ABSTRACT
There is a popular view of existentialism that says it embraces mortality as a necessary component of meaningful human life. Insofar as existentialism can be generalized about in this way, this view is mistaken. Many of the figures frequently associated with existentialism are actually quite ambivalent about mortality, and some object to it vehemently. Two thinkers in the latter category are Miguel de Unamuno and Albert Camus. In laying out their respective thoughts about death, meaning, and immortality, I make the case that so-called ‘existentialists’ need not have a very friendly or even resigned relationship with their own chronological finitude. Unamuno explicitly states that a life ended by annihilative death is meaningless, and longing for personal immortality is the only way to maintain hope of a life worth living. In some ways, Camus takes a less extreme position, but he still manages to argue that death is an injustice and an obstacle to the cultivation of further value. In both cases, extension of one’s own conscious life always seems like something worth fighting for, even when it results in great suffering. The claim that suffering is preferable to extinction might be difficult to defend, but it does reinforce the notion that two representative existentialists are quite hostile toward mortality.
