In the video, you encountered several contemporary philosophers who ask whether immortality is really desirable—or even possible to value. But this question reaches far back into philosophical history and opens up deeper questions about identity, time, meaning, and death.

Is Immortality Desirable? Modern Debates
Bernard Williams famously argues that an immortal life would become intolerably tedious. In “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality” (1973), he imagines a woman who has already lived over 300 years and has lost all interest in continuing. According to Williams, our sense of purpose depends on what he calls categorical desires—the deep, identity-forming desires that give our lives direction. If we outlive the goals and values that once defined us, Williams argues, we risk losing not only motivation, but our very sense of self.

Others like John Martin Fischer and Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin push back (2014). In their view, a meaningful immortal life might still be possible if it includes long-term projects, forgotten pleasures, or deeply meaningful relationships that unfold over time. They argue that we already evolve across our lifespan, and that continuity of character doesn’t require sameness.

Samuel Scheffler (2013) adds another twist: immortality, he suggests, might undermine meaning itself. Our finitude forces us to prioritize, to choose, to care. Without time limits, we lose urgency—and perhaps the very structure that makes value possible.

Immortality vs. Death
If, as Williams and Scheffler suggest, immortality would actually be bad for us, then it seems we should be glad we’re mortal. In other words, it’s actually good for us that we die. But this is puzzling, because death is widely viewed as a misfortune. What is less clear is why death should be a misfortune. Philosopher Thomas Nagel argues in his 1970 essay “Death” that death is bad for the person who dies not because death is necessarily painful or unpleasant, but because of what it deprives us of. For Nagel, life as such has value, simply in virtue of enabling experience. But death brings an end to the possibility of any further experience, and in that respect it is always a harm. Indeed, it remains true that death deprives us of something valuable even when our actual experiences while alive are negative.

This view is challenged by philosophers in the ancient Epicurean tradition, who argue that death is not a harm at all—because when it arrives, we are no longer there to experience it. As Epicurus put it:“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.” (from the Letter to Menoeceus, translated by Robert Drew Hicks).In other words, since all good and bad things depend on experience, and death is the absence of all experience, death itself cannot be bad for the person who dies.

The Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher Lucretius extended this argument with a vivid comparison. In On the Nature of Things, he asks why we do not regard our pre-natal nonexistence—the vast stretch of time before we were born—as a misfortune. If nonexistence before our birth is not something we grieve, then why should nonexistence after our death be feared? According to Lucretius, both are symmetrical absences of consciousness and should be viewed with the same indifference.Still, the psychological reality of fearing death persists. For many, philosophical reasoning is cold comfort against the felt terror of ceasing to be. See Stroud and Muñoz (2025), Section 31, “Should we Fear Death?”

Immortal Souls
Centuries earlier, Plato had offered a much more optimistic view. In his dialogue entitled Phaedo, he portrays Socrates calmly awaiting death and arguing that the soul is immortal. His case rests on several arguments: that life and death form a cycle (so souls return), that we have knowledge not gained from the senses (suggesting we knew it before birth), and that the soul, unlike the perishable body, resembles the eternal and unchanging Forms.Plato also explores a more poetic vision in the Symposium, where the priestess Diotima suggests that all human beings seek immortality—not necessarily by living forever, but by leaving something lasting behind. Some pursue this through children; others through works of art, acts of virtue, or the creation of knowledge. In this way, Plato invites us to see immortality not as a metaphysical fact, but as a human longing—for beauty, meaning, and permanence.

Memento Mori: Embracing Mortality as Moral Practice
Not all traditions treat death as a problem to be solved. The medieval phrase memento mori—“remember you must die”—served not as a grim warning, but as a call to clarity, humility, and moral urgency. The same sentiment was present in ancient Roman customs, Christian art, and philosophical practice, reminding people that life is finite and that awareness of this fact can sharpen our priorities and deepen our sense of purpose.The Stoic philosophers of antiquity made this reflection a daily discipline, urging people to meditate on death in order to live more wisely and virtuously. In ancient Rome, even as generals celebrated victory, a servant would whisper, “Remember you are mortal,” to remind them that triumph is fleeting. In medieval Christian Europe, skulls, hourglasses, and wilting flowers began to appear in paintings, carvings, and tomb inscriptions. These images weren’t meant to provoke despair, but to awaken us to what matters most. In these traditions, death is not just an end, but a teacher.

References

Fischer, J. M., & Mitchell-Yellin, B. (2014). Immortality and boredom. The Journal of Ethics, 18(4), 353–372.

Nagel, T. (1970). Death. Noûs, 4(1), 73–80.

Scheffler, S. (2013). Death and the afterlife. Oxford University Press.

Muñoz, D., & Stroud, S. (2025). Ethical theory: 50 puzzles, paradoxes, and thought experiments. Routledge.

Williams, B. (1973). Problems of the self. Cambridge University Press.