Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

You can register for a free account to have four complimentary articles per month. We will occasionally email you a newsletter, from which you can unsubscribe at any time. We do not sell personal data or otherwise disclose personal information to other organisations.

Life & Death

Who Wants to Live Forever?

Dan Pollen weighs up the pros and cons of indefinitely extended life.

Billionaire Bryan Johnson is obsessed with anti-ageing. This led him to launch Project Blueprint, in which he underwent a series of six monthly one-litre plasma transfusions, using his own son as a donor, in order to reverse or delay the ageing process. This is just the latest high-profile example of a human fascination with extending youth and seeking eternal life. This goal was captured memorably in one of my favourite childhood films, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), in which Indy and his father raced to stop the Nazis from obtaining of the Holy Grail, which would grant the holder eternal life. So, let’s start with the obvious question: If someone passed you a cup and said, “Drink this and you will live forever”, would you drink it?

The ancient Stoics would have refused.

…