Precious and Pathetic: The Value of Mortality

Abstract This paper contrasts our mortal lives with the kind of immortality depicted in Jorge Luis Borges’s story ‘The Immortal’. Borges’s story illustrates how chance plays a different role in mortal and immortal lives. I will show that this difference in the role of chance gives choices in our mortal lives an importance that the choices of Borges’s immortals lack. We can imagine immortal lives other than the ones in Borges’s story. But even for such immortals the importance of their choices diminishes as time goes toward infinity. I conclude that being mortal comes with benefits that immortal lives lack.