Immortality

Bernard Williams in his brilliant essay "The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality" argues that immortality is undesirable. I think what he says in that essay is mostly right, but I am not going to repeat his points here. If you are interested, the essay is in Williams's book Problems of the Self. For me, the main problem for a person who desires immortality is that she has no idea of what it is like to be living forever, and the notion of an immortal life for a human person is doubly unintelligible when an immortal life is supposed to be incorporeal. Just ask someone who thinks it is good to live forever what it is so good about it and most likely he will not be able to give you a satisfactory answer. I think many people desire immortality simply because they confuse not wanting to die soon (i.e. in less than a hundred years) and wanting to live forever. I certainly don't want to live forever, but I do want to live for as long as I like.