Anti-natalism and value creation: should humans continue to procreate?<\/p>\n
It is not worth being brought into existence if one can potentially experience
\nany form of suffering. The philosopher David Benatar argues that whilst life can
\nconsist of pleasures it also always consists of some form of suffering (making
\nliving harmful for people and the world). \u201cwhile existence brings pains as well
\nas pleasures, non-existence is a lack of pains and pleasures. While pain is bad,
\nabsence of pain and pleasure is not bad, so it is always worse to be than not to
\nbe\u201d (Brake and Millum, 2021). It means that even if life consists of 99%
\npleasure and 1% suffering then it still would have been better to have never
\nbeen.
\nAs controversial and counterintuitive it may seem to desire to stop humanity
\nfrom bringing more people into the world, it also does not violate the moral
\nlaw to live. Kant conveys strong beliefs surrounding the idea of suicide but
\nnever conveys it in a way that would take future generations into
\nconsideration. Implying that as long as the individual had not yet come into
\nexistence then one does not go against basic moral rights. It is not our duty to
\nconsider the life of potential future generations, but it is our duty to live our
\nlives once we have been born (Philosophynow.org, 2019).
\nThe arguments put forward by anti-natalists challenges common beliefs in
\nrelation to procreation and examines the roots of where various normative
\nviews stem from and whether they are adequate justifications for procreation.<\/p>\n
Benatar, D. (2013). Better never to have been : the harm of coming into existence. Oxford, England:
\nClarendon Press
\nPhilosophynow.org. (2019). Philosophy Now. [online] Available at:
\nhttps:\/\/philosophynow.org\/issues\/61\/Kant_On_Suicide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Katrin Mihalova, 2022, Stage 2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,22,128],"tags":[130,131,132],"class_list":["post-2380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-23","category-abstracts","category-stage-2-abstracts","tag-benatar","tag-existence","tag-suffering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}