Whether life has meaning, whether it needs to, and what changes if it doesn't. Essays on nihilism, purpose, and the search for sense in an indifferent universe.
In the moral calculus of existence, the duty to alleviate suffering holds a weightier claim than the pursuit of happiness. This essay defends the ethical priority of pain reduction over pleasure promotion.
While existentialists like Camus and Sartre championed creating meaning in a meaningless world, their core premises about absurdity and freedom logically support an antinatalist conclusion.
Buddhist analyses of suffering, when followed to their logical conclusions, find a powerful and unexpected resonance with the core tenets of antinatalism.
Existentialists like Camus and Sartre affirmed life in the face of meaninglessness, but their core premises about absurdity and freedom can be read to support a more pessimistic, even antinatalist, conclusion.
Emil Cioran's aphorisms, especially in "The Trouble with Being Born," offer a powerful literary testament to antinatalist thought, arguing that birth itself is a profound imposition.
Pronatalism, the pervasive but often invisible ideology that treats procreation as a default, shapes our world by serving powerful cultural, religious, and economic systems.
Derek Parfit's non-identity problem challenges our understanding of procreative ethics. If actions are only wrong if they are bad for someone, can it be wrong to create a life that is worth living?
This essay examines the most compelling counterarguments to antinatalism, from Pollyannaism to appeals to future good, and argues for their ultimate insufficiency in the face of suffering.
Rising rates of mental illness and alienation in late modernity lend credence to the antinatalist assessment of existence.
To create new life under the banner of a loving God requires reconciling procreation with the problem of evil. This essay argues that theological defenses fail.