QuestionsShould we fear death?The tedium of immortality (the Makropulos case)
Should we fear death?Nothing to fear

The tedium of immortality (the Makropulos case)

The Makropulos case

Bernard Williams 1929 · 2003Luck plays a part in what we are held responsible for: morality cannot ignore it.
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What it claims

An endless life, for someone who remains himself, would be unbearable: death is not always an evil, and it can be a good thing not to live too long. (Williams adds: it remains an evil when it comes too early.)

Why

Nothing guarantees that an endless life stays interesting for someone who keeps their character and tastes.

In short

"The tedium of immortality (the Makropulos case)" is an argument by Bernard Williams ("The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality", 1973) on the question "Should we fear death?" (answer: nothing to fear). Its claim: An endless life, for someone who remains himself, would be unbearable: death is not always an evil, and it can be a good thing not to live too long. (Williams adds: it remains an evil when it comes too early.). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

"The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality", 1973
Valid with an implicit premise

In a play by Karel Čapek, turned into an opera by Janáček, Elina Makropulos has taken an elixir of long life. At 342, her endless life has become boredom, indifference and coldness, and she refuses to prolong it. Bernard Williams draws a thesis from it: an immortal life would be unbearable for someone who remains himself. So death is not an evil to be avoided at all costs. But he does not say that dying at any time is good: dying too early remains an evil.

P1For an endless life not to become boring, something in it would have to be totally absorbing at every moment: something that makes boredom unthinkable.
P2When one keeps a character, tastes and interests, there is no reason to think that anything could be guaranteed to be totally absorbing forever. Removing boredom by removing the awareness of what would bore us would mean no longer being the same person.
P3 · implicit premiseA life that can only be kept interesting by ceasing to be oneself is a life one cannot want to live: it is unbearable.
Therefore an endless life, for someone who remains himself, would be unbearable: death is not always an evil, and it can be a good thing not to live too long. (Williams adds: it remains an evil when it comes too early.)

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds someone whose endless life is boring but who puts up with it and wants to go on, for instance because he has other projects.
With P3, the conclusion follows: if an endless life does not stay interesting without ceasing to be oneself (P1 and P2), and if such a life is unbearable (P3), then it is unbearable. P3 links boredom to the impossibility of wanting to live, and a defender of immortality contests it: one could put up with a little boredom. The real discussion is about P2.
Analogy. Imagine a song you love. Played on a loop for a thousand years, it would become unbearable. To keep loving it, you would have to change so much that you would no longer be the one who loved it. That is the choice Williams sees for the immortal: be bored or become someone else.

Objections

2

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

John Martin Fischer 1994 · attacks premise 2

Fischer, in "Why Immortality Is Not So Bad" (1994), answers Williams. Some pleasures are self-exhausting, but others are repeatable: one can come back to them without tiring, especially if they are spaced out enough. An endless life made of a mix of such pleasures would stay pleasant, without the person ceasing to be himself.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Williams in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Williams did not answer Fischer in the texts we have read. Our summary of what follows: Williams's supporters object that a repeated pleasure can become routine and lose what gave it meaning, and that a mix of pleasures still has to remain the same person without being bored. The underlying disagreement is what gives a reason to go on living: pleasure, or projects that are one's own.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open debate: the disagreement is about what makes a life worth prolonging and what "remaining oneself" requires. No widely accepted answer.
Lucretius (as Williams presents him) 55 BC · attacks the conclusion

According to Williams, Lucretius holds that death is never an evil: not only is there no one for whom dying is an evil, but there is no time at which dying is an evil. So dying too early is no worse than dying too late: it is all the same.

Williams replies
Williams 1973 · Williams's reply
Williams writes that we are propelled into a longer life by "categorical" desires (desires that give us a reason to go on living). What life promises must therefore hold out some hope for those desires. That is what grounds the hope of going on living against Lucretius, and the reason for judging a premature death an evil.
Where the debate stands (our summary)The disagreement is about the value of what we lose by dying: for Lucretius, nothing, since no one is there to regret it; for Williams, the desires we have now matter. The debate is still open.