ABSTRACT
Ever since Bernard Williams made the character Elina Makropulos central to his case against the desirability of immortality, a debate has raged on between philosophers who join him in arguing that immortal life would lack meaning, and those who defend the prospects of meaningful everlasting existence. Instead of getting defensive about the desirability of immortality, this chapter takes up the offensive position that being mortal already leaves much to be desired. To illustrate the idea that having a necessary ending spoils life’s meaning, this chapter introduces a new literary example—Leonid Andreyev’s Lazarus—to juxtapose with Elina Makropulos. Lazarus personifies the notion that the transient significance of life simply evaporates in comparison with the infinite nothingness of death. Among other things, dying means the destruction of the first-personal sense of value we build up and attribute to our lives through conscious experience, memories, and agency. And even a more legacy-based sense of meaning seems doomed to corruption and fading once we are gone. These and other observations open the door for considering what thinkers from the existentialist tradition have to say about meaning in mortal and immortal lives alike.
