Could Body-bound Immortality be Liveable?

Abstract

Could body-bound immortality be liveable? I should like to approach this question via consideration and criticism of some arguments put forward by Professor Bernard Williams in his essay 'The Makropulos case'.' Williams distinguishes between two quite different types of immortality. These we may call body-bound immortality (BBI) and bodyindependent immortality (BII). As we might expect, someone enjoying BBI could do so only in a body of flesh and blood and bone; but it might be a moot point as to how far his body at any point during his immortal existence would have to be continuous with the body he was born with. Also, someone enjoying BII might hope to explore avenues of existence not open to the BBI case. But this, in Williams' view, would not be sufficient to make the BII case tolerable, even if we could accept that the BII case could qualify as a person, which he doubts. Williams argues that it is a Good Thing that we are not immortal, regardless of whether we favour BBI or BII. He also appears to take the more extreme view that it is virtually a necessary truth that immortality could not be enjoyed by a person. I shall suggest that his arguments are uncharacteristically weak, and that the elaboration of two simple distinctions can help to make the prospect of BBI more appealing than Williams allows. Williams illustrates the possibility of BBI by the case of EM, following a play by Karel Capek. EM's father, the court physician to a sixteenth century emperor, tried out on her an elixir of life. 'At the time of the action she is aged 342. Her unending life has come to a state of boredom, indifference and coldness. Everything is joyless: the end it is the same, she says, singing and silence. She refuses to take the elixir again; she dies; and the formula is deliberately destroyed by a young woman among the protests of some older men' (p. 82). The case of EM, Williams suggests, constitutes a strong (if fictional) argument in favour of the view that BBI could not be tolerable. Nevertheless, he admits, it is possible for someone to object that EM may have laboured under some contingent limitations (social, psychological, etc.) which might not be suffered by more fortunate and sanguine souls. But, against this possible objection, Williams argues that 'the supposed contingencies are not really contingencies; that an endless life would be a meaningless one; and that we could have no reason for living eternally a human life. There is no desirable or significant property which life would have more of, or have more unqualifiedly, if we lasted for ever' (p. 89). I In his book Problems of the Self (Cambridge University Press, I973), p. 82 ff. All page references are to this book.