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‘Intimations of immortality’: a response to Bernard Williams

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2018

JON W. THOMPSON
JON W. THOMPSON*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, King's College London, London WC2R, UK
*
e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article, I address Bernard Williams's famous objection to immortality. Following others, I conceive of Williams's argument as presenting a dilemma for those who hope in immortality. The first lemma involves utter boredom, while the second lemma involves loss of one's distinctive character. I argue that each lemma fails to admit realistic alternative possibilities. The first fails to admit the possibility that our disposition to boredom is a radically contingent disposition. The second fails to admit the possibility that we retain some of our most important desires and projects in immortality – even while cycling through an array of desires and projects.

Type
Articles from the 2018 Postgraduate Essay Prize
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 245 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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