The immortality paradox

By taking precautions to keep safe and stay healthy, most people clearly live their lives as though death is undesirable. But does that also suggest that an immortal existence – or something like it – would be preferable? Perhaps outliving loved ones and diminishing returns of satisfaction would make it feel more like a curse. Or maybe experiencing immortality would resemble something surprisingly close to most humans’ lives, with its own positives and negatives, blessings and frustrations. Created in collaboration with Sarah Stroud, director of the Parr Centre for Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this TED-Ed animation offers a brief survey of the contrasting ways in which philosophers, including the UK moral philosopher Bernard Williams (1929-2003), have viewed the question of immortality – and, by extension, what it reveals about the mortal lives we currently have no choice but to live.