The Debate on Immortality: Posthumanist Science vs. Critical Philosophy

At different times Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse argued that immortality is a condition of overcoming misery and achieving complete human freedom. Their arguments were made before “practical immortality” had become a concrete scientific project. The difference between what was then and what is now scientifically possible alters the ethical and political value of the idea of immortality. Had the first generation of critical theorists occupied the present historical moment, they would have realized that science harnessed to the demand for limitless life would not solve the kind of ethical and existential problems they hoped it would. I argue that the scientific struggle against human finitude is driven by the same egocentric concern for money and self-maximization that early critical theory diagnosed as the main psychological pathology caused by capitalism. Finitude, I conclude, is the price human beings must pay if they are to live free and meaningful lives.