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Defending heaven's desirability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2019

CLINTON NEPTUNE
CLINTON NEPTUNE*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Loyola University, 1032 West Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60660, USA
*
e-mail: cneptune@luc.edu
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Abstract

Bernard Williams famously argued that immortality would lead to intolerable tedium. If his conclusion is true, then we ought not desire any sort of blissful-type afterlife (heaven) that precludes death. I reconstruct Williams's argument and examine three possible defeaters for his premises: the possibility of infinite activity kinds, the inability to prefer justifiably non-existence over the enduring of suffering, and the existence of inexhaustible pleasures such as the deepening love relationship between family, friends, and God, if God exists. I will show that further attempts to reboot Williams's argument also fail to rule out the desirability of heaven.

Type
Articles from the 2018 Postgraduate Essay Prize
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 235 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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