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“A logos that increases itself”: response to Burley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2010

Timothy Chappell
Timothy Chappell
Affiliation:
The Open [email protected]
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Extract

Mikel Burley says that he thinks that the Makropoulos debate can make no sense unless talk about eternal life makes sense. Here is his most striking argument that it doesn't – that immortality is inconceivable:

…the concepts [of birth, death, and sexual relations] are internally related to the concept of a human being in the sense that they form part of the complex system of interrelated concepts of which ‘human being’ is a member. To understand what a human being is, and hence to be able to operate competently with that concept, one must also have some understanding of, among many other things, what it means for a human being to be born, to form sexual relationships, and to die. (Burley, ‘Immortality and meaning: reflections on the Makropoulos debate’, Philosophy84, 543–544)

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 105 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2010

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References

Burley, Mikel, ‘Immortality and meaning: reflections on the Makropoulos debate.’ Original version online at http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/death/papers/burley_paper.pdf.Google Scholar
Burley, Mikel, ‘Immortality and meaning: reflections on the Makropoulos debate.’ Published version, Philosophy 84, no.330, 529–547 ref.Google Scholar
Chappell, Timothy, ‘Infinity Goes Up on Trial: Must Immortality be Meaningless?’. European Journal of Philosophy, 17.1 (2009), 30–44.Google Scholar
Chappell, Timothy, ‘Immortality and identity’, online version, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/death/papers/chappell_paper.pdfGoogle Scholar
Heracleitus, , Fragments. In Diels, and Kranz, , Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1903. Sixth edition, 1951–2.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard, ‘The Makropoulos Case: reflections on the tedium of immortality’, pp. 82–100 in his Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar