Self-Giving and Reflections on Life Extension: How Love Might Shape the Choice of Whether to Live Past a Natural Human Lifespan.

Abstract

Drawing upon a deprivationist account of the badness of death, Ingemar Patrick Linden advocates for a hypothetical state called "contingent immortality." The future Linden champions is one in which every person would be able to live for as long as they would like, save for events like accidents or murder. We recognize Linden's foundational claims in defense of contingent immortality as weighty and reasonable, but consider whether there are defensible reasons to forgo the inhibition of aging and living well past a natural human lifespan. Drawing partly upon the work of Carter Snead and Alasdair MacIntyre, we outline the nature of self-giving love, how love provides for many persons a measure of meaning and purpose in life, and the ways in which given and self-imposed limitations can help imbue our actions as embodied beings with a particular and richer sense of that meaning and purpose. We conclude that love provides defensible grounds as to why one might reasonably choose to accept our shared human identity as creatures with naturally bounded lifespans. This conclusion takes into account both the benefits and costs of love, especially in light of our existence as embodied beings.