Between Death And Immortality

Berkant Gültekin

1. Introduction

Throughout history, death is cursed by mankind because it takes only known from them and
leads them to absolute unknown; then what is the religions’ promise for an eternal afterlife if it’s not
a solacement, an answer to man’s stand against death and his search for immortality, just because he
can never accept that he is going to be nothing and dissolve into nonexistence? Man desires not to
die. But what if he is imprisoned in life? After infinite amount of years, would he become bored?
In the following paper, I’ll be discussing about what both death and immortality add to our
lives or what they take from us. I’ll be thinking about arguments those claim immortality is
undesirable by focusing on possible problems an immortal life can lead us; while doing that I will
mainly analyze Bernard Williams’ article The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of
Immortality and then I’ll try to give answers to these arguments, from Spinoza’s philosophy that
defends life against death and John Martin Fischer’s article Immortality. In another words, I’ll be
defending life against death and I’ll try to show why immortality is not something so bad. Now,
before moving on to possible problems that comes with immortality, and answers to these problems,
we should first clarify what kind of immortality that we are going to discuss.

2. What Sort of Immortality We’ll Be Discussing About?

John Martin Fischer, in his article Immortality talks about various kinds of immortality. He
draws a line between living forever with the possibility of dying and living forever without the
possibility of dying. Then he makes another distinction that is about the immortal individual’s
epistemic status, whether the individual has knowledge about his/her immortality or not. In the
following lines, (like how Fischer does) I’ll be focusing on kind of immortality in which the
individual is aware that he/she is immortal without the possibility of dying — which Fischer calls
 “robust immortality”. Also there is a reason why I started a paper that’s mainly about desirability of
immortality by talking about religions and their afterworld promises: I would like to pick this
promise and put it on the worldly ground. It is because I want to leave secondary problems that
makes immortality undesirable behind —those like population growth, scarcity of natural resources,
end of the world/universe, individual’s mental decay, etc.— and focus on primary problems about
nature of human life that comes with immortality, I’ll be talking about an immortality in a this
worldly heaven. For this I’ll imagine a world that is adorned with optimum conditions for humanity
and an immortality in which individual does not age biologically. After we’ve clarified the kind of
immortality we’re going to talk about, we can now start by discussing what kind of problems we
may face by having an immortal life.

3. Mortal Life Might End With Misery

Immortal One Is a Misery That Never Ends

“(. . .) Among the Immortals, on the other hand, every act (every thought) is the
echo of others that preceded it in the past, with no visible beginning, and the
faithful presage of others that will repeat it in the future, advertiginem. There is
nothing that is not as though lost between indefatigable mirrors. Nothing can
occur but once, nothing is preciously in peril of being lost.”— Jorge Luis Borges*

Can death —although being on the converse pole by its very nature— harbor constructive aspects to
life itself? Philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Bernard Williams would answer this question
very confidently: It is the death what makes life precious. According to Williams, for example, an
immortal life would be unattractive one. When saying that he takes The Makropulos Affair —which
is an opera by Leos Janacek— case in hand. The main character, 342-years-old Elina Makropulos
rejects taking the elixir of life —which allows to live 300 more years without aging— because she
was bored with her existence. In his article The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of
Immortality Williams argues that, if we were immortal, we would end up like Elina: Our life, and
living would not be attractive to us because everything would be monotonous and there’s also an
identity problem we have to deal with. Both of the challenges are fed from Williams’ distinction
between “unconditional/categorical desires” and “conditional desires”. As Fischer puts it: “On
Williams’s view, we are propelled into the future by ‘categorical desires’ —such as the desire to
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*Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Immortal”. Selected Fictions. Trans. Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin, 1998
raise a family, write a book, help the needy, save the planet from environmental destruction, make a
fortune, find a true love, master the Goldberg Variations, and so forth. These are distinguished from
‘conditional desires’, such as the desire to be healthy, if alive, and so forth.” (Fischer, 341) So we
can say that, categorical desires are the ones that make our lives worth to live, which gives our life
its “humanly” essence, where conditional desires comes from more like our “natural” essence.
— When we put this distinction with Spinoza’s terminology, categorical desires are like “desires”
where conditional desires are more like “appetites”. And for Spinoza “Desire is defined as appetite
together with consciousness of it” (Spinoza: III, P: X) —
From this distinction, Williams constructs his argument against immortality. “Over time in
an immortal life, the individual will either change his or her character (and categorical desires), or
not. If the former, then evidently the story will not meet the identity criterion. If the latter, there are
two possibilities. If experience does not affect the individual, he or she will become alienated and
completely disengaged from life. But if one is indeed affected by experience without the possibility
of that experience changing one’s basic character, one will inevitably become bored” (Fischer, 340)
After clarifying this, we can continue our discussion with two separate paths: Identity problem and
attractiveness problem that comes with immortality.

Problems with Self-Preservation and Identity

As I’ve mentioned earlier, according to Williams, changes in immortal individual’s
categorical desires leads to change in his/her character and the story will not meet the identity
criterion. John Danaher in his analyze about immortality sets this argument like following:
“Williams claimed that a recognisably human immortality would have to preserve the same self
over time, and that the state of being in survival would have to be desirable to the person who
wishes to survive. As such, Williams is looking for a continued state of immortal existence, one in
which the same person continues to survive forever. But in doing so he sets a trap since the ‘person’
is partly constituted by their categorical desires, and hence it would follow that such a ‘person’
would cease to exist once their desires are replaced.” Therefore, according to Williams, our
categorical desires determines our identity and when we change our categorical desires over time, it
gets harder to talk about a consistent/steady self. As Fischer puts it, “A story of an individual with
substantially different categorical desires would not be a story of me in a sense relevant to my
special concern for my own future.” (Fischer, 341) Although he might be right in his definition of
self and identity, this idea loses it’s justification when we change our perspective about definition of
self and identity. I’ll give these arguments in the section that I’m defending immortality, until then,
let me talk about next problem that immortality might lead us, unattractiveness of life.

Immortal Life is Unattractive

Neil deGrasse Tyson in an interview* in which he was asked whether he wanted to be
immortal says “If we live forever, why ever even get out of bed in the morning? Because we always
have tomorrow”. This is one aspect to look at attractiveness challenge: There will always be time to
do something when we have infinite amount of time. Present will be unattractive in a state of
immortality.
There’s second aspect of unattractiveness challenge is the one that Williams asserts which is
the unattractiveness of immortal life itself. As we said earlier, according to Williams, one have to
have categorical desires that he/she wishes to fulfill in order to have a meaningful life. And one will
either become bored over time, by continually satisfying his/her desires or will saturate all of his/her
categorical desire and end up just like Elina Makropulos with one difference, he/she cannot finish
his/her misery. This, according to Williams turns a life that is immortal to a boring and unattractive
one.
There is also a third aspect of this challenge which is put forward by Aaron Smuts in his
article Immortality and Significance and which is about unattractiveness of any act over another. He
argues that, we are making choices between many options in life and we choose one option over
another. That is because we have limited time and we pay the price of our choices with our lifetime.
That is why he argues that death adds significance to our choices —because we have limited time
and we can only choose once; time flies, basically— and distributes a hierarchy of options for us.
And for an immortal, we cannot talk about this kind of hierarchy, he argues. Death gives our
choices their significance.

4. A Defense of Life Against Death

“Wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death” — Baruch Spinoza

So far we have talked about possible problems that an immortal life can lead us. Of course, I
do not deny that immortality changes our understanding and even nature of our lives. But I cannot
easily say such statements as “an immortal life cannot be defined as a humanly, it is nothing but
unattractive in the end, or death creates the significance of our lives” as well. So in this part, I am
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*This interview can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM
going to search some solutions and answers to the problems listed above. I’ll start with identity
problem by taking Spinozist approach towards self and identity, and I’ll mainly talk about idea of
expanding the self in Deleuze’s Spinoza. I guess when we have different approach towards self,
we’ll also solve the problems. Secondly I’ll try to find some responses to arguments claiming that
an immortal life would be an unattractive one. For this I’ll give references to both Spinoza (mainly
to his Ethics) and Fischer. I also would like to tell why I give weight to Spinoza while thinking
about immortality: It is because Spinoza in his philosophy, invites us to very heart of the life. As I
quoted above, according to him, wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death. And one who is going
to live forever has very much to learn from him.

Gaining a New Perspective with Spinoza: What Are We Capable of?

“What counts is the question, of what is a body capable? (. . .) As long as you
don't know what power a body has to be affected, as long as you learn like that, in
chance encounters, you will not have the wise life, you will not have wisdom.
Knowing what you are capable of. This is not at all a moral question, but above
all a physical question, as a question to the body and to the soul. (. . .) Depending
on the culture, depending on the society, men are not all capable of the same
affects.” — Gilles Deleuze*

Spinoza is a philosopher who offers us an “Unrefusable Philosophical Offer”**. Instead of

the distinction between mind and body, he defends the opposite view: Mind and body parallelism.
“The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” (Spinoza: II,
P VII), “The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body.” (Spinoza: II, P XIX)
and “A mind is the more capable of perceiving many things adequately as its body has many things
in common with other bodies.” (Spinoza: II, P XXXIX) Of course, there is more he said about this
issue, but I think these three propositions from “Ethics” will be enough to understand his view of
virtuous life.
According to Spinoza, there is no common “ought” or rules that leads us to virtuous life, it is
all subjective and every individual needs to find his/her own. And we need to say that, all his
philosophy is about encounters between bodies — which is to say encounter between ideas. At
every moment I am in encounter with another body, and every encounter have an affect on me.
Deleuze explains this like following: “I eat something that I like, or else another example, I eat
something and collapse, poisoned. Literally speaking, in the one case I had a good encounter and in
the other I had a bad one.” and “To the extent that I have affection-ideas I live chance encounters:
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* From Deleuze’s Lectures on Spinoza. Can be found at: www.webdeleuze.com
** Which is also the subtitle of Çetin Balenuye’s book in Turkish: Spinoza’nın Sevinci Nereden Geliyor:
Reddedilemeyecek Bir Felsefi Teklif
I walk in the street, I see Pierre who does not please me, it's the function of the constitution of his
body and his soul and the constitution of my body and my soul.” As we have seen, I get affected by
every encounter I have, and this affection creates feelings on me — mainly joyful passions and sad
passions. We also keep in mind that, this relation is an interrelation. We can read this interrelation
other way around: As a body that is open to be affected, I also affect other bodies. It is a philosophy
of encounters, affections, joyful and sad passions.

An Alternative Approach to Self Creation:

“Expanding the Self” is The Way of “Knowing the Self”
After all these, we can now move on to the question: What is key to a virtuous life according
to Spinoza? Very simple, yet quite strong answer he has: Increase joyful encounters. In order to do
that, find what are you capable of, to affect and to be affected more. In Ethics, Spinoza writes “He
who has a body capable of a great many things, has a mind which considered only in itself is very
much conscious of itself, and of God, and of things. In this life, then, we mainly try to bring it about
that the baby’s body changes (as much as its nature allows this and helps in it) into another body
that is capable of a great many things and related to a mind that is very much conscious of itself, of
God, and of things, in such a way that whatever is related to its memory or imagination is of hardly
any moment in relation to the intellect.” (Spinoza: V, P XXXIX) This, I call, expanding the self and
I think this aspect of the self, opens a possibility to evaluate the possible identity problem in an
immortal life from another perspective. If we remember Williams’ argument again “A story of an
individual with substantially different categorical desires would not be a story of me in a sense
relevant to my special concern for my own future.” Wouldn’t Spinoza see what Williams judges as
negative in a positive way? Substantially different categorical desires would not be any problem in
his understanding of self, on the contrary it would be a chance to expand the self and live most
virtuous life ever. If we are looking for examples in history, it would be helpful to think about
polymaths of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

Life by It’s Very Nature Is Attractive

If we start with Neil deGrasse Tyson’s argument, yet I share his point of view, I still don’t
think that death is the only source that creates focus on the present. Yes, for days that I haven’t got
out of bed and done anything particular, I feel regret, and yes this feeling has so much to do with the
knowledge that I am mortal, that I am going to die; however is the knowledge of being mortal the
only source for this feeling? I don’t think so. I don’t think that in an immortal life, such a feeling
would disappear. It seems to me, what motivates us about our actions is not just death, but also
search of a meaning to our existence. And our search of a meaning does not comes because we are
going to die but because we were born. Death, in this picture is only an end to our effort: searching
for or creating of a meaning. There’s also another point that gives meaning to the present. It is
because we are not fully-rational-animals and we also have emotions as Spinoza agrees, we still
would feel regret after the days we’ve done nothing. I find Fischer’s argument very powerful and
very close to this last point I made. He says “We human beings seem to be acutely sensitive to what
is going on with us now; arguably, we also are keenly attuned to what we take will happen to us in
the future. (. . .) If one is in pain or depression now, it is hardly comforting to know that eventually
and given enough time one will feel better.” (Fischer, 346)
The perspective we have gained from Spinoza about self-creation, I guess, solved the “either
or dilemma” that Williams talks about. One may have many categorical desires and still preserve a
consistent self. And from now on, we can say that, if one satisfies his/her categorical desires, he/she
still can form new categorical desires.
I’d like to challenge with is Smuts’ argument lastly. Despite this argument has so much
connection with Tyson’s argument —both of them justifies themselves by emphasizing the
importance of finitude— I’d like to take a different path to answer. He was saying that in an
immortal life, there won’t be any superiority of any choice over another and that would lead us to a
life in which our choices are insignificant. I agree with Smuth that there won’t be hierarchy of
choices in an immortal life. But when we follow Spinoza, I don’t see this as problem that much. I
take myself for example, I’m studying politics today, and I also want to study philosophy. And
suppose that because my lifetime is limited, I cannot study both. On one hand, mortality increases
importance of choices that I make, but on the other hand it takes opportunity to study both of them
which is what I actually want. At this point, we should ask, what gives importance to choices? Yes,
they are significant because we spend our finite time on them but there is also another element that
gives significance to choices which is simply called “desire”. One last time, let’s pay attention what
Spinoza says —change the word “good” with “significant” if you like—: “We don’t try for or will
or want or desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to
be good because we try for it, will it, want it, and desire it.” (Spinoza: III, P IX)
 4. Conclusion

So far I’ve tried to state possible primary problems in an immortal life that is isolated from
secondary problems such as overpopulation, scarcity of natural resources, etc. and I examined these
problems mainly under two subtopics: Issues about Self-preservation and attractiveness of immortal
life. I believe that Spinoza’s Ethics, his understanding of the-self and virtuous life offers a different
perspective while examining these questions. Although I personally believe that both death and
immortality are two opposite poles to defend and the most desirable situation is an immortality in
which we can choose whether we live or die — just like in Makropulos case. A blogger’s comment
that I saw while doing my research explains the whole situation cleverly I think: “We could desire
immortality until we no longer desire it.”* However, still being cursed with immortality seems more
desirable than being cursed with mortality (Yet I’m not sure if we are cursed at the very moment).

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*The comment can be found at: http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com.tr/2012/09/would-immortality-be-desirable-part-
one.html

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Works Cited

Williams, Bernard. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality”.

The Metaphysics of Death. Ed. John Martin Fischer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993

Fischer, John Martin. “Immortality”. Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death. Ed. Ben
Bradley, Fred Feldman and Jens Johansson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013

Spinoza, Baruch. “Ethics” in the version by Jonathan Bennett presented at

www.earlymoderntexts.com

Smuts, Aaron. “Immortality and Significance”. Philosophy and Literature. Vol. 35, No. 1,
April 2011

Danaher, John. “Would Immortality be Desirable? (Part One)”. Philosophical Disquisitions.

13 Sept. 2012. Web. 2 June 2017. http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com.tr/2012/09/would-
immortality-be-desirable-part-one.html