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Regarding Immortality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Roy W. Perrett
Roy W. Perrett
Affiliation:
University of Otago
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Would personal immortality have any value for one so endowed? An affirmative answer would seem so obvious to some that they might be tempted to go so far as to claim that immortality is a condition of life's having any value at all. The claim that immortality is a necessary condition for the meaningfulness of life seems untenable. What, however, of the claim that immortality is a sufficient condition for the meaningfulness of life? Though some might hold this to be the characteristic religious view, this is certainly disputable. Thus McTaggart reminds us, for instance, that ‘Buddhism... holds immortality to be the natural state of man, from which only the most perfect can escape.’ I want to argue that we can imagine variants of personal immortality which would not be valuable and hence immortality in itself cannot be a sufficient condition for value. What is required for the meaningfulness of life is that life exhibit certain valuable qualities. But then the endless exhibition of these qualities is not only unnecessary for the meaningfulness of life, but the endlessness of a life can even devalue those qualities that would make valuable a single, bounded life.

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Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1986 , pp. 219 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

page 219 note 1 I have argued for this in my ‘Tolstoy, death and the meaning of life’, Philosophy LX (1985), 231–45.

page 219 note 2 McTaggart, J. M. E., Some Dogmas of Religion (London: Edward Arnold, 1906), p. 278.Google Scholar

page 219 note 3 Hick, John, Death and Eternal Life (London: Collins, 1976), ch. 8.Google Scholar

page 220 note 1 de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man (London: Collins, 1959), p. 251.Google Scholar

page 221 note 1 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Beck, Lewis White (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), p. 127.Google Scholar

page 221 note 2 Cf. Harvie, J. A., ‘The immortality of the soul’, Religious Studies V (1969), 219–20.Google Scholar

page 221 note 3 Cf. also the proof from goodness in Anselm's Monologian, ch. 4. This passage might plausibly be seen as an argument for what Augustine merely asserts in The City of God (bk XII, ch. I).

page 222 note 1 My objection here assumes the universe to be a finite collection of objects, as Aquinas believed. Hence he rejects the suggestion that there can exist an unlimited number of things (except potentially): ‘All created things must be subject therefore to definite enumeration. Thus even a number of things that happens to be unlimited cannot actually exist’ (Summa Theologise I a, 7, 4). If, however, the universe is unlimited there need not exist even a de facto largest thing.

page 223 note 1 Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels, ed. Davis, Herbert (Oxford: Blackwell, 1959), pp. 207–14.Google Scholar

page 223 note 2 Williams, Bernard, Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), ch. 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The EM scenario discussed here is the one presented by Williams. However it differs from that found in Ĉapek, Karel, The Macropulos Secret, authorized English translation by Selver, Paul (London: Robert Holden, 1927).Google Scholar There EM claims to be 337 years old (p. 170). She took the elixir at 16 (p. 179) but she is commonly taken to be about 30 (pp. 18, 169).

page 224 note 1 Williams, , p. 91.Google Scholar

page 224 note 2 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science, trans. by Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Random House, 1974), sect. 341.Google Scholar

page 225 note 1 See ‘Personal identity’, Philosophical Review LXXX (1971), 3–27; ‘On “The Importance of Self-Identity”’, Journal of Philosophy LXVIII (1971), 683–90; ‘Later Selves and Moral Principles’ in Montefiore, Alan (ed), Philosophy and Personal Relations (Montreal: McGill–Queen's University Press, 1973).Google Scholar For the contrary claim that only the ‘simple view’ of personal identity can satisfy our hopes and fears about immortality see Swinburne, Richard, ‘Personal identity’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society LXXIV (1973–1974), 231–47;Google Scholar‘Persons and personal identity’ in Lewis, H. D. (ed), Contemporary British Philosophy, Fourth Series (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1976).Google Scholar

page 226 note 1 Peirce, Charles Sanders, Collected Papers, ed. by Hartahorne, Charles and Weiss, Paul (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935), 6.521.Google Scholar

page 227 note 1 Williams, , pp. 93–4.Google Scholar

page 228 note 1 For an interesting discussion of this debate, based primarily on Nyaya materials, see Chakrabarti, A., ‘Is liberation (Moksa) pleasant?’, Philosophy East and West XXXIII (1983), 167–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 229 note 1 I call this principle ‘Platonistic’ since it seems to have an ancestral link with Plato's view that Goodness itself is the source of both being and goodness in everything else (Republic 509). The identity of being and goodness is certainly evident in Neo-Platonism: witness Plotinus’ claim that the One is both Being itself and the Good itself. Augustine takes over this view when he says that ‘every entity, even if it is a defective one, in so far as it is an entity, is good’ (Enchiridion, ch. XIII). The principle that it is greater to exist in reality than not to do so is, of course, a presumption of Anselm's first ontological argument (Proslogion, ch. II).

page 229 note 2 The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. by Haldane, E. S. and Ross, G. R. T. (New York: Dover, 1955), Vol. II, p. 186.Google Scholar

page 230 note 1 On perfectionism in Western thought see Flew, R. Newton, The Idea of Perfection in Christian Theology (London: Oxford University Press. 1934);Google ScholarPassmore, John, The Perfectibility of Man (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970).Google Scholar

page 231 note 1 ‘Wittgenstein: a personal memoir’ in Luckhardt, C. G. (ed.), Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1979), p. 48.Google Scholar

page 231 note 2 A good discussion of this question is to be found in Pike, Nelson, God and Timelessness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970).Google Scholar

page 232 note 1 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Culture and Value (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 22e.Google Scholar

page 233 note 1 Phillips, D. Z., Death and Immortality (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Phillips' account here has been influenced by similar suggestions presented in Sutherland, Stewart R., ‘Immortality and resurrec tion’, Religious Studies III (1968), 377–89;Google Scholar and ‘“What happens after death?”’, Scottish Journal of Theology XXII (1969), 404–18. (Compare also Wittgenstein's Tractatus 6.4312.)

page 233 note 2 See, for example, Sherry, Patrick, Religion, Truth and Language-Games (London: Macmillan, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 233 note 3 On this point compare Thornton, J. C., ‘Religious belief and “Reductionism”’, Sophia, v no. 3 (Oct. 1966), 3–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar