inside your current body, reincarnation, reincarnation with memory of past lives, religious-style immortality, or philosophical immortality.

Quotes

1. “The question of life being desirable is certainly transcendental in the most modest sense, in that it gets by far its best answer in never being asked at all”

   
   

2. “The reasons which a man would have for avoiding death are, on the present account, grounded in desires – categorical desires – which he has; he, on the basis of these, has reason to regard possible death as a misfortune to be avoided, and we, looking at things from his point of view, would have reason to regard his actual death as his misfortune”

   
   

3. “Her (EM’s) trouble as it seems, boredom: a boredom connected with the fact that everything that could happen and make sense to one particular human being of 42 had already happened to her”

   
   

4. “The problem remains of whether this series of psychologically disjoint lives could be an object of hope to one who did not want to die.”

   
   

5. “One might make the immortal man content at very moment, by just stripping off from him consciousness which would have brought discontent by reminding him of other times, other interests, other possibilities.”

   
   

6. “An eternal life would be unlivable. In part, as EM’s case originally suggested, that is because categorical desire will go away from it; in those versions, such as hers, in which I am recognizably myself, I would eventually have had altogether too much of myself. There are good reasons, surely, for dying before that happens. But equally, at times earlier than that moment, there is reason for not dying. Necessarily, it tends to be either too early, or too late. EM reminds us that it can be too late, and many, as against Lucretius, need no reminding that it can be too early”

How the Book Changed Me

Sometimes people cope about death or think it is something completely neutral or even trivial. I disagree with this sentiment even more now. This book made me clearly understand why death is mostly a bad thing and ought to be avoided. Though I understand William’ the case for why immortality shouldn’t really be desirable, I am still not 100% convinced. It’s not that the conclusion is wrong necessarily, I just don’t think Williams provided a deductive proof or empirical evidence for why categorical desires eventually run out. His second argument against immortality regarding identity also seems shaky. It has left me deeply contemplating what the optimal life span is and honestly further strengthened my desire to extend my healthy life span as much as possible.

Long Summary

Williams starts by defining the scope of his paper, that is: he is arguing that immortality is not desirable but also that death can be bad, or, an evil.

The title of this paper comes from a play in which a women who continually takes an special elixir to extend her life, refuses to drink the elixir again and dies.

Some say death is not bad because it is the start of an eternal life, while others say it is not bad because it is the complete and final end.

Lucretius has two arguments for why death is never evil, which, in short, are that 1) once you die you no longer experience anything positive or negative so nothing can hurt you, and 2) you die the same amount of time whether you die early or later.

Lucretius’ first argument: an evil only occurs when someone experiences it, but when you are dead, you can’t experience anything, so nothing bad can happen to you.

The second Lucretian argument is contradictory because if you died a finite amount of time, then it would be preferable to die later, but the first argument is saying there actually isn’t anything undesirable about being dead.

The second argument – that death is never an evil - cannot be right because experiencing all the delights and joys of life for longer is preferable to experiencing less of them for a shorter time.

The argument goes like this: I want things, death can prevent me from having those things, therefore, I should avoid death and regard it as an evil.

The following claim is wrong: “all desires are conditional on being alive”, instead, some desires ask whether it is worth it to continue being alive or not (this is a “categorical desire”).

A happy person, for instance, has many categorical desires, that is, desires that answer the question of whether one should continue existing (which will be affirmative).

It is wrong to say that desire is, at its core, the desire to avoid the frustration of not getting the desire.

Williams is not trying to argue that never being born and never existing in the first place is better than being born and actually existing.

Nagel seems to assume that death is bad, and even though the subject does not experience it, they suffered a misfortune, while Williams argues it is bad because their categorical desires were eliminated.

Williams’ argument can only explain why death is bad but not necessarily why never existing in the first place is bad, since there would be no one whose categorical desire were thwarted.

If we reject Lucretius on the grounds that death is both bad, and shorter life is not preferable to longer life at all times, then it seems like we should be committed to being immortal.

So now assuming that we do not age, and death is bad, is it desirable to live forever? Williams will argue why that answer is no.

If we assume you live eternally at a desirable age (say 42) as an embodied normal person – even then – the main problem with eternal life is boredom.

The solution to boredom for an eternal life is varied experiences but this can either destroy the identity of a person, or they would have to become detached from the new experiences to preserve their identity.

Even if everyone was immortal, it wouldn’t solve the issue of boredom and it might even make the world stagnant because society would become calcified.

It is possible to live an eternal life if you started off discontent, cold, and withdrawn because you’d be used to that state already, but the cost is a lack of rich categorical desires (not mere continuation of life) and people who want eternal life usually have categorical desires.

In order for immortality to be desirable, it must 1) be me who lives on forever, and 2) my future desires should relate in some way to my present character.

Williams introduces reincarnation style immortality as an alternative to EM style immortality, but warns it may fail because later lives aren’t really me, or because they aren’t connected to my present desires to be worth hoping for.

If future lives are psychologically disconnected from my present life, then either I cannot know enough about them to hope for them, or, if I can judge them, my present judgment seems irrelevant to the future person who will actually live them.

Immortality as a series of discrete lives (like reincarnation) is attractive to Williams because one lives a complete life, but many religions see a release from reincarnation as actual salvation.

There is another immortality model that tries to combine serial and continuous lives, where one has memory but lives disjointed lives, but this fails because it would be impossible to have a stable character.

Perhaps ,when one hopes for immortality, they are imagining it in a more religious way like an eternal soul rather than continued existence in a human body.

The religious style of immortality fails to answer why it would not eventually be boring, or diminish one’s consciousness so that they don’t experience boredom.

One might say that boredom can be good, and it is for finite ends like sentry duty, but the same can’t be said for eternal life.

Some might say an eternal life of intellectual contemplation of truth (which is timeless) solves the boredom problem, but Williams argues your identity would again be dissolved and your interest in it wouldn’t also be eternal.

Spinoza argues that intellectual contemplation actually makes one more fully individual, because they transcend unchosen desires, unconscious influence, memory, history, and character.

The argument is that thought continues itself without external influence, but Williams says that alone cannot explain why one sustains intellectual engagement and that personal history, memory, character, are within the bounds of your identity, not outside of it.

Williams argues that Spinozist eternal intellectual activity cannot satisfy the desire for individual immortality, because by dissolving personal character it preserves only impersonal thinking, not the particular person who wanted to survive.

Unamuno, a writer, wrote about how he yearns to continue living as he is with his body and character, as opposed to becoming some ethereal spirit, or a mere calculation of utilitarian pleasure maximization.

Unamuno’s affirmation of bodily existence is too extreme (even going so far as to say existence with limitless suffering is better than nothingness) but it does correctly point out that the desire to continue existing is not merely to eventually experience pleasant times.

In conclusion: one can die too early in which case death is bad because categorical desire is frustrated, but if death can be endlessly postponed one can die too late because boredom sets in.