"The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality." In the new critical edition of the opera The Makropulos Case by Leoš Janá?ek, the performance material has been completely reworked on the basis of all the preserved sources. Any contribution, large or small, helps us produce intelligent, reflective radio that questions everything, including our most deeply-held beliefs about science, morality, culture, and the human condition. What makes a human life worth living is the activity of pursuing one's deep, or 'categorical', desires; but it is a She suggested that we need not have these sorts of desires. Rosati, Connie (2012). be because we want to stay alive. In these pages an ancient promise of philosophy has been kept.' Although it has received several productions in Britain over the last two decades, “The Makropulos Case” remains among the lesser-heard of Janáček’s major operas, and has not received its share of critical or popular acclaim. The book answers questions about what death is and why it matters that help define the growing interdisciplinary subfield of philosophy of death. Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman, and Jens Johansson, ‘The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality’ in Problems of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. The Makropulos Case is about unrequited love, women with hearts of ice, fear of death, and fear of ageing. My kindred spiritual subject is, one might say, the mortality of the soul. title, e.g. ( Log Out /  Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. This character and circumstance is derived from a play by Karel Capek. Free Essay: In his paper “The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality” Bernard Williams asserts his central claim that when immortality is. E.g., Elina Makropulos, the fictional protagonist of Karel Čapek’s 1922 play, The Makropulos Case — later turned into a 1926 opera by Leoš Janáček — has been granted immortality, but within the first three centuries of her sempiternally endless or infinite life, starting at age 42, she’s also lost all her positive categorical desires. After 300 years, Elina has exhausted her desires and her life has become tedious to her. Check if you have access via personal or institutional login. I decided that I needed some good reading to keep me company. Whenever I teach Introduction to Philosophy, I begin not with Plato or Descartes or Nietzsche, but rather with the work of a now little-known philosopher and playwright, Karel Čapek (1890-1938). Williams' central argument can be sum-marized as follows. 0 有用 v_etch Williams, Bernard. View Williams - The Makropulos Case.pdf from PHILO 101 at Hunter College, CUNY. What makes a human life worth living is the activity of pursuing one's deep, or 'categorical', desires; but it is a Williams , ‘The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality’, in his Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956-1972 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973), ch. Those among previous lecturers who were philosophers tended, I think, to discuss the question whether we are immortal; that is not my subject, but rather what a good thing it is that we are not. Mcallum, Carol She moves to another city and becomes, again, a successful opera singer and mother, and so on. After admitting this, Elina Makropulos … And is the good life a finite life? 2009. His staging of The Makropulos Case was a co-production between the Paris Opéra and the Teatro Real in Madrid and won the Premio Lírico Teatro Campoamor as the Best Opera Production of 2009. F.p. My kindred spiritual subject is, one might say, the mortality of the soul. : Rossum’s Universal Robots. Conclusion: If you are immortal and have unchanging categorical desires, then your life is not worth living. Buetow, Stephen Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Immortality, or a state without death, would be meaningless, I shall suggest; so, in a sense, death gives the meaning to life. Notes on the issues concerning this edition. Philosophy Talk relies on the support of listeners like you to stay on the air and online. ‘Immortality without Boredom.’ Ratio XXII: pp. E.M. is a woman of three hundred and forty two years. This essay started life as a lecture in a series ‘on the immortality of the soul or kindred spiritual subject’. I love Janacek and I regard “The Makropulos Case” to be his masterpiece. In philosophy, it is known best from Bernard Williams’ 1973 article “The Makropulos Case”, named after Karel Čapek’s comedy Věc Makropulos. For example, the things that are the most important to some of us might instead be certain virtues – we might desire to lead honest lives. This opera is the basis for a well-known argument by Bernard Williams about the value of life. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. The prominent English moral philosopher Williams Bernard ‘s (1929- 2003) famous essay, “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality,” is not about the nature of boredom as such. He argues his position by utilization of The Makropulos case, or the case of E.M. He argues his position by utilization of The Makropulos case, or the case … that people should not yearn for an unreachable longevity whose consequences they cannot begin to foresee, but rather live so that the brief time allotted to us will have been spent living fully, experiencing things, accomplishing things, and managing to be happy." 82–100. Bernard Williams, a philosopher and an author wrote the essay titled “The Makropulos Case: Reflection on the Tedium of Immortality”. Why would someone want to live forever? Its thesis is, roughly, that it would not be a good thing to live forever, for eventually immortal life would become boring. Bernard Williams' essay, 'The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality' (first published in 1973),2 initiated a debate that still rumbles on. The big philosophical questions in the background are three: what is the good life? One member challenged the notion of a categorical desire in (1). That is, categorical desires might only be known, at least for some of us, in hindsight. The elixir allows her to … based on play (1922) of same name by Karel Čapek (1890–1938). Ecosabotage and Civil Disobedience. As she nears the end of her natural life, she takes the elixir and extends her life. Someone else said that he wasn’t sure what his categorical desires were and that he didn’t think he could really know for sure until the end of his life. Papatya gave a talk on whether death is preferable to immortality. Bernard William’s The Makropulos Case focuses on the topic of immortality, and the issues that would arise from being immortal. Philosophy and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, edited by Nicholas Joll Massimo Pigliucci finds his way around Philosophy and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is the philosophical aspect of death. Her real name is Elina Makropulos and she was the daughter of the Greek man, Hieronymus Makropulos, who as the personal doctor of Emperor Rudolph II attempted to create the elixir of youth. “The Makropulos Case Revisited: Reflections on Immortality and Agency,” The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death, eds. Travis Timmerman - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (1):18-37. The Makropulos Affair is a famous three-act opera written by the Czech composer Leos Janacek, based on a play of the same name by Karel Capek. Add more citations Similar books and articles. Tännsjö, Torbjörn (2013). Elina Makropulos is now 337 years old and the effect of the elixir is beginning to wear off. paper “The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality” Bernard Williams asserts his central claim that when immortality is feasible it is intolerable; further, it is reasonable to regard death as an evil. (4) If you have pervasive boredom, then you will suffer from lack of motivation to act, feelings of detachment and loss of meaning. Epistemic injustice and children’s literature, Childhood trauma and moral responsibility. Problems of the Self: The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality @inproceedings{Williams1973ProblemsOT, title={Problems of the Self: The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality}, author={B. Williams}, year={1973} } Opera in 3 acts by Janáček to his own lib. The Makropulos case revisited: Reflections on immortality and agency. Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this book to your organisation's collection. Richard Wollheim, The Listener 61, No. Widely celebrated as a philosophical classic, Bernard Williams’ essay “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality” (Williams 1973) sparked a debate among philosophers and theologians that has run and run. Steven P. Wainwright & Clare Williams - 2005 - Body and Society 11 (3):27-41. The obvious exception is the chapter on ‘The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality’, in Problems of the Self, pp. https://www.coursehero.com/file/27015057/The-Makropulos-Case-SUMMARY-docx A conditional desire might be the desire to go to on holiday in the summer, to write a book review or to eat a fish pie for dinner. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. The revision of the score involved a comparison of the autograph score with three copies that originated during the composer’s lifetime. It is also about misplaced love when Gregor, Emilia’s great-great-great-great-grandson falls madly in love with her. “Philosophy and Death is a well-organized, even-handed, and comprehensive anthology about the nature of death, personal identity, the evil of death, and the wrongness of killing. In Language, Metaphysics, and Death. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. 261-77. Michael Martin - 1990 - Environmental Ethics 12 (4):291-310. The Makropulos Case: Tedium Of Immortality Analysis. Williams believes in the “mortality of the soul” and that eternal life is Background to the Makropulos2 Case: play by Karel Capek, opera3 by. “The End of Immortality!” Eternal Life and the Makropulos Debate. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 6. The protagonist Elina Makropulos is given the gift of a rejuvenating elixir by an alchemist. On Friday the Philosophy Society held a discussion of Janáček’s opera The Makropulos Case. Indeed, there are several very different ways in which it could be true at once that death gave the meaning to life and that death was, other things being equal, something to be feared. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. (2) If you have similar experiences repeatedly, then you will at some stage exhaust all your categorical desires. The incoherence and impossibility of personal immortality. Pursuing another line of argument, someone else suggested that the argument reinforces the Buddhist teaching that desire is the cause of suffering, and that to avoid pervasive boredom and the loss of meaning we ought to strive to eliminate desire. In Williams' case, it is his reflections upon the single fictional predicament of Elina Makropulos, from which he proceeds to make an inference pertaining to human beings in general. Show More. So good on Opera North who over the past few seasons have staged all six of Janacek’s mature operas, concluding this autumn with The Makropulos Case… Her fear of death has not decreased. She has survived so long due to an immortality draught concocted by her father, a physician, long before the play’s action. A Dialogue on Immortality. In The Oxford handbook of philosophy of death , ed. This essay started life as a lecture in a series ‘on the immortality of the soul or kindred spiritual subject’. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511621253.008 Corpus ID: 169142420. Makropulos differs from the general population, but this would not be the case if her “condition” became usual. One part of the field of life's meaning consists of the systematicattempt to clarify what people mean when they ask in He argues his position by utilization of The Makropulos case, or the case of E.M. ( Log Out /  Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, FBA (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English moral philosopher.His publications include Problems of the Self (1973), Ethics and the Limits of Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality’’ (Williams1973) sparked a debate among philosophers and theologians that has run and run.1 As & Mikel Burley m.m.burley@leeds.ac.uk 1 University of Leeds, Leeds, UK 1 Initially delivered as a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1972, Williams’ essay has Mikel Burley - 2015 - The Journal of Ethics 19 (3-4):305-321. In his paper “The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality” Bernard Williams asserts his central claim that when immortality is feasible it is intolerable; further, it is reasonable to regard death as an evil. The Makropoulos Case. Lucretius wrote: I shall rather pursue the idea that from facts about human desire and happiness and what a human life is, it follows both that immortality would be, where conceivable at all, intolerable, and that (other things being equal) death is reasonably regarded as an evil. Oxford University Press. Not that it lacks anything of the intensity or the conviction found in other works from the composer’s hectic last … The Makropulos Case Read More » Opera North, Grand Theatre, Leeds. It tells the story of Elina Makropulos who, at the age of 42, is given an elixir of life by her father. He tried it … In his essay he discusses how death is not necessarily evil, like some people think. “The Makropulos Case” is the title of a play written by Karel Čapek, which tells the story of Elina Makropulos, a woman who acquires the elixir of life at the “biological” age of 37. Williams believes in the “mortality of the soul” and that eternal life is Background to the Makropulos2 Case: play by Karel Capek, opera3 by. Those among previous lecturers who were philosophers tended, I think, to discuss the question whether we are immortal; that is not my … Upshur, Ross Edited by John Donnelly. 2009. I doubt if anyone could read the reflections on immortality entitled ‘The Makropulos Case’ without a consciousness that his deepest beliefs and feelings were being engaged: engaged and adjusted under the influence of reason. (3) If you exhaust all your categorical desires, then you will be afflicted by pervasive boredom. I doubt if anyone could read the reflections on immortality entitled 'The Makropulos Case' without a consciousness that his deepest beliefs and feelings were being engaged: engaged and adjusted under the influence of reason. Brno 1926, London 1964, S. … (5) If your life is affected by lack of motivation to act, feelings of detachment and loss of meaning, then it is not worth living. Foerster Lectures on the Immortality of the Soul — 4:10 PM University of California, Berkeley — UC Berkeley Campus. Bernard A. Williams. Steven P. Wainwright & Clare Williams - 2005 - Body and Society 11 (3):27-41. My kindred spiritual subject is, one might say, the mortality of the soul. This mystery is about ourselves. Another member suggested that we might well have categorical desires, but they need not be unchanging as Williams’ claims they must be; we might take another view of personal identity. It is tied to my sense of personal identity. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. 2 . The Makropulos Case Analysis 1760 Words | 8 Pages. Makropulos Affair, The (Věc Makropulos; literally ‘The Makropulos Thing’, hence variations in trans. A categorical desire, by contrast, is a deep, driving desire, one that makes me me. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on Immortality and Agency.” In Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman, and Jens Johansson (eds. 2 (Apr., 2007) (pp. Read reviews from … ),The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death [Electronic resource]. Bernard Williams' essay, 'The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality' (first published in 1973),2 initiated a debate that still rumbles on. This opera is the basis for a well-known argument by Bernard Williams about the value of life. Williams thinks that this generality would ot eliminate boredom and inner death – it would be a world of Bourbons, learning nothing and forgetting nothing, and it is unclear how much could ever happen. They pressurise Marty until the singer tells them her secret. Above all it is about time, endless time, time on your hand, time that you do, and don’t, want to end. Change ). Today the Philosophy Society welcomed Papatya O’Reilly from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. made into an opera by Janacek and which tells of a woman called Elina Makropulos, alias Emilia Marty, alias Ellian Macgregor, alias a number of other things with the initials ‘EM’, on whom her father, the Court physician to a sixteenth-century Emperor, tried out an elixir … In Chappell's case, it is merely the ‘familiar feature of lived experience’, that our projects characteristically overlap with one another rather than arising and then burning out all at once. Problems of the Self Philosophical Papers 1956-1972 BERNARD WILLIAMS Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy in the Can an infinite life have… Williams’ argument has been formalised by Bortolotti and Nagasawa (2009, p. 266) as follows: (1) If you are immortal and have unchanging categorical desires, then you will have similar experiences repeatedly. In these pages an ancient promise of philosophy has been kept.’ Richard Wollheim Source: The Listener 1959 Words 8 Pages. 1923–5. Years ago I was set to spend a full weekend in my apartment, as it was forecast to snow outside. ( Log Out /  and This argument trades on the notions of conditional desire and categorical desire. ‘The Makropulos Case’, ‘The Makropulos Secret’). Comp. Bortolotti, L. and Y. Nagasawa. Some existentialists, for instance, seem to have said that death was what gave meaning to life, if anything did, just because it was the fear of death that gave meaning to life; I shall not follow them. Problems of the Self: The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality. Bernard Williams (1973) drew upon The Makropulos Case to argue that an immortal life would not be worth living and, by corollary, the value of life stems from its finiteness. Vinit Haksar - 1976 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 19 (1-4):151 – 192. Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman, and Jens Johansson.Oxford: Oxford 321. She decides not to take the elixir again and dies a natural death. Makropulos Case unfolds in a continuous trajectory, its profun-dities delivered so deftly we may fail to recognize them until we realize we are engulfed. Another member of the group suggested, taking aim at (2), that the claim that we will exhaust our categorical desires turns on a failure of imagination: we might fulfil our desires in new and different ways indefinitely. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. E.g., Elina Makropulos, the fictional protagonist of Karel Čapek’s 1922 play, The Makropulos Case—later turned into a 1926 opera by Leoš Janáček— has been granted immortality, but within the first three centuries of her sempiternally endless or infinite life, starting at age 42, she’s also lost all her positive categorical desires. On Friday the Philosophy Society held a discussion of Janáček’s opera The Makropulos Case. Specifically, I have the class read his 1920 play R.U.R. Elina’s heart’s desires are to become a successful opera singer and a mother. PHILOSOPHY 1200A MEANING OF LIFE C ARLETON U NIVERSITY P ROFESSOR K ENNETH F ERGUSON C OURSE S YLLABUS TERM: Fall Term 2019 TIME: Monday/Wednesday 2:35-4 LOCATION TBA INSTRUCTOR: Ken Ferguson OFFICE: Paterson Hall, 3A56 OFFICE HOURS: Tues/Thurs, 3:00 – 4:00 EMAIL: kenneth.ferguson@carleton.ca CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge . Williams, B. Free Essay: In his paper “The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality” Bernard Williams asserts his central claim that when immortality is. That does not mean that we should not fear death (whatever force that injunction might be taken to have, anyway). Elina Makropulos is given an elixir that extends her life by 300 years, and can be taken many times. Connie S. Rosati, Curriculum Vita, p. 2 PUBLICATIONS Articles “The Story of a Life,” (forthcoming, Social Philosophy & Policy). The Embodiment of Vulnerability: A Case Study of the Life and Love of Leoš Janáček and His Opera The Makropulos Case. http://www.eno.org | 0871 472 0600 Trailer for the first revival of David Alden's production of Janáček's The Makropulos Case, starring Amanda Roocroft. The protagonist Elina Makropulos is given the gift of a rejuvenating elixir by an alchemist. She becomes both an opera singer and a mother. Language Language, Metaphysics, and Death book. One of the most famous philosophy papers on the topic of longevity/immortality was published by Bernard Williams in 1973: “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality”2 . In order to prolong her life for another 300 years, Elina set off to find the recipe, the only reason for her interest in Gregor’s case. 1973. The Makropulos Affair (or The Makropoulos Case, The Makropulos Secret, or, literally, The Makropulos Thing; Czech Věc Makropulos) is a The elixir extends her “chronological” life In ‘The Makropulos Case’, Williams agrees that it is rational to avoid death, for at least a while, but argues that a life without end would be ‘unlivable.’ First, he considers some famous arguments by Lucretius for the conclusion that death is nothing to fear. Williams' central argument can be sum-marized as follows. ( Log Out /  The Embodiment of Vulnerability: A Case Study of the Life and Love of Leoš Janáček and His Opera The Makropulos Case. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/sep/22/the-makropulos-case-review The group discussed this argument at length.

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