Should We Live Forever?: The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging


should we live foreverBy Gilbert Meilaender

Well-thought-out perspectives on living both long and well. 

In Should We Live Forever? Christian ethicist Gilbert Meilaender puzzles over the implications of the medical advances that have lengthened the human life span, wrestling with what this quest for living longer means for our conception of living well and completely. As he points out in his introduction, “That we often desire, even greedily desire, longer life is clear; whether what we desire is truly desirable is harder to say.”

Meilaender argues that a thirst for indefinitely more life, and for a life in which aging and decline are significantly slowed, is surely appealing in many ways and should not be simply resisted, but neither should it uncritically be applauded. If human life is an embodied, organic life, he says, we might suppose that even a flourishing life must include the sort of aging and decline that marks organic life generally. Still more, if human beings are created for life with God, prolongation of this life, however long, may not really satisfy the thirst that moves us.

The six chapters of this book take multiple perspectives on issues surrounding aging and invite readers to consider whether “indefinitely more life” is something worth pursuing. (Publisher’s description)

Available at Christian Book

Pin It on Pinterest