Mortality doesn’t just cover the simple phenomenon of death but the fact that we are all limited creatures: limited in time, space, power, and knowledge. We are vulnerable to old-age and decline, disease and accidental injury. But throughout history there has always been the dream of immortality. Suppose you had access to the elixir of youth which guaranteed you would live for ever (and be young and healthy as well). Would you take it?

§ The Vision of Personal Immortality

The philosopher Bernard Williams takes as his starting point the 1925 play by Karel Capek, The Makropoulos Secret in which the famous singer Emilia Marty has taken the elixir of youth and has so-far lived for 300 years. She has become bored by the repetitiveness of life and nothing has value for her anymore. Williams argues that an eternal life would become tedious and produce a terrible ennui. Life can only have meaning and value if it has a trajectory and a terminal point. So, in a sense, death gives meaning to life.

On the other hand GB Shaw in his suite of five plays entitled Back to Methuselah takes a more optimistic line, thinking that eternal life might bring wisdom through long experience.

The idea of life extension, if not absolute immortality, is not entirely science fiction. There are some scientist, mainly in the USA, who believe that through a combination of drugs, transplant surgery and computer technology the possibility of indefinitely extended one’s life is within humanity’s grasp. However, what would be the social and political consequences of a society heavily weighted with immortals, not least how would we deal with the  population problem with fewer people dying? And would the new technologies be available to all, or just to a wealthy elite?

If we take the view that immortality would be undesirable does that mean that death is a good thing? Surely, death robs us of everything valuable? While we are fit, healthy and happy we have projects that drive us forward into the future and so we would not want to die today or tomorrow. On the other hand, if Williams is right immortality is also undesirable and we are caught in a paradox. I think this is captured very well by Christopher Hitchens in his book Mortality, which he wrote while being treated for terminal cancer.

“The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair.

I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence.

Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall.” ~ Christopher Hitchens

2. The Vision of an Immortal Society

While it’s true that all of die as individuals, the society, community and culture we participate in goes on after we die. The philosopher, Samuel Scheffler, in his 2013 book Death and the Afterlife, asks us the perform a thought experiment with him where due to some quite natural phenomenon, the whole human race is rendered infertile. There is no other effect other than no more children are conceived after a specific date and so the whole of humanity will have died out within 80 or so years. Would there any point in undertaking any project if there is no one to hand in onto after we individually die?

Scheffler argues that everything we care about and value assumes a continuing community that transcends our individual lives. Take that away and our lives lose most of what makes them meaningful and worthwhile.

3. Control over our personal mortality

Given that we are mortal and cannot avoid death completely, how much control should individuals have over their own life-spans? The UK government has recently passed a bill allowing people with a terminal illness to be assisted in achieving a comfortable death. The arguments for and against seem to centre on the one hand personal autonomy, allowing people to make their own choices, and on the other, paternalism, seeking to protect the vulnerable against unfair pressure to end their own lives. Once we allow some choice on the ending of one’s life are we on a slippery slope that will end in involuntary euthanasia?

We won’t be able to cover all this in our discussion but you can focus on the topics that interest you most.

We will be following up this session later in the year with a session on the practical issues of end of life directives wills and powers of attorney.