Category: Benatar, David
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Birthdays
People celebrate birthdays. But what's to celebrate? First, birth is not unequivocally good. Second, it is not something you brought about. It befell you. Better to celebrate some good thing that you made happen. "It befell you." Riders on the storm . . .Into this house we're born, into this world we're thrown. Thus Jim…
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A Love of Life Inordinate and Idolatrous?
Dying of cancer, Susan Sontag raged against the dying of the light, hoping for a cure. "If only my mother hadn't hoped so much." (David Rieff, Swimming in a Sea of Death, Simon and Shuster, 2008, 139.) Hers was a false hope, one fueled by an inordinate and idolatrous love of life: ". . .…
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Strange Anti-Epicurean Bedfellows
Top o' the Stack
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Anti-Natalism Article of Mine Now in Print and Online
Vallicella, William F.. "Is the Quality of Life Objectively Evaluable on Naturalism?" Perichoresis, vol.21, no.1, 2023, pp.70-83. https://doi.org/10.2478/perc-2023-0005 Abstract This article examines one of the sources of David Benatar’s anti-natalism. This is the view that ‘all procreation is [morally] wrong.’ (Benatar and Wasserman, 2015:12) One of its sources is the claim that each of our…
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Is St. Paul an Anti-Natalist?
I wrote in Christian Anti-Natalism? (10 November 2017): Without denying that there are anti-natalist tendencies in Christianity that surface in some of its exponents, the late Kierkegaard for example, it cannot be maintained that orthodox Christianity, on balance, is anti-natalist. Ask yourself: what is the central and characteristic Christian idea? It is the Incarnation, the…
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A Similar Pattern of Argument in Buddhism and Benatar
On Buddhism the human (indeed the animalic/sentient) condition is a profoundly unsatisfactory predicament from which we need extrication. The First Noble Truth is that fundamentally all is ill, suffering, unsatisfactory, dukkha. That there is some sukha (joy, happiness) along with the dukkha is undeniable, but the little sukha is fleeting and unsatisfying and leads to…
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The Generalized Ought-Implies-Can Principle and Novák’s Objection
This entry is an addendum to my Prague paper (see link below) in which I deploy a principle I call GOC, a principle that comes under withering fire in the ComBox from Dr. Lukáš Novák. Here is my reformulation of his objection. You will have to consult my Prague paper to see what I mean by…
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Is the Quality of Life Objectively Evaluable on Naturalism?
This is the penultimate draft of the paper I will be presenting in Prague at the end of this month at the Benatar conference. Comments are welcome from those who are familiar with this subject. ………………………………………………. IS THE QUALITY OF LIFE OBJECTIVELY EVALUABLE ON NATURALISM? William F. Vallicella Abstract This article examines one of…
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Jordan Peterson Throws a Wild Punch at David Benatar
Philosophers have been known to advance extreme theses. David Benatar's signature anti-natalist theses are not only extreme, but extremely unpalatable to almost everyone. This makes him a target of vicious attacks. I don't agree with him, but I admire him and what he exemplifies, the courageous practice of unrestrained philosophical inquiry, inquiry that follows the…
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Benatar on Suicide: Is Suicide Murder?
This is the eleventh entry in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). I have decided to skip ahead to Chapter 7, "Suicide," and leave Chapter 6, "Immortality," for later. This episode discusses pp. 163-172. We have seen that for Benatar death, being a part of the human predicament, contra Epicurus, is no solution to…
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Has Benatar Refuted the Epicurean Argument?
This is the tenth installment in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). We are still in the very rich Chapter 5, "Death." Herewith, commentary on pp. 123-128. My answer to the title question is No, but our author has very effectively shown that the Epicurean argument is not compelling, and perhaps even that it is…
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Benatar on the Lucretian Symmetry Argument
This is the ninth installment in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). We now take up the Lucretian symmetry argument insofar as it bears upon the question whether being dead is bad. That is what Benatar maintains. Being dead is bad for the one who is dead even though to be dead is to be…
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Strange Anti-Epicurean Bedfellows: Josef Pieper, Thomist and David Benatar, Anti-Natalist
Many find the Epicurean reasoning about death sophistical. Among those who do, we encounter some strange bedfellows. To compress the famous reasoning into a trio of sentences: When we are, death is not. When death is, we are not. Therefore, death is nothing to us, and nothing to fear. The distinguished German Thomist, Josef Pieper,…
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Benatar on Annihilation and the Existence Requirement
Herewith, the eighth installment in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). We are still in the juicy and technically rich Chapter 5 entitled "Death." This entry covers pp. 102-118. People who dismiss this book unread are missing out on a lot of good philosophy. You are no philosopher if you refuse to examine arguments the…
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Benatar, Death, and Deprivation
This is the seventh entry in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). We are still in Chapter 5 and will be here for some time. This entry covers pp. 98-102. Recall the Issue If one is a mortalist, but also holds that human life is objectively bad, then one might naturally view death as…