Introduction: The Hope of Meaningful Immortality
The Meaning of "Meaning"
The Current State of the Immortality Debate
The Meaninglessness of Mortal Life
Hope for Meaning
Existentialism, Death, and Meaningful Life
1. Early Arguments About the Desirability of Immortality
Socrates’ Ambivalence
Pascal’s Wager
Kant’s Postulates
Schopenhauer’s Pessimism
2. Kierkegaard on Repeatable Pleasures, Perpetual Projects, and Risk
Boredom and Identity
The Importance of Repetition
Meaning Beyond Rotation
Immortality as a Thought Experiment
Risk and Value
3. The Dark Side of Desire: Nietzsche, Immortality, and the Roots of Transhumanism
The Transhumanist Agenda and the Desirability of Immortality
Nietzsche on Life-Affirmation, Novelty, and Immortality
Eternal Recurrence and Immortality
Not Quite a Curmudgeon or a Transhumanist
4. Unamuno on Having the Strength to Long for Personal Immortality
What We Really Want
Death and Injustice
Running Afoul of Nietzsche
Giving Up on Oneself
5. Heidegger on Finitude and Value
The Higher Bar: God-like Immortality
Stages, Risk, and Urgency
Being-towards-death
Immortality and Inhumanity
6. Immortality Online: Reasons to Be Wary
What Gets Left Behind
An Imagined but Not So Far-Fetched Scenario
Duties to the Dead
Inhuman Resources
Facing Death
Appendix
7. Sartre and the Importance of Always Having an Exit
Death and the Indeterminacy of Meaning
The Finitude of Immortal Life
"Hell Is Other People" and the Dangers of Necessary Immortality
Indefinite Life-Extension and Suicide
8. Camus and the Absurdist Case for Immortality
Meaninglessness and Absurdity
Two Types of Suicide
Freedom and Revolt
Imagining Sisyphus Happy
9. Grander Ambitions, Rekindled Interests, and Limited Memory in Beauvoir
Beauvoir Contra Sartre
A Curmudgeonly Tale?
Resources for Immortality Enthusiasts
Lingering Ambiguities
Conclusion: Disappointment and Death
Biography
Adam Buben is a Universitair Docent 1 in Philosophy at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is the co-editor, with Eleanor Helms and Patrick Stokes, of The Kierkegaardian Mind (Routledge, 2019).
"This book is clear, careful, and sometimes personal and especially poignant. It is essential reading for scholars interested in death and immortality, and it is accessible enough to use in undergraduate teaching. Buben is well-versed in the analytic philosophical literature on death and immortality as well as in the existentialist tradition, and his writing is accessible even for readers without a background in continental philosophy. I highly recommend this book."
Taylor Cyr, Samford University, USA
“[Buben has] offered an impeccable treatment of the reflection conducted by outstanding existentialists on the desirability of immortality. He [has] attempted to find a synergy between the analytic tradition and the continental one, a synergy which can help us deal with the current interest of science and technology in the achievement of immortality. Finally, he [uses] a rigorous methodology, which the reader can immediately appreciate as soon as she picks up the book.”
Roberto Di Ceglie in Human Studies
