Sir, – Joe Humphreys's weekly excursions into philosophical questions always make for interesting reading. His most recent piece, on the idea of an afterlife, is no exception ("Would you want to live in the afterlife?", November 3rd).
The final comment of his interviewee, Raymond Tallis, that he “can’t think of a particularly attractive” version of such an afterlife conjures up memories of a remark made many years ago by the philosopher Bernard Williams when dealing with the same issue.
Noting the possible boring endlessness of an eternal afterlife, Williams wrote, “ . . . from the facts about human desire and happiness and what a human life is, it follows that immortality would be, where conceivable at all, intolerable”. – Yours, etc,
HARRY McCAULEY,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.