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ONE CAN SAY ALMOST ANYTHING ABOUT THE FIRST MEETING of the interdisciplinary commission except that it went well. The blame, if such a weighty term can be applied here, rests on the dramatic memorandum sent to the government by the eventide homes, especially those final ominous words, Rather death, prime minister, than such a destiny. The philosophers, divided as always between frowning pessimists and smiling optimists, readied themselves to recommence for the thousandth time the ancient dispute over whether the glass was half full or half empty, a dispute which, when transferred to the matter they had been summoned there to discuss, would probably come down to a mere inventory of the advantages and disadvantages of being dead or of living forever, while the religious delegates, from the outset, presented a united front, hoping to set the debate on the only dialectical terrain that interested them, that is, the explicit acceptance that death was fundamental to the existence of the kingdom of god and that, therefore, any discussion about a future without death would be not only blasphemous but absurd, since it would, inevitably, presuppose an absent or, rather, vanished god. This was not a new attitude, the cardinal himself had already put his finger on the implications of this theological version of squaring the circle, when, in his phone conversation with the prime minister, he admitted, although not in so many words, that if there was no death, there could be no resurrection, and if there was no resurrection, then there would be no point in having a church. Now, since this was clearly the only agricultural implement god possessed with which to plough the roads that would lead to his kingdom, the obvious, irrefutable conclusion is that the entire holy story ends, inevitably, in a cul-de-sac. This bitter argument came from the mouth of the oldest of the pessimistic philosophers, who did not stop there, but went on, Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat. The religious delegates did not bother to protest. On the contrary, one of them, a highly regarded member of the catholic sector, said, You're absolutely right, my dear philosopher, that, of course, is why we exist, so that people will spend their entire life with fear hanging round their neck, and when their time comes, they will then welcome death as a liberation, You mean paradise, Paradise or hell, or nothing at all, what happens after death matters to us far less than is generally believed, religion, sir, is an earthly matter, and has nothing to do with heaven, That isn't what we're usually told, We had to say something to make the merchandise attractive, So does that mean you don't believe in eternal life, We pretend we do. For a minute no one spoke. The oldest of the pessimists allowed a wry smile to spread across his face and he adopted the air of someone who has just seen a particularly difficult laboratory experiment crowned with success. In that case, said a philosopher from the optimistic wing, why are you so alarmed by the fact that death has ended, We don't know that it has, we know only that it has ceased to kill, which is not the same thing, Agreed, but given that this doubt remains unresolved, I repeat my question, Because if human beings do not die then everything will be permissible, And would that be a bad thing, asked the old philosopher, As bad as nothing being permissible. There was another silence. The eight men seated round the table had been asked to reflect upon the consequences of a future without death and to construct from the present information a plausible forecast of what new problems a society would have to confront, quite apart, of course, from an inevitable exacerbation of the old problems. The trouble is that the future is already here, said one of the pessimists, before us we have, among others, statements drawn up by the so-called eventide homes, by hospitals, by funeral directors, by insurance companies, and apart from the latter, who will always find a way of profiting from any situation, one must admit that the prospects are not just gloomy, they're terrible, catastrophic, more dangerous by far than anything even the wildest imagination could dream up, Without wishing to be ironic, which, in the current circumstances, would be in appalling taste, remarked an equally highly regarded member of the protestant sector, it seems to me that this commission is dead before it's been born, The eventide homes are right, rather death than such a destiny, said the catholic spokesman, What do you propose we do then, asked the oldest of the pessimists, apart from the immediate dissolution of this commission, which is what you appear to want, We, the catholic apostolic roman church, will organize a national campaign of prayer, asking god to bring about the return of death as quickly as possible so as to save poor humanity from the worst horrors, Does god have authority over death, asked one of the optimists, They're two sides of the same coin, on one side the king and on the other the crown, In that case perhaps it was god who ordered death to withdraw, One day we will know why he set us this test, meanwhile we will put our rosaries to work, We will do the same, by which I mean that we, too, will pray, no rosaries for us, of course, smiled the protestant, And we will arrange processions throughout the country calling on death to return, just as we used to do ad petendam pluviam, to ask for rain, translated the catholic, We won't go that far, such processions have never been part of our customs, said the protestant, smiling again, And what about us, asked one of the optimistic philosophers in a tone that seemed to announce his imminent enlistment in the ranks of the opposition, what are we going to do now, when it seems that all doors are closed to us, To start with, replied the oldest philosopher, let's adjourn this session, And then what, We will continue to philosophize since that is what we were born to do, even if all we have to philosophize about is the void, What for, I don't know what for, All right, then, why, Because philosophy needs death as much as religions do, if we philosophize it's in order to know that we will die, as monsieur de montaigne said, to philosophize is to learn how to die.