Why shouldn't Java enum literals be able to have generic type parameters?

Question

Java enums are great. So are generics. Of course we all know the limitations of the latter because of type erasure. But there is one thing I don\'t understand, Why can\'t I

Answer 1

The answer is in the question:

because of type erasure

None of these two methods are possible, since the argument type is erased.

public  T getValue(MyEnum param);
public T convert(Object);

To realise those methods you could however construct your enum as:

public enum MyEnum {
    LITERAL1(String.class),
    LITERAL2(Integer.class),
    LITERAL3(Object.class);

    private Class clazz;

    private MyEnum(Class clazz) {
      this.clazz = clazz;
    }

    ...

}