In this blog I will examine the many ways the philosophy of antinatalism, or elfism as it is sometimes called, is wrong. Antinatalism has been advanced by any distinguished thinkers, like West African college professor Patrick Benatar, American horror author Thomas Ligotti (author of such works as Teatro Grotesco and The Shining) and German philosopher Friedrick Nietzsche, as well as postmodernists like Sartre and Camus. Antinatalism uses logic and reason to try to establish that it is better that humanity end. But is the logic and reason ANs use sound and coherent, or does it fall apart under examination? I will address these, and other questions on my blog.
Who on earth is Patrick Benatar?
ReplyDeletePatrick Benatar, author of Better To Never Have been.
DeleteThis is an odd little blog. You seem to be getting people's positions wrong, many times over.
ReplyDeleteFor example, you class Dima Sokol as a "misanthropic antinatalist", someone who says the world is wonderful and people make it bad. When has he ever said that the world is wonderful?!
Or your category of "reactionary antinatalists", who you seem to define as people who long for a past of patriarchal rule by the white race, or something, but who so despair of it ever happening that they would prefer extinction instead. Presumably there are people who match that description, but I can't say it applies to any of the people you name. You list "metamorphhh" aka "Jim" as one of these. He was married to a black woman, and liked her enough to have two daughters with her. And Sister Y is undoubtedly a philanthropic antinatalist. It seems that because she has come to entertain "reactionary" ideas, or simply skepticism about many "liberal" platitudes, that you are filing her in the wrong category.
And the post where you try to deal with "philanthropic antinatalism" is in a way the most perplexing of all. Suffering doesn't exist, because you can't point to it in an fMRI machine? And you even seem to be hinting that people as such don't exist, perhaps because of some quasi-Buddhist deconstruction of the notion of identity? The convergence of views between Buddhists who analytically decompose the subject, and modern neuro-materialists who think there is only atoms, is an interesting cultural phenomenon. But if it is to be used as a way to deny the existence of suffering, then it has simply become evil - though hopefully an ineffectual evil. I call it evil because it tries to wish away something that is there.
Maybe you're just in denial about how evil life can be? Maybe out of your own sensitivity, plus a dose of wishful thinking, you're trying to find reasons to deny that the badness is there? Because if you won't confront it, you can never even begin to form an opinion on these matters.
Life encompasses all the worst things that have ever happened to anyone - people tortured to death, buried alive in earthquakes, swept to sea by tsunamis, and dying by inches in terror and confusion thanks to modern medical care - just to mention a few things. Benatar's logic-chopping aside, if you would just care to notice the sort of things that happen in the world, then it should be obvious that antinatalists have a good case; because if no-one has children, at least things like all that can't happen to anyone. Call this "precautionary antinatalism" if you need a name for it. I'd like to see you tackle that version.
Thank you for your comment. This measured, reasoned response is the kind I'd like to receive with this blog. I will address these issues in an upcoming post within the next few days, as I need some time to mull over what you've said.
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