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But You Mustn’t Be

Orpheus and Eurydice, by Edward Poynter — Orpheus and Eurydice seeking to flee the Underworld.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

In 1970, the philosopher Thomas Nagel published a short paper entitled Death, in which he asked: If death is the permanent end of our existence, is it an evil?

There are, at least to the non-believer, only two possible answers to this question: either death is an evil because it deprives us of life, or it is a mere blank because there is no one left to suffer this deprivation.

Thus, if death is an evil, this is not in virtue of any unpleasant attribute that it has (such as eternal torment), but only in virtue of what it deprives us of, namely, life. For Nagel, the bare experience of life is intrinsically valuable, regardless of the balance of its good and bad elements.

The longer we live, the more we ‘accumulate’ life. In contrast, death cannot be accumulated—it is not, as Nagel puts it, ‘an evil of which Shakespeare has so far received a larger portion than Proust’. Most people would not regard the infinitely long period before they were born, or the temporary suspension of life, as an evil. Therefore, if death is an evil, this is not because it involves a more or less lengthy period of non-existence, but because it deprives us of life.

Nagel’s Straw Men

Nagel raises three objections to this view, but only so as to later overturn them:

It is doubtful whether anything can be an evil unless it causes pain or displeasure.
In the case of death, there is no subject left to suffer an evil. So long as we live, we have not yet died; and as soon as we are dead, we are no longer alive. So there seems to be no time at which the evil of death might occur. (This is a formulation of the ancient ‘no subject of harm’ argument.)
If we do not regard the infinitely long period before we were born as an evil, then why should we regard the period after we are dead any differently? (This is a formulation of the ancient ‘symmetry’ argument.)

All three of these ‘objections’—really, arguments for why we should not fear death—were made already by Epicurus (d. 270 BCE). Nagel addresses them in toto by arguing that the good or evil that befalls us depends on our history and possibilities rather than our momentary state, such that an evil can befall us even if we are no longer here to experience it. For instance, if an intelligent person suffers a brain injury that reduces his mental condition to that of a contented infant, this should be regarded as a serious evil even if the person himself (in his current state) is oblivious to his fate.

In essence, if the three objections are invalid, it is because they ignore the direction of time—that is, the shape of a human life. Even though we do not materially survive our death, we can still suffer evil; and even though we do not exist in the time before our birth and in the time after our death, the time after our death is time of which we have been deprived, time in which we could have continued to enjoy the good of living.

The Problem for Nagel

The question remains as to whether the non-realisation of further life is an absolute evil or whether this depends on what can naturally be hoped for: the death of John Keats at 24 is commonly regarded as tragic, but that of Leo Tolstoy at 82 is not (even though Tolstoy died in a freezing cold train station while running away from his wife). ‘The trouble,’ says Nagel, ‘is that life familiarises us with the goods of which death deprives us … Death, no matter how inevitable, is an abrupt cancellation of indefinitely extensive goods.’

Notice that, although Nagel’s conclusion is impeccably arrived at, it rests on an initial assumption which the casual reader may have taken for granted, namely, that ‘the bare experience of life is intrinsically valuable, regardless of the balance of its good and bad elements’. We might agree or disagree, but Nagel has not proved this. Perhaps it is too fundamental to require proof—or to be provable.

Bernard Williams and the Shape of a Human Life

Three years later (1973), the philosopher Bernard Williams took up the problem where Nagel had left off. If life is intrinsically valuable, does it follow that more is always better? Williams concluded, apparently contra Nagel, that immortality would not be desirable. What gives us reason to go on living, he argued, is not bare existence, but our desires, attachments, and projects—which must necessarily assume the shape of a human life.

Yet Nagel’s ‘abrupt cancellation’ may not be quite so abrupt. Our bodies, memories, characters, desires, and projects are continually changing. The child becomes the adolescent, the adolescent the adult, and the adult someone whom the child could scarcely have imagined. By the time death arrives, we have already died several times. Perhaps this is why, consciously at least, we are not more frightened of it: biological death is less an abrupt cancellation than the last in a series of deaths.

Death Kills Us Twice

But although biological death may be the last in a series, it is still the last. If we grant Nagel his premise, it is an evil insofar as it deprives us of indefinitely extensive goods.

No surprise, given the sheer horror of this conclusion, that theologians down the ages have sought to blunt it. But it gets worse, much worse. Death not only deprives us of life, but also compels us to spend the very life that it deprives us of in the mostly unconscious fear of this deprivation. As I have argued, much of our anxiety and the baggage that comes with it stems from our fear of death. Thus, death not only cuts us short, but prevents us from making the most of whatever it leaves us.

To be afraid of death, therefore, is to die twice—and never to live.

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Odysseus, Calypso, and the Philosophy of Immortality

Odysseus and Calypso — Calypso offered eternity. Odysseus chose Ithaca.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Would you want to live forever? Then why did Odysseus refuse Calypso’s offer of immortality?

Suppose an attractive goddess offered you eternal youth and immortality. Would you accept? Most of us wouldn’t have waited for the end of my last sentence. Homer, however, tells the story of a man who turned her down.

Calypso is one of the most elusive characters in Greek mythology. Like ‘apocalypse’ and ‘eucalyptus’, her name derives from the Greek kalyptō, ‘to conceal’ or ‘to hide’. She lives on the remote island of Ogygia, hidden from both gods and men. She is beautiful and deeply in love with Odysseus. More than that, she offers him the greatest prize of all: eternal life with eternal youth.

Yet every day Odysseus sits alone upon the shore, gazing out to sea and weeping. He longs not for paradise, but for Ithaca.

The Odyssey is full of monsters and marvels. The Cyclops tests Odysseus’ ingenuity. Circe his self-control. The Sirens his judgement. Yet Homer saves his greatest temptation until the monsters are gone. Calypso cannot be defeated. She can only be refused. Her island may be the most philosophical place in all literature. It asks neither how we survive nor how we succeed, but what makes a human worth living—or even, what makes a human life human.

At first sight, Odysseus’ decision seems irrational. Calypso is more beautiful than Penelope, her island more idyllic than rocky Ithaca. She offers not merely pleasure, or happiness, but eternity. Why exchange eternity for a finite, imperfect, and uncertain human life?

Nor is Calypso a villain. Homer invites us to sympathise with her. When Hermes arrives bearing Zeus’ command that she release Odysseus, she bitterly complains that the male gods freely take mortal lovers while condemning goddesses for doing the same. Before letting him go, she desperately pleads with Odysseus. Penelope can never rival her beauty or save him from ageing and death.

The obvious answer is that Odysseus misses his wife and son. But Homer suggests something deeper. To embrace Calypso would be to abandon not merely his home, but himself. When we fall in love, we fall in love with someone who would change us, but not change us beyond all recognition. Calypso does not ask Odysseus to become a better Odysseus. She asks him to become someone, or something, else.

For thousands of years writers and philosophers and sorcerers have returned to the same question.

Some five centuries before Homer, another hero came to the opposite conclusion. After the death of his friend Enkidu, whom he mourned ‘like a woman mourning’, Gilgamesh set out in search of eternal life. At the end of his long journey and descent into the underworld, he discovered the plant of immortality—only for a serpent to steal it while he bathed. He returned home empty-handed, having learnt that the proper task of human beings is not to escape death, but to make the most of life.

Greek mythology itself offers an even darker warning. Eos, the goddess of the dawn, fell in love with the Trojan prince Tithonus and, fearing his loss, begged Zeus to grant him immortality. As the centuries pass, the once alluring youth shrivels into a babbling old man, too frail to live yet unable to die. In some versions of the myth, he shrinks into a cicada, condemned forever to thirst and chirp.

Jonathan Swift issues a similar warning in Gulliver’s Travels. The Struldbrugs, though born immortal, continue to age indefinitely. As they lose their memories and outlive everyone they have ever loved, they sink into loneliness, despondency, and envy of mortals.

In his essay The Makropulos Case (1973), the philosopher Bernard Williams sought to explain why immortality might ultimately become undesirable. The ambitions and desires that give our lives meaning, he argued, cannot sustain one and the same person forever. Once they are exhausted, we could escape the resulting tedium only by becoming different people, with different ambitions and desires. But then who exactly would be living forever?

Immortality threatens not only meaning but identity. Tolkien reached a similar conclusion, this time by asking the opposite question. In The Silmarillion, his mythology of Middle-earth, death is ‘the Gift of Men’. It is not men who envy the immortal elves. It is the elves who envy men, because only mortal lives possess the shape, urgency, and completion that immortality denies. Far from a punishment, mortality becomes one of humanity’s greatest blessings.

Today, our oldest ambition has become a technological one. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs spend vast fortunes on longevity research. Some hope to slow ageing indefinitely. Others dream of uploading consciousness into machines. Cryonics companies promise to preserve bodies until such a time as science might revive them. The quest of Gilgamesh is now drawing venture capital.

Before asking whether any of this will succeed, we should ask, with Homer, whether it should.

Odysseus’ refusal is one of the most astonishing decisions in all literature. Offered eternal youth and immortality, he prefers an ageing wife, a rocky, run-down island, and a fragile, mortal life. Rightly or wrongly, it is not life that Odysseus wants, but his life—not an immortal life, but a meaningful one. Instead of trying to live forever, it is today that we should seek to live.

That, anyway, is what Homer seems to be saying.

What about me? Would I accept Calypso’s offer?

I think I’d compromise and ask for three hundred years. That way, I’d have the best of everything.

There are two things that man can do that God cannot: make wine, and end his own life.

Deus non sibi potest mortem consciscere si velit, quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vitae poenis. —Pliny