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On Risk-Based Arguments for Anti-natalism

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Notes

  1. David Benatar. “Why it is Better Never to Come into Existence,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 34(3) (1997): 345-355; “The Wrong of Wrongful Life,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 37(2) (2000): 175-183; Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); and “Part I: Anti-Natalism” in David Benatar and David Wasserman, Debating Procreation: Is it Wrong to Reproduce? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Benatar has also recently proposed a third ‘misanthropic’ argument for anti-natalism that focuses on “the terrible evil that humans wreak, and on various negative characteristics of our species,” including negative aesthetic characteristics, though this is a distinct type of argument that does not focus on the interests of the child who is brought into existence. For two recent iterations of this argument, see Benatar, “Anti-Natalism,” chapter 4, and “The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-Natalism” in Sarah Hannan, Samantha Brennan, and Richard Vernon (eds.), Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

  2. See, for example, David DeGrazia. “Is it Wrong to Impose the Harms of Human Life? A Reply to Benatar,” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 31 (2010): 317-332; Thaddeus Metz. “Are Lives Worth Creating?” Philosophical Papers, 40(2) (2011): 233-255, esp. pp. 240-243; and Rivka Weinberg. “Is Having Children Always Wrong? South African Journal of Philosophy, 30(1) (2012): 26-37.

  3. See, for example, Erik Magnusson. “How to Reject Benatar’s Asymmetry Argument,” Bioethics, 33(6) (2019): 674-683; and Metz, op. cit., esp. pp. 243-249.

  4. See, for example, Elizabeth Harman, “Critical Study: David Benatar. Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2006),” Noûs, 43(4) (2009): 776-785, esp. pp. 779-780; Jeff McMahan, “Asymmetries in the Morality of Causing People to Exist” in Melinda A. Roberts and David T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics, and the Nonidentity Problem (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), esp. pp. 61-64; David DeGrazia, Creation Ethics: Reproduction, Genetics, and Quality of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. pp. 145-150; and Christine Overall, Why Have Children? The Ethical Debate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), esp. pp. 97-106.

  5. See, for example, DeGrazia, “Is It Wrong to Impose the Harms of Human Life,” op. cit., pp. 324-329; Harman, op. cit., pp. 782-783; Christine Vitrano, “The Predicament that Wasn’t: a Reply to Benatar,” Philosophical Papers 49(3) (2020): 457-484; David Wasserman, “Pro-Natalism,” in Benatar and Wasserman, Debating Procreation, op. cit., esp. pp. 155-166; and Metz, op. cit., esp. pp. 249-254.

  6. See, for example, Rivka Weinberg, The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May be Permissible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), esp. pp. 121-134; and Jason Marsh, “Quality of Life Assessments, Cognitive Reliability, and Procreative Responsibility,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89(2) (2014): 436-466.

  7. See Aaron Smuts, “To Be or Never to Have Been: Anti-Natalism and a Life Worth Living,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17(4) (2014): 711-729, esp. pp. 725-727.

  8. Benatar and Wasserman, op. cit., p. 11.

  9. Ibid., p. 23. For an explanation of why this claim is incoherent, see Magnusson, op. cit., pp. 676-679.

  10. Vitrano, op. cit., p. 480.

  11. See Benatar, Better Never to Have Been, op. cit., p. 92, and Benatar and Wasserman, op. cit., 62-72.

  12. See Benatar, Better Never to Have Been, op. cit., p. 92.

  13. Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Kit Ling Leong, “Eco-Reproductive Concerns in the Age of Climate Change,” Climatic Change, 163 (2020): 1007-1023.

  14. For descriptions of the so-called problem of pure risking, see Judith Jarvis Thomson, “Imposing Risks” in Rights, Restitution, and Risk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), and John Oberdiek, Imposing Risk: A Normative Framework (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), chapter 3.

  15. See, for example, Benatar and Wasserman, op. cit., pp. 66-68.

  16. For a classic defense of this view, see Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), Appendix G. For more recent statements, see Krister Bykvist. “The Benefits of Coming into Existence,” Philosophical Studies, 135(3) (2007): 335-362; Elizabeth Harman, “Can We Harm and Benefit in Creating?” Philosophical Perspectives, 18 (2004): 89-113; and Seana Valentine Shiffrin, “Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm,” Legal Theory, 5(2) (1999): 117-148.

  17. Shiffrin, op. cit., pp. 124-125.

  18. David Benatar, “Still Better Never to Have Been: A Reply to (More) of My Critics,” Journal of Ethics, 17(1/2) (2013): 121-151, p. 148, n. 43.

  19. See Benatar, Better Never to Have Been, op. cit., pp. 64-69, and Benatar and Wasserman, op. cit. 41-45.

  20. Benatar 2015a, op. cit., 68.

  21. Ibid., 69.

  22. Matti Häyry. “A Rational Cure for Pre-Reproductive Stress Syndrome,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 30(4) (2004), pp. 377-378, 377.

  23. John Rawls. A Theory of Justice. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 152-157.

  24. Matti Häyry. “A Rational Cure for Pre-Reproductive Stress Syndrome,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 30(4) (2004), pp. 377-378, 377.

  25. For a defense of this view, see Joel Feinberg, “Wrongful Life and the Counterfactual Element in Harming,” in Freedom and Fulfillment: Philosophical Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).

  26. Ibid., 378.

  27. Ibid., p. 377.

  28. See Joel Feinberg’s description of welfare interests in Joel Feinberg, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, Volume 1: Harm to Others (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), P. 37.

  29. Benatar does not pursue this line of argument himself, though he seems to acknowledge its appeal, noting that “When considering the interests of the prospective child, there is nothing to be lost by desisting from bringing it into existence. There is however a very serious cost if the created person suffers in one of the ways I have mentioned.” See Benatar and Wasserman, op. cit., p. 67.

  30. One such case might appeal to Samuel Scheffler’s ‘afterlife conjecture’ that the value of our life projects depend on the assumption of a ‘collective afterlife’, or the notion that others will continue to live on after we die. If this is correct, we might think that members of the present generation are justified in creating at least n children, where n is the minimum number required to secure a collective afterlife, despite the risk of catastrophic harm they will be exposed to. See Samuel Scheffler. Death and the Afterlife. Ed. Niko Kolodny. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Acknowledgements

For helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper, I am grateful to Anca Gheaus, Oliver Hallich, Michael Hauskeller, and Riccardo Spotorno.

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    Erik Magnusson

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Magnusson, E. On Risk-Based Arguments for Anti-natalism. J Value Inquiry 56, 101–117 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-022-09889-3

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