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The Philosophers Magazine
John Martin Fischer takes on the Immortality Curmudgeons
Could an immortal life be worthy of choice for human beings? In contemporary philosophy, the English philosopher Bernard Williams has posed this question against the backdrop of Elina Makropulos’s choice to decline an elixir of eternal life in a play by Karol Capek, made into an opera by Janos Janacek. Elina’s life had become boring and alienating; she had lost all interest and projects that she cared about, and she thus threw away a second dose of an elixir that would give her three hundred more years of life. Williams famously contended that living forever would