Benatar’s central argument for antinatalism develops an asymmetry between the pain and pleasure in a potential life. I am going to present an alternative route to the antinatalist conclusion. I argue that duties require victims and that as a result there is no duty to create the pleasures contained within a prospective life but a duty not to create any of its sufferings. My argument can supplement Benatar’s, but it also enjoys some advantages: it achieves a better fit with (...) our intuitions; it does not require us to acknowledge that life is a harm, or that a world devoid of life is a good thing; and it is easy to see why it does not have any pro-mortalist implications. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays on the philosophy of life’s meaning in contemporary society. Topics range from antinatalism, meaning of life, the trolley problem, to painless civilization. I am now writing a comprehensive philosophy book on those topics, but it will take several years to complete; hence, I decided to make a handy book to provide readers with an outline of the philosophical approaches to the meaning of life that I have in mind. -/- Chapter One discusses (...) the definition, history, and category of antinatalism. Antinatalism is the thought that all human beings or all sentient beings should not be born. Although I am not an antinatalist, I believe that antinatalism poses an important question about procreation and the meaning of our lives. This is why I presented an overview of antinatalistic thoughts in the past and the present and also performed an analytical examination of their arguments. -/- In Chapter Two, I take up Philosopher Thaddeus Metz’s argument on meaning in life, especially his fundamentality theory, and claim that “the heart of meaning in life,” which is the concept I propose in this chapter, cannot be compared with anything whatsoever. -/- Chapter Three deals with the concept of “birth affirmation,” which means that I can say “yes” to my having been born. I believe that birth affirmation is one of the most promising ideas that can contribute to contemporary philosophical discussions on meaning in life, and I call this approach “an affirmation-based approach to meaning in life.” The concept of birth affirmation has two dimensions: the psychological dimension and the philosophical dimension. I would like to show in this chapter that it is difficult to clarify what it actually means to say “yes” to my having been born. -/- Chapter Four discusses the relationship between the dropping of the atomic bombs and the trolley problem. I argue that the dropping of atomic bombs was a typical example of the events that contained the logic of the trolley problem in both their decision-making processes and justifications. I further argue that the trolley problem has its own unique problems, which I call “the problem of the trolley problem.” This problem has been overlooked in academic discussions of the trolley problem. I also refer to a religious aspect of this problem. -/- In Chapter Five, I talk about the “philosophy of life” as an academic discipline. We have the philosophy of language, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history, but why don’t we have the philosophy of life in the field of philosophy? Of course, we have Lebensphilosophie, but it does not cover philosophical discourses in ancient worlds, nor current analytical approaches to the concepts of life and death. A new research field is required to advance contemporary philosophy. -/- In Chapter Six, I illustrate an outline of my “painless civilization” theory, a criticism of contemporary civilization that deprives us of a joy of life in exchange for eliminating pain and suffering. I also discuss the concept of “fundamental sense of security,” which is considered indispensable for us to be able to live a life without regret. (shrink)

The concept of antinatalism is now becoming popular on the Internet. Many online newspaper articles deal with this topic, and numerous academic papers on antinatalism have been published over the past ten years in the fields of philosophy and ethics. The word “antinatalism” was first used in the current meaning in 2006, when the two books that justify the universal negation of procreation were published: one by David Benatar and the other by Théophile de Giraud. However, we (...) can find various prototypes of antinatalistic thoughts in ancient Greece, ancient India, and modern Europe. You might recall the name Schopenhauer. In this paper, I briefly summarize the history of antinatalistic thoughts and propose a set of categories on antinatalism and related thoughts. (shrink)

In my paper recently published in a collection of controversial arguments in this journal, I argued that the same principles that are behind ethical veganism also warrant antinatalist conclusions. I thus suggested that to be consistent in their ethical reasoning, moral vegans should not have children. William Bülow has kindly responded to my claims and offered a plausible reply, which, according to him, concludes that at least some moral vegans may resist antinatalism. In this short paper, I reply to (...) Bülow. (shrink)

Ethical vegans and vegetarians believe that it is seriously immoral to bring into existence animals whose lives would be miserable. In this paper, I will discuss whether such a belief also leads to the conclusion that it is seriously immoral to bring human beings into existence. I will argue that vegans should abstain from having children since they believe that unnecessary suffering should be avoided. After all, humans will suffer in life, and having children is not necessary for a good (...) life. Thus vegans, and probably vegetarians as well, should not have children. I will consider several objections against this controversial claim, show why the objections fail and conclude that it would be best for ethical vegans to abstain from procreation. (shrink)

Despite Lyotard’s proclaimed end of metanarratives in a post-modern predicament, metanarratives appear to be making a comeback. This is the case for antinatalism, a relatively recent ideological formation or moral philosophical perspective that has spawned a new social movement with an active presence in social media. The organizational and structural aspects of NSMs render them amenable to being labeled as ‘post-modern’. In this context, the emergence of ideologies as moral philosophies, such as antinatalism, loom like an outsider, or (...) like a retro fissure in a plastic canvass. The reason is that antinatalism shares the holistic, fundamentalist and totalizing discursive traits of modernist metanarratives that were heralded by Lyotard (1984) as being outmoded in a post-modern condition. Yet, this metanarrative is also different in fundamental aspects from traditional metanarratives. These aspects pertain to its rhetorical self-reflexivity and to its pre-occupation with rooting the propounded arguments in empirical particulars, rather than in a metaphysical or transcendentalist realm. This new form of metanarrative I call metametanarrative as it constitutes a philosophical regression, so to speak, in a pre post-modernist cultural milieu. (shrink)

Antinatalism, a relatively recent moral philosophical perspective and ideology that avows “it is better not to have ever existed,” has spawned a new social movement with an active presence in social media. This study draws on the discourse historical approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis for offering a firm understanding as to how the collective identity of the Facebook antinatalist NSM is formed. The findings from the analysis of the situated interaction among the NSM’s members demonstrate that collective identity (...) is far from a knitty-gritty concept, but a dynamic schema that includes a plethora of micro-interactions. Individuals constantly negotiate its meaning in context, as they seek to streamline the antinatalist system of ideas with their lifeworld through a web of interlocking schemata, discursive and rhetorical strategies. (shrink)

The philosophical debate over whether procreation is morally justified, given the sufferings of procreated humans, finds renewed significance amidst global crises. In this paper, I argue that procreation as a collective human endeavour inevitably perpetuates horrendous, life-ruining evil on a global scale. I also show that horrendous evil is unavoidable even under optimistic assumptions about the prospect of the progress of civilisation. Moreover, I argue that such evil cannot be outweighed by the favourable outcomes experienced by the procreated humans. This (...) makes procreation pro tanto morally wrong. Since much of the literature focuses on individual procreative acts and non-life-ruining evil, my argument makes a novel contribution by drawing the focus of the debate to (1) humans’ collective procreative practice and (2) how it sustains horrendous evil across the globe. This analysis invites further reflection on the ethics of bringing life into a world fraught with profound suffering and encourages consideration of antinatalism as a serious philosophical proposition. (shrink)

People wonder about the cause of poverty when scarcity is the natural state of things. Why? Because we are “designed” (metaphorically) to survive and reproduce our genes as much as possible. Not to discover reality. Not to enjoy. This is why evolution has selected in us the fear of death and the belief in that life is always worth living. We are “programmed” to make our life as long as possible, at any cost. -/- “The Big Lie” was published in (...) The Antinatalism Magazine, vol. 1, September, 2017. Jiwoon Hwang, Ed. Paperback Kindle Edition. (shrink)

This paper is a revised version of the essay that won the Zapffe Prize in 2017. -/- In «The Last Messiah» and On the tragic, Peter Wessel Zapffe suggests that humankind should cease to reproduce, as the meaning of life cannot be found and human life at its best is tragic. The theory has been criticized for assuming that the meaning of life must be explained by an external cause and implicitly asks for an infinite causal chain. In this paper, (...) I argue that it is possible to escape this critique by adding a new element to the definition of the tragic: namely, the insight that the tragic cannot come into existence if the subject does not demonstrate its greatness. Precisely because a human, on Zapffe’s understanding, must prove its brilliance if tragedy is to arise, I argue that the tragic cannot be devoid of meaning. In contrast, the individual seems to be provided with a tragic meaning of life, rather than being deprived of it. Furthermore, the new definition of the tragic affects Zapffe’s antinatalism, because a tragic meaning of life does not necessitate that humankind should cease to reproduce. Yet, the definition does not suggest that humans should reproduce either. Instead, it confronts us with the following question: Should one bring new life into the world, when the meaning of life only can be found in the tragic? (shrink)

Anthroterminalism is introduced as a descriptive label for a previously unnamed worldview in discussions of human extinction. It is the position that total and rapid human extinction is intrinsically appropriate due to the presence of one or more intrinsic, species-specific human qualities, independent of moral culpability, consequentialist reasoning, or instrumental aims. The note distinguishes anthroterminalism from related positions such as antinatalism, efilism, misanthropy, and annihilationism, clarifies its conceptual boundaries, and emphasizes its purely classificatory and action-neutral character.

Advocates of Mars colonies commonly assert a supposed obligation to act so as to maximize the longevity of the human species. When this principle is defended, it is often by appeal to the alleged costs—of incoherence or misanthropy—of denying it. Against this supposed obligation, I argue for two theses. The modest thesis: it is not incoherent and need not be misanthropic to prefer human extinction sooner rather than later. The ambitious thesis: we should prefer human extinction sooner rather than later. (...) The supposed obligation to prolong our species is no justification of human activities in space. (shrink)

I present and explore a new version of the Person-Affecting View, according to which reasons to do an act depend wholly on what would be said for or against this act from the points of view of particular individuals. According to my view, (i) there is a morally requiring reason not to bring about lives insofar as they contain suffering (negative welfare), (ii) there is no morally requiring reason to bring about lives insofar as they contain happiness (positive welfare), but (...) (iii) there is a permitting reason to bring about lives insofar as they contain happiness. I show how my view solves the non-identity problem, while retaining the procreation asymmetry and avoiding implausible forms of antinatalism. We can be morally required to ensure that the quality of life of future people is higher rather than lower when this involves bringing about (worth living) lives that would contain less suffering rather than bringing about different (worth living) lives that would contain more suffering. (shrink)

This paper explores anti-natalism and attitudes towards environmental preservation. Anti-natalisms of a certain kind, what I call “compassion-based anti-natalisms”, adhere to the principle of minimising suffering, and this goes hand-in-hand with the common belief that protecting the environment from destruction is the right thing to do. However, I argue that environmental preservation is, in fact, antithetical to the anti-natalist’s aims. This is because environmental preservation is, as I argue, primarily for future generations and has, therefore, pro-natalist attachments: environmental preservation promotes (...) and enables future generations. As a result, environmental preservation conflicts with three of the anti-natalist’s fundamental values: the goal of extinction, an overall reduction in suffering, and adherence to a duty of non-procreation. Because of this, I discuss two possible attitudes the anti-natalist might take towards environmental preservation: Destruction and Apathy. Destruction involves the active degradation and destruction of the environment to bring about extinction as soon as possible. Apathy is to be “hands-off” towards preservation and degrade the environment more slowly. I state that Apathy is the most suitable attitude for the anti-natalist to take towards the environment because it ascertains a sensible balance within the anti-natalist’s values and does not introduce new, morally objectionable outcomes. Finally, I discuss some practical limitations to Apathy and how the anti-natalist might best act in the context of the real world. I conclude that anti-natalists might have to compromise on their values and, paradoxically, support environmental preservation. (shrink)

Several influential organisations have attempted to quantify the costs and benefits of expanding access to interventions-like contraceptives-that are expected to decrease the number of pregnancies. Such health economic evaluations can be invaluable to those making decisions about how to allocate scarce resources for health. Yet how the benefits should be measured depends on controversial value judgments. One such value judgment is found in recent analyses from the Disease Control Priority Network (DCPN) and the Study Group for the Global Investment Framework (...) for Women's and Children's Health. Noting the decrease in the number of pregnancies expected to result from providing access to family planning, DCPN and the Study Group claim that a substantial benefit of such interventions is averting the stillbirths and child deaths that would have resulted from those pregnancies. We argue that health economic analyses should not count such averted deaths as benefits in the same way as saved lives. First, by counting averted stillbirths and child deaths as a benefit but not counting as a cost the lives of babies who survive, DCPN and the Study Group implicitly commit themselves to antinatalism. Second, this method for calculating the benefits of family planning interventions implies that infertility treatments are harmful. Determining how potential people should be treated in health economic analyses will require grappling with population ethics. (shrink)

In The Human Predicament, David Benatar develops and defends the annihilation view, according to which “death is bad in large part because it annihilates the being who dies.” I make both a positive and negative argument against the annihilation view. My positive argument consists in showing that the annihilation view generates implausible consequences in cases where one can incur some other (intrinsic) bad to avoid the supposed (intrinsic) bad of annihilation. More precisely, Benatar’s view entails that would be prudent for (...) someone to incur a non-trivial amount of pain in order to avoid being annihilated, even in cases in which the additional life one would live would not be good at all for the person living it. Yet, it seems imprudent to incur any amount of pain to continue living a life that isn’t good for the person living it, so annihilation itself cannot be (intrinsically) bad. Avoiding the implausible consequences I identify requires denying that annihilation is itself bad. My negative argument, made throughout other chapters, consists in demonstrating that standard forms of deprivationism can avoid each of the three major problems that Benatar attributes to them without having to posit that annihilation itself is bad. (shrink)

In his Philosophy of Redemption (1876) Philipp Mainländer transforms the Schopenhauerian will-to-life into his own concept of will-to-death, preceding Freud’s investigations into the death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). Mainländer’s post-Schopenhauerian conception that non-being is preferable to being anticipates Cioran’s discussion of suicide from A Short History of Decay (1949) and his vision of the “catastrophe” of birth from The Trouble with Being Born (1973). If, from a Nietzschean perspective, Mainländer’s and Cioran’s obsession with death was a symptom (...) of passive nihilism, their thanatophilia may resonate with our anxious crepuscular mentality, prefiguring contemporary Antinatalism. (shrink)

East Asian countries such as South Korea have recently made headlines for experimenting with different methods to incentivise people to have (more) children, in a bid to reverse declining birth rates. Many such incentives—child benefits, cash bonuses, dating events, and so on—appear morally innocuous at first glance. I will demonstrate in this analysis, however, that they amount to stopgap measures which reveal fundamental shortcomings with the way various nation states are approaching the so-called ‘problem’ of fertility decline.

An original argument in favor of the philosophy of antinatalism has been developed. The argument takes the form of a thought experiment in which an agent is asked to choose the life they wish to live. The experiment offers a completely new method for assessing quality of life. This method is radically different from weighing the good and the bad, or from listing the good that justifies the bad. The experiment is new and does not replicate the famous Benatar (...) asymmetry or other antinatalist arguments. This should come as no surprise, as antinatalism is a very small field. -/- The argument is made according to a 3 by 3 scheme. At the beginning of the text, three axioms are described, then the experiment itself in the form of three mechanisms, then three results of the experiment. -/- The entire book is short, just 32,000 words. It can be read in two hours at a moderate reading speed. The book does not touch upon any other issues of procreation besides the experiment itself. (shrink)

If Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy replaced its anti natalism with anti racism it may be one of the best survival heuristics. People of color cannot pay their own reparations so the future welfare state must be financed by the work of European clones. Schopenhauer's pessimism becomes irrational when he advocates for antinatalism. While pessimism is generally better for societal well being than optimism is, a point of excess exists. Hegel's idealism towards progress should be accepted to a limited extent thus (...) making it realism towards progress. Marx's theory of historical inevitability towards progress is plausible due to the proof of Wagner's Law. Once policies are implemented by the reparational welfare state. The Mimetic Theory can be thoroughly applied by distribution of research and creative jobs to the population. Research and creative work are not as easily automated because they are more cognitively demanding and open-ended. Sound has been found to throw off people's focus. Schopenhauer posited that sound was detrimental to the intellect. Schopenhauer also claimed that high intellect tends to make people antisocial. Nietzche claimed that an Ubermensch would oppose some social norms and would thereby be poorly socialized and a great societal contributor. In practice, Thiel has made the conjecture that having Asperger's can be an advantage in entrepreneurship. Newport claims cognitively demanding tasks require much attention and that being bored has benefits. A correlation is not a causation so in a science a result likely has multiple causes . Paradoxes are when theory and practice diverge. Thus, the reparations welfare state plan could unleash extreme human potential by providing an economic basis for living. And any theory should be put into practice with pessimism because discrepancies are problematic. The Anti Racist Skeptical Pessimistic Theorem: (Group Theory) A theorem which proves the synthesis of Wagner's Law, Critical Race Theory, White Privilege Theorem, Transhumanist Theorem, Game Theory of Racial Fetishizing and Internalized Racism, Reparations Theorem, etc. The reparations system could be composed in accordance with CRT. The Nordic Privileged clones would create a workforce to finance the welfare state. Thus, creating a universal economic basis for the other Nordics and the people of color. Once the cloning is implemented Nordic Privilege could be further distributed to end systemic racism. All of these are backed by empirical evidence in this essay, so, pessimism is an imperative attitude in the implementation of these ideas in case if discrepancies arise calling for modification. (shrink)

Does Benatar’s anti-natalism—the view that it is better never to have been—imply that death is better than continued living? This is known as the pro-mortalist question, a compelling, unresolved question surrounding anti-natalist discourse. In order to answer this question, I analyse two theories about the badness of death that Benatar uses to argue against the idea that anti-natalism implies pro-mortalism. The first is that death deprives one of the good things in life. The second is that death annihilates the person. (...) However, I argue that these theories fail to block pro-mortalism. As such, I conclude that Benatar’s anti-natalism implies pro-mortalism, suggesting that if it is better never to have been, then it is better to cease to be. (shrink)

Kenneth Einar Himma (2009, 2016) argues that the existence of Hell renders procreation impermissible. Jason Marsh (2015) contends that problems of evil motivate anti-natalism. Anti-natalism is principally rejected for its perceived conflict with reproductive rights. I propose a theistic solution to the latter problem. Universalism says that all persons will, postmortem, eventually be eternally housed in Heaven, a superbly good place wherein harm is fully absent. The acceptance of universalism is now widespread, but I offer further reason to embrace one (...) variant of it. If universalism is true and there are opportunities to procreate in Heaven, then reproductive autonomy is largely preserved for everyone. Assuming Heaven is a harm-free place, there are no risks to children born in Heaven, unlike Earth or Hell. While this requires human persons to accept temporary restrictions on procreation during our premortem lives, the bulk of reproductive autonomy is preserved since one will have infinite opportunities to reproduce in Heaven. (shrink)

In the Socratic tradition, the Buddhist truths are regarded as theses that are open to examination. Moving beyond traditional interpretations, this paper explores how the Buddhist truths connect with current scientific findings and ethical discussions.

«Процессуальный пессимизм. О природе вселенского страдания и человеческом ничто» — вторая часть дилогии «Трагическое». Что остаётся человеку, когда масштаб трагического выходит за пределы человеческой жизни и поднимается до размеров вселенной? Когда привычные объяснения рассеиваются, а само существование раскрывается как краткий узор материи на фоне медленного, неумолимого распада? -/- Завершение дилогии «Трагическое» переносит исследование за границы антропоцентрической перспективы. Если «Опыт трагического» раскрывал механизмы человеческого страдания, то «Процессуальный пессимизм» обнажает космологические основания самого бытия как движения к распаду. Сознание наблюдает собственную временность, этика (...) ищет форму, способную выдержать знание о зыбкости того, что принято считать ценностями. Книга стремится отойти от привычного пессимизма и взглянуть на него сквозь процессуальную онтологию. (shrink)

Processual Pessimism. On the Nature of Cosmic Suffering and Human Nothingness — the second part of the dilogy of The Tragic. What is left for a person when the scale of the tragic goes beyond human life and rises to the size of the universe? When the usual explanations dissipate, and existence itself is revealed as a brief pattern of matter against a background of slow, inexorable decay? The conclusion of the dilogy of The Tragic takes the study beyond the (...) boundaries of the anthropocentric perspective. If the The Experience of the Tragic revealed the mechanisms of human suffering, then Processual Pessimism exposes the cosmological foundations of existence itself as a movement towards disintegration. Consciousness observes its own temporality, ethics is looking for a form that can withstand the knowledge of the fragility of what are considered values. The book seeks to move away from habitual pessimism and look at it through procedural ontology. (shrink)