David Benatar

Last updated

David Benatar
Born (1966-12-08) 8 December 1966 (age 57)
NationalitySouth African
Occupation(s)Academic, professor, writer
Known for Antinatalism
Academic background
Alma mater University of Cape Town (BSocSc, PhD)

David Benatar (born 8 December 1966) is a South African philosopher, academic, and author. He is best known for his advocacy of antinatalism in his book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence , in which he argues that coming into existence is serious harm, regardless of the feelings of the existing being once brought into existence, and that, as a consequence, it is always morally wrong to create more sentient beings. [2]

Contents

Education and career

Benatar is the son of Solomon Benatar, a global-health expert who founded the Bioethics Centre at the University of Cape Town. He studied at the University of Cape Town, receiving a BSocSc and PhD. [3]

Benatar is a professor of philosophy and director of the Bioethics Centre at the University of Cape Town. [3] He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Controversial Ideas . [4]

Philosophical work

Asymmetry between pain and pleasure

Benatar argues there is a crucial asymmetry between the good and the bad things, such as pleasure and pain, which means it would be better for humans not to have been born:

  1. The presence of pain is bad.
  2. The presence of pleasure is good.
  3. The absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone.
  4. The absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation. [5] [6]
Scenario A (X exists)Scenario B (X never exists)
1. Presence of pain (Bad)3. Absence of pain (Good)
2. Presence of pleasure (Good)4. Absence of pleasure (Not bad)

Implications for procreation

Benatar argues that bringing someone into existence generates both good and bad experiences, pain and pleasure, whereas not doing so generates neither pain nor pleasure. The absence of pain is good, while the absence of pleasure is not bad. Therefore, the ethical choice is weighed in favor of non-procreation.

Benatar raises four other related asymmetries that he considers quite plausible:

  1. We have a moral obligation not to create unhappy people and we have no moral obligation to create happy people. The reason why we think there is a moral obligation not to create unhappy people is that the presence of this suffering would be bad (for the sufferers) and the absence of the suffering is good (even though there is nobody to enjoy the absence of suffering). By contrast, the reason we think there is no moral obligation to create happy people is that although their pleasure would be good for them, the absence of pleasure when they do not come into existence will not be bad, because there will be no one who will be deprived of this good.
  2. It is strange to mention the interests of a potential child as a reason why we decide to create them, and it is not strange to mention the interests of a potential child as a reason why we decide not to create them. That the child may be happy is not a morally important reason to create them. By contrast, that the child may be unhappy is an important moral reason not to create them. If it were the case that the absence of pleasure is bad even if someone does not exist to experience its absence, then we would have a significant moral reason to create a child and to create as many children as possible. And if it were not the case that the absence of pain is good even if someone does not exist to experience this good, then we would not have a significant moral reason not to create a child.
  3. Someday we can regret the sake of a person whose existence was conditional on our decision, that we created them – a person can be unhappy and the presence of their pain would be a bad thing. But we will never feel regret for the sake of a person whose existence was conditional on our decision, that we did not create them – a person will not be deprived of happiness, because he or she will never exist, and the absence of happiness will not be bad, because there will be no one who will be deprived of this good.
  4. We feel sadness by the fact that somewhere people come into existence and suffer, and we feel no sadness by the fact that somewhere people did not come into existence in a place where there are happy people. When we know that somewhere people came into existence and suffer, we feel compassion. The fact that on some deserted island or planet, people did not come into existence and suffer is good. This is because the absence of pain is good even when there is not someone who is experiencing this good. On the other hand, we do not feel sadness by the fact that on some deserted island or planet, people did not come into existence and are not happy. This is because the absence of pleasure is bad only when someone exists to be deprived of this good. [7]

Humans' unreliable assessment of life's quality

Benatar raises the issue of whether humans inaccurately estimate the true quality of their lives, and has cited three psychological phenomena which he believes are responsible for this:

  1. Tendency towards optimism: we have a positively distorted perspective of our lives in the past, present, and future.
  2. Adaptation: we adapt to our circumstances, and if they worsen, our sense of well-being is lowered in anticipation of those harmful circumstances, according to our expectations, which are usually divorced from the reality of our circumstances.
  3. Comparison: we judge our lives by comparing them to those of others, ignoring the negatives which affect everyone to focus on specific differences. And due to our optimism bias, we mostly compare ourselves to those worse off, to overestimate the value of our own well-being.

He concludes:

The above psychological phenomena are unsurprising from an evolutionary perspective. They militate against suicide and in favour of reproduction. If our lives are quite as bad as I shall still suggest they are, and if people were prone to see this true quality of their lives for what it is, they might be much more inclined to kill themselves, or at least not to produce more such lives. Pessimism, then, tends not to be naturally selected. [8]

Discrimination against men and boys

Benatar's book The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys (2012) examines various issues regarding misandry and the negative socially imposed aspects of male identity. It does not seek to attack or diminish the ideas of feminism, but rather to shine a light on the parallel existence of systemic and cultural discrimination against men and boys. In a review of the book, philosopher Simon Blackburn writes that "Benatar knows that such examples are likely to meet snorts of disbelief or derision, but he is careful to back up his claims with empirical data," and through this book, he shows that "if it is all too often tough being a woman, it is also sometimes tough being a man, and that any failure to recognise this risks distorting what should be everyone's goal, namely universal sympathy as well as social justice for all, regardless of gender." [9] In another review, the philosopher Iddo Landau praises the work as "a very well-argued book that presents an unorthodox thesis and defends it ably," agreeing with Benatar that "in order to cope with the hitherto ignored second sexism, we should not only acknowledge it, but also dedicate much more empirical and philosophical research to this under-explored topic and, of course, try to change many attitudes, social norms, and laws". [10]

Publications

Benatar is the author of a series of widely cited papers in medical ethics, including "Between Prophylaxis and Child Abuse" ( The American Journal of Bioethics ) and "A Pain in the Fetus: Toward Ending Confusion about Fetal Pain" ( Bioethics ). [11] [12] His work has been published in such journals as Ethics , Journal of Applied Philosophy , Social Theory and Practice , American Philosophical Quarterly , QJM: An International Journal of Medicine , Journal of Law and Religion and the British Medical Journal .

Cultural influence

Nic Pizzolatto, creator and writer of True Detective , has cited Benatar's Better Never to Have Been as an influence on the TV series (along with Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound, Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race , Jim Crawford's Confessions of an Antinatalist, and Eugene Thacker's In the Dust of This Planet). [13]

Personal life

Not much is known about Benatar's personal life as he deliberately guards his privacy. He has held antinatalist views since his childhood. [14]

Benatar is vegan, and has taken part in debates on veganism. [15] He has argued that humans are "responsible for the suffering and deaths of billions of other humans and non-human animals. If that level of destruction were caused by another species we would rapidly recommend that new members of that species not be brought into existence." [16] [17] He has also argued that the outbreak of zoonotic diseases, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, [18] is often the result of how humans mistreat animals. [19]

Benatar is an atheist and has stated that he has no children of his own. [20] [21] He is ethnically Jewish and he has criticized the "regressive left" at institutions such as the University of Cape Town for creating an environment hostile to Jews. He has also criticized South Africa for its increasing willingness to distance itself from liberal democracies and cozy up to autocracies, and in particular has criticized South Africans who sympathize with Hamas. [22] [23]

Bibliography

As editor

Notes

    1. ↑ Benatar 2017, pp. 102–110.
    2. ↑ Steyn, Mark (14 December 2007). "Children? Not if you love the planet". Orange County Register. Archived from the original on 16 April 2008. Retrieved 29 April 2008.
    3. 1 2 "Professor David Benatar". University of Cape Town. Retrieved 15 February 2023.
    4. ↑ "Editorial Board". Journal of Controversial Ideas. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
    5. ↑ Benatar, D. (1997). "Why it is Better Never to Come Into Existence". American Philosophical Quarterly. 34 (3): 345–355.
    6. ↑ Benatar 2006, pp. 30–40.
    7. ↑ Benatar 2006, pp. 30–57.
    8. ↑ Benatar 2006, pp. 64–69.
    9. ↑ "The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys". Times Higher Education (THE). 5 July 2012. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
    10. ↑ Metapsychology online reviews Archived 14 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine , 21 August 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2012.
    11. ↑ Benatar & Benatar 2003.
    12. ↑ Benatar & Benatar 2001.
    13. ↑ Calia, Michael (2 February 2014). "Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of 'True Detective'". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 15 April 2020.
    14. ↑ Rothman, Joshua (27 November 2017). "The Case for Not Being Born". The New Yorker.
    15. ↑ The Species Barrier 35 Antinatal , retrieved 5 March 2023, around 30 minutes in
    16. ↑ Benatar, David (15 July 2015). "'We Are Creatures That Should Not Exist': The Theory of Anti-Natalism : The Critique". The Critique. Archived from the original on 17 July 2015. Retrieved 5 April 2019.
    17. ↑ "Do Humans Have a Moral Duty to Stop Procreating?". Big Think. 18 August 2015. Retrieved 5 April 2019.
    18. ↑ Wiebers, D., & Feigin, V. (2021). Heeding the call of COVID-19. Animal Sentience, 5(30)
    19. ↑ Benatar, David (13 April 2020). "Our cruel treatment of animals led to coronavirus". The New York Times . Retrieved 22 April 2020.
    20. ↑ "Antinatalism – should we let humanity go extinct? David Benatar vs Bruce Blackshaw". 13 March 2020. Retrieved 14 March 2020– via YouTube.
    21. ↑ "The Harm of Coming Into Existence". 13 June 2020. 8:36 minutes in. Retrieved 13 June 2020– via YouTube.
    22. ↑ Feinberg, Tali (18 November 2021). "UCT has become 'University of Capitulation', says professor". South African Jewish Report. Retrieved 10 April 2024.
    23. ↑ Benatar, David. "Denying 7 October: The Case of Former ANC Minister Ronnie Kasrils". Fathom. Retrieved 10 April 2024.

    Related Research Articles

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Consequentialism</span> Ethical theory based on consequences

    In moral philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act is one that will produce a good outcome. Consequentialism, along with eudaimonism, falls under the broader category of teleological ethics, a group of views which claim that the moral value of any act consists in its tendency to produce things of intrinsic value. Consequentialists hold in general that an act is right if and only if the act will produce, will probably produce, or is intended to produce, a greater balance of good over evil than any available alternative. Different consequentialist theories differ in how they define moral goods, with chief candidates including pleasure, the absence of pain, the satisfaction of one's preferences, and broader notions of the "general good".

    In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the greatest good for the greatest number. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is, in some sense, to maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility as the capacity of actions or objects to produce benefits, such as pleasure, happiness, and good, or to prevent harm, such as pain and unhappiness, to those affected.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Misanthropy</span> General dislike of humanity

    Misanthropy is the general hatred, dislike, or distrust of the human species, human behavior, or human nature. A misanthrope or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings. Misanthropy involves a negative evaluative attitude toward humanity that is based on humankind's flaws. Misanthropes hold that these flaws characterize all or at least the greater majority of human beings. They claim that there is no easy way to rectify them short of a complete transformation of the dominant way of life. Various types of misanthropy are distinguished in the academic literature based on what attitude is involved, at whom it is directed, and how it is expressed. Either emotions or theoretical judgments can serve as the foundation of the attitude. It can be directed toward all humans without exception or exclude a few idealized people. In this regard, some misanthropes condemn themselves while others consider themselves superior to everyone else. Misanthropy is sometimes associated with a destructive outlook aiming to hurt other people or an attempt to flee society. Other types of misanthropic stances include activism by trying to improve humanity, quietism in the form of resignation, and humor mocking the absurdity of the human condition.

    This index of ethics articles puts articles relevant to well-known ethical debates and decisions in one place - including practical problems long known in philosophy, and the more abstract subjects in law, politics, and some professions and sciences. It lists also those core concepts essential to understanding ethics as applied in various religions, some movements derived from religions, and religions discussed as if they were a theory of ethics making no special claim to divine status.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Leon Kass</span> American academic (born 1939)

    Leon Richard Kass is an American physician, scientist, educator, and public intellectual. Kass is best known as a proponent of liberal arts education via the "Great Books," as a critic of human cloning, life extension, euthanasia and embryo research, and for his tenure as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. Although Kass is often referred to as a bioethicist, he eschews the term and refers to himself as "an old-fashioned humanist. A humanist is concerned broadly with all aspects of human life, not just the ethical."

    The wisdom of repugnance or appeal to disgust, also known informally as the yuck factor, is the belief that an intuitive negative response to some thing, idea, or practice should be interpreted as evidence for the intrinsically harmful or evil character of that thing. Furthermore, it refers to the notion that wisdom may manifest itself in feelings of disgust towards anything which lacks goodness or wisdom, though the feelings or the reasoning of such 'wisdom' may not be immediately explicable through reason.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Julian Savulescu</span> Australian philosopher and bioethicist

    Julian Savulescu is an Australian philosopher and bioethicist. He is Chen Su Lan Centennial Professor in Medical Ethics and director of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at National University of Singapore. He was previously Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and co-director of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities. He is visiting professorial fellow in Biomedical Ethics at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia, and distinguished visiting professor in law at Melbourne University since 2017. He directs the Biomedical Ethics Research Group and is a member of the Centre for Ethics of Pediatric Genomics in Australia. He is a former editor and current board member of the Journal of Medical Ethics, which is ranked as the No.2 journal in bioethics worldwide by Google Scholar Metrics, as of 2022. In addition to his background in applied ethics and philosophy, he also has a background in medicine and neuroscience and completed his MBBS (Hons) and BMedSc at Monash University, graduating top of his class with 18 of 19 final year prizes in Medicine. He edits the Oxford University Press book series, the Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics.

    Antinatalism or anti-natalism is a philosophical view that deems procreation to be unethical. Antinatalists thus argue that humans should abstain from having children. Some antinatalists consider coming into existence to always be a serious harm. Their views are not necessarily limited only to humans but may encompass all sentient creatures, arguing that coming into existence is a serious harm for sentient beings in general.

    David DeGrazia is an American moral philosopher specializing in bioethics, animal ethics, and the study of moral status. He is Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University, where he has taught since 1989, and the author or editor of several books on ethics, including Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status (1996), Human Identity and Bioethics (2005), and Creation Ethics: Reproduction, Genetics, and Quality of Life (2012).

    Sentientism is an ethical view that places sentient individuals at the center of moral concern. It holds that both humans and other sentient individuals have interests that must be considered. Gradualist sentientism attributes moral consideration relatively to the degree of sentience.

    Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the total amount of happiness. It can be considered as a version of utilitarianism that gives greater priority to reducing suffering than to increasing pleasure. This differs from classical utilitarianism, which does not claim that reducing suffering is intrinsically more important than increasing happiness. Both versions of utilitarianism hold that morally right and morally wrong actions depend solely on the consequences for overall aggregate well-being. "Well-being" refers to the state of the individual.

    The Asymmetry, also known as 'the Procreation Asymmetry', is the idea in population ethics that there is a moral or evaluative asymmetry between bringing into existence individuals with good or bad lives. It was first discussed by Jan Narveson in 1967, and Jeff McMahan coined the term 'the Asymmetry' in 1981. McMahan formulates the Asymmetry as follows: "while the fact that a person's life would be worse than no life at all ... constitutes a strong moral reason for not bringing him into existence, the fact that a person's life would be worth living provides no moral reason for bringing him into existence." Professor Nils Holtug formulates the Asymmetry evaluatively in terms of the value of outcomes instead of in terms of moral reasons. Holtug's formulation says that "while it detracts from the value of an outcome to add individuals whose lives are of overall negative value, it does not increase the value of an outcome to add individuals whose lives are of overall positive value."

    The nonidentity problem in population ethics is the problem that an act may still be wrong even if it is not wrong for anyone. More precisely, the nonidentity problem is the inability to simultaneously hold the following beliefs: (1) a person-affecting view; (2) bringing someone into existence whose life is worth living, albeit flawed, is not "bad for" that person; (3) some acts of bringing someone into existence are wrong even if they are not bad for someone. Rivka Weinberg has used the nonidentity problem to study the ethics of reproduction.

    <i>Better Never to Have Been</i> 2006 book by David Benatar

    Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence is a 2006 book by South African philosopher David Benatar. In the book, Benatar makes a case for antinatalism.

    Rivka Weinberg is an American philosopher. She is a professor of philosophy at Scripps College. She specializes in bioethics, the ethics of procreation, and the metaphysics of birth, death, and existence.

    Suffering-focused ethics are those views in ethics according to which reducing suffering is either a key priority or our only aim. Those suffering-focused ethics according to which the reduction of suffering is a key priority are pluralistic views that include additional aims, such as the prevention of other disvaluable things like inequality, or the promotion of certain valuable things, such as pleasure. Nevertheless, these views still prioritize reducing preventable suffering over these other aims.

    <i>The Human Predicament</i> 2017 philosophy book by David Benatar

    The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions is a philosophy book by David Benatar, which makes a case for philosophical pessimism, published by Oxford University Press in 2017. The book presents Benatar's views on a range of philosophical issues, arguing, among other topics, that having children is immoral, that death is bad despite much of human life being spent in suffering, and that suicide may be a morally justified action more often than is commonly assumed. The Human Predicament has been favorably compared to The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti, the worldview presented in Ecclesiastes, and the works of philosopher Thomas Metzinger.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Philosophical pessimism</span> Family of philosophical views

    Philosophical pessimism is a family of philosophical views that assign a negative value to life or existence. Philosophical pessimists commonly argue that the world contains an empirical prevalence of pains over pleasures, that existence is ontologically or metaphysically adverse to living beings, and that life is fundamentally meaningless or without purpose. Philosophical pessimism is not a single coherent movement, but rather a loosely associated group of thinkers with similar ideas and a resemblance to each other. Their responses to the condition of life are widely varied. Philosophical pessimists usually do not advocate for suicide as a solution to the human predicament; though many favour the adoption of antinatalism, that is, non-procreation.

    Philosophical pessimism is a philosophical school that is critical of existence, emphasizing the inherent suffering and futility of life. This perspective can be traced back to various religious traditions and philosophical writings throughout history.

    Benatar's asymmetry argument for antinatalism is an argument based on the difference between harms and benefits viewed in two scenarios — when the person in question exists and when the person in question never exists. The argument, introduced by David Benatar in his book, Better Never to Have Been, aims to establish that coming into existence is always a harm for the one who's coming into the world.

    References

    This page is based on this Wikipedia article
    Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
    Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.