ABSTRACT
In the third lecture of Death and the Afterlife, Samuel Scheffler aligns himself with the so-called “immortality curmudgeons.” According to Scheffler, a life without end would be undesirable because temporal finitude is a significant contributing factor in determining the value or meaning of life. In the absence of both a final impending deadline and the danger of premature death, Scheffler doubts we would continue to experience the urgency, orienting life stages, and notions of risk and caution that underlie what we ordinarily value about human life. This chapter argues that Scheffler would discover an opponent in Martin Heidegger, who famously introduces the idea of human life (or something like it) as essentially “Being-towards-death.” On its surface this idea appears to line up quite nicely with the account Scheffler provides, and, in fact, on the rare occasions Heidegger’s name comes up in the surrounding literature, it is usually placed on a list of likely immortality curmudgeons. When properly understood, however, it turns out that his view on the importance of death for structuring the meaning of life allows for a rather uncurmudgeonly take on immortality.
