While immortality may seem highly desirable, it can be argued that an immortal life, cannot be a meaningful life. Susan Wolf describes a meaningful life as one that involves active engagement in projects of worth (Wolf, 2008, p.234). Following this line of thought, in order to determine whether or not an immortal life is meaningful, one must first consider factors such as what “immortality” means, why someone would want to be immortal and how immortality affects one’s ability to experience life.

In order to establish the meaningfulness of an immortal life, one must first know what “immortality” means. Society’s view on what it means to be immortal is dependent on their belief systems. For example, a religious person may subscribe to the idea that immortality pertains to an individual’s soul and can be experienced through things such as reincarnation or an afterlife, whereas others who rely more on science may believe in immortality involving the physical prolonging of our bodies. Then there are those that believe in an immortality that does not involve our bodies at all but rather the consciousness being able to live on without a physical form. However, because death is well understood as the end point of a human’s physical existence there is also the belief that immortality can mean living forever through one’s achievements and lineage even though the individual themselves is gone.

Because what is considered to be an immortal life is so varied it can be difficult to determine the value of a specific kind of “immortality.” However, whether immortality is defined as preserving the conscious or soul so it can exist beyond the body, or preserving the physical body itself, philosophers such as Bernard Williams would argue that regardless of its form, an immortal life is not something to be desired.

Human consciousness allows for individuals to conceptualize death as something that will inevitably occur to all living beings and yet, death as an “unknown” individual experience can cause a great deal of worry or even fear. Death as the end of consciousness represents an “end” that many desire to delay or even stop all together. In the case of those who believe in an afterlife, they may fear that what awaits them after death may not be very pleasant. As Williams describes it, “Death is said by some to be an evil because it is not the end, and by others, because it is” (Williams, 2010, p.346).

Ultimately it is one’s own desires, functioning within the belief system they engage with, that decide why they would wish for something like immortality. Where one person might want to simply prolong their life in fear of death, another may feel like they didn’t have enough time to accomplish all they wanted to within their lifetime. Just as the forms immortality may take are varied, so too are the reasons for wanting it. In that sense, the question of why would something that is so heavily desired and theorized about be considered meaningless or bad arises.

While many would seek immortality to prolong their lives, they fail to take into account other factors such as the ethical and environmental consequences of lengthened lifespans and whether or not a longer life would truly be better or simply prolong the suffering that people endure throughout their lives. The inability to imagine being dead is natural since we are unable to simulate the end of consciousness, however, like Bernard Williams, others would claim that living forever would inevitably be meaningless because we lack the sense of finitude that urges us to actively engage in fulfilling our goals and desires.

There are two conditions that must be satisfied in order for an immortal life to have meaning. According to Williams, these conditions are that our sense of self stays the same over time and that we are able to satisfy our categorical desires. However, these two conditions are not easily satisfied. Following Williams’ line of thought, if an individual could live forever, then they would have all the time in the world to fulfill their categorical desires. However, this would inevitably make them indistinguishable from the individual’s more fleeting, easily forgotten desires. Then there is the question of whether or not someone’s character can truly remain the same as they encounter endless experiences (Williams, 2010, p.352).

To the first condition, the problem is that our lives would become tedious and painful. Williams uses an example of a woman called EM who had stopped aging at the age of 42 and had lived on for 300 more years. Williams describes the problem in having lived such a long life as “A boredom connected with the fact that everything that could happen and make sense to one particular human being of forty-two had already happened to her” (Williams, 2010, p.352). To the second condition, it is impossible for one’s sense of self to not change over time. Someone’s identity as a teenager may be completely different from their identity as an adult. If someone were to remain the same age for the rest of eternity then preserving one’s identity for that long, even with minor adjustments to suit the passing of time, is impractical.

Our sense of self is integral in leading a meaningful life because the kinds of categorical desires one chooses to engage in is dependent on the kind of person they are. However, as immortality strips away our sense of time, not only does time itself become meaningless, but so do one’s goals and desires. Thus, a longer life, not in the context of a few centuries but rather one that spans an eternity, is meaningless if an individual is unable to satisfy their desires and plan how they’d wish to live. This is because on one hand, without a sense of an end point or finish, any goals one might have is reduced to fleeting desires that they would not be actively engaged in fulfilling and on the other hand one’s sense of self would become dulled overtime due to the tedious boredom brought on by having lived for too long.

As previously discussed, the prolonging of our consciousness or bodies would not result in a meaningful life nor has any way to accomplish that been discovered throughout the many centuries of humans seeking immortality. However, there is still the belief that immortality is obtainable through things such as one’s achievements or any children that they leave behind in the world after their death. This concept is most notably demonstrated in the way people still continue to analyze and learn about the works of great philosophers like Aristotle for example or the ways in which people still listen to and praise the music created by famous singers such as Michael Jackson. However, when we examine immortality as it has been discussed, what has achieved “immortality” is not the individual themselves, but their legacy. Immortality understood as the prolonging of life has not been achieved. Therefore, while their contributions to society may have been meaningful, for their “immortality” to be meaningful they would have to still be actively engaged in their work, which is impossible once they’re dead.

Immortality understood as the indefinite prolonging of life is something that many wish to achieve however, such a life would inevitably become tedious and painful. Susan Wolf’s definition of a meaningful live involving active engagement in projects of worth and Bernard’s conditions for a meaningful immortality both suggest that an immortal life would be meaningless. Factors such as what “immortality” means, why people desire it and how immortality is experienced can be used to examine the ways in which immortality strips away the meaning of life by depriving an individual of the ability to actively fulfill their goals and desires in accordance with their identity, which becomes meaningless over an infinite span of time. It is ultimately the finitude of human that gives life meaning and renders an eternal life meaningless.

Bernard Williams, “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality,” from Life, Death, & Meaning, Second Edition, (ed.), David Benatar (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).

Susan Wolf, “The Meanings of Lives” from The Meaning of Life: A Reader, (eds.), E.D. Klemke & Steven M. Cahn (Oxford, 2008).