The asymmetry of pleasure and pain, the structural inevitability of harm, and what suffering means for a life. Essays that take suffering seriously as a moral fact.
David Benatar's asymmetry argument posits that coming into existence is always a harm. This essay explores the argument's logic, historical context, and philosophical implications.
Emil Cioran's aphorisms offer a unique, literary testimony against procreation, diverging from the systematic arguments of contemporary antinatalism.
Pronatalism is not a natural impulse but a constructed ideology. This essay unpacks the cultural, religious, and economic machinery that coerces procreation.
Derek Parfit's Non-Identity Problem challenges the idea that creating a person can be wrong if that person has a life worth living, posing a significant hurdle for antinatalist arguments.
This essay explores the most compelling counterarguments to antinatalism, from appeals to gratitude to the potential for future good, and articulates why these objections ultimately fail to overcome the ethical asymmetry of existence.
If God is all-loving and all-powerful, how can we justify creating new beings into a world rife with suffering? This essay questions theological defenses of procreation in light of the problem of evil.
Suffering-focused ethics posits that the alleviation of pain is a more urgent moral duty than the promotion of happiness. This essay defends that position.
Is non-existence preferable to a life of absurdity? We pit Camus, Sartre, and Cioran against each other on the question of birth.
David Benatar’s asymmetry argument posits that coming into existence is always a harm because the absence of pain is good, but the absence of pleasure is merely not bad. This essay critically examines his argument.
To be born is a calamity. We explore Emil Cioran's radical pessimism and the literary expression of antinatalism in his aphoristic work, "The Trouble with Being Born."