Philosophical pessimism is not despair but a discipline of clear sight. These essays follow the tradition from Schopenhauer through Zapffe and Ligotti, asking what honest pessimism requires of us.
Rising mental distress and alienation in late modernity are not merely societal failings but experiential evidence for the antinatalist claim that suffering is an intrinsic feature of sentient existence.
Theological defenses of procreation falter when confronted by the problem of evil. If a loving God orchestrates existence, then creating new beings guaranteed to suffer becomes an act of divine contradiction.
Suffering-focused ethics posits that the moral weight of preventing or alleviating suffering is greater than that of promoting happiness.
To be is to be condemned to meaninglessness. An existentialist reading of the ethics of birth, from Sartre to Cioran.
This essay examines the profound and often overlooked convergence between the Buddhist analysis of suffering (dukkha) and the ethical conclusions of antinatalism.
Emil Cioran's aphorisms are not a formal argument for antinatalism but a profound literary witness to the trouble with being born, viewing existence itself as a fundamental imposition and a calamity.
An examination of the cultural, religious, and economic machinery that treats procreation as a default, and the philosophical arguments for a more critical approach.
Derek Parfit's non-identity problem challenges the belief that creating a person can be morally wrong, posing a significant hurdle for antinatalist arguments by questioning whether a life with suffering can constitute harm if non-existence is the only alternative.
This essay explores the core arguments for antinatalism, addresses its strongest objections, and argues that they ultimately fail to refute the position.
Rising rates of mental illness are not mere individual pathologies but symptoms of a deepening alienation endemic to modern life—a diagnosis that gives weight to the antinatalist critique of existence.