Antinatalism Argument

Overview and Historical Background

The antinatalism argument is a cluster of philosophical arguments maintaining that bringing new sentient beings into existence is morally problematic, impermissible, or at least seriously morally risky. It is a normative position about procreation, not about ending the lives of those who already exist. Antinatalism typically evaluates the decision to have children in terms of harm, consent, and the value (or disvalue) of existence itself.

Historically, antinatalist themes appear in various religious and philosophical traditions. Certain strands of Buddhism, Gnosticism, and Schopenhauerian pessimism express the view that life is pervasively characterized by suffering, sometimes implying that non‑existence would be preferable. However, a carefully articulated, secular antinatalism has been developed mainly in contemporary analytic philosophy, especially through the work of David Benatar, whose book Better Never to Have Been (2006) is a major reference point.

Antinatalism arguments are controversial and minority positions in ethics and population philosophy, but they have become central to contemporary debates on population ethics, existential risk, and reproductive rights.

Core Logical Structures

There is no single “official” antinatalism argument; rather, there are several influential families of arguments. Three of the most discussed are the asymmetry argument, the harm-based argument, and the consent-based argument.

1. Asymmetry Argument (Benatar)

Benatar’s asymmetry argument hinges on an alleged asymmetry between pain and pleasure in cases of non‑existence:

1. The presence of pain is bad.
2. The presence of pleasure is good.
3. The absence of pain (when someone could have existed but does not) is good, even if there is no one who experiences this good.
4. The absence of pleasure (when someone could have existed but does not) is not bad unless there is someone deprived of that pleasure.

From this, proponents conclude that:

• Not creating a person avoids harms, which is good.
• Not creating a person does not wrong anyone by withholding pleasures, because there is no existing individual who is deprived, so it is not bad.

Thus, non‑creation is said to be morally preferable to creation, which inevitably includes some harms.

2. Harm-Based Argument

A broader harm-based argument does not rely on the asymmetry, but on the pervasive harms of life:

1. Coming into existence exposes an individual to serious and often unavoidable harms (pain, illness, psychological suffering, death).
2. These harms are preventable in the strongest sense: they simply do not occur if the person is never created.
3. It is wrong (or at least morally problematic) to impose serious, preventable harms on someone for the sake of goods that they could not have consented to and that are not necessary for any existing person’s well‑being.

Conclusion: Because procreation necessarily imposes such harms on someone who cannot consent and who otherwise would not have been harmed at all, we have strong moral reasons not to procreate, and perhaps a moral duty to refrain.

This line of reasoning often relies on pessimistic assessments of life: that many or most lives contain substantial suffering, or at least that the risk of serious harm is significant and unavoidable.

3. Consent-Based Argument

Another family of arguments emphasizes consent:

1. Major, irreversible impositions on a person typically require their informed consent to be morally permissible.
2. Being brought into existence is a major, irreversible imposition, exposing the person to harm, death, and a particular life trajectory.
3. It is impossible to obtain prior consent from a possible person regarding being brought into existence.

Conclusion: Procreation is, at minimum, morally problematic because it constitutes a non‑consensual imposition of a life, including suffering and death, on a person.

Unlike the asymmetry argument, this does not center on overall value balances, but on the ethics of imposing conditions on someone without their agreement.

Major Objections and Critiques

The antinatalism argument faces numerous critiques from moral philosophy, population ethics, and practical ethics.

Challenges to the Asymmetry

Many critics reject Benatar’s core claim that the absence of pleasure for a merely possible person is “not bad” yet the absence of pain is “good.” They argue that:

• The asymmetry is intuitive in some specific cases (e.g., we think it good not to create a life of pure suffering), but does not generalize to all ordinary lives.
• Standard person‑affecting or impersonal theories in population ethics do not support this strong asymmetry without further argument.
• If absence of pleasure is never bad when there is no one deprived, it becomes difficult to explain why we regard creating happy people as a good thing.

Defenders respond that our common intuitions about regretting missed opportunities to create happy people can be explained by independent social or emotional factors, not by genuine moral reasons to create new individuals.

Optimistic and Moderate Views of Life

Other critics challenge the pessimistic assessment of existence:

• They hold that many lives are on balance worth living, with positive experiences outweighing negatives, making creation a benefit rather than a harm.
• They point to empirical data on subjective well‑being, where many people report being glad to be alive, suggesting that existence is typically not overall harmful.

Antinatalists reply that experienced satisfaction does not necessarily track objective value; people may adapt to poor conditions or rationalize their existence. They also emphasize that even if a life is “worth living,” it may still involve severe harms that could have been entirely avoided by non‑creation.

The Non-Identity Problem

Some objections draw on the non-identity problem: if a child’s existence depends on a particular reproductive choice, then that child cannot claim to have been harmed by being created, since the alternative was never existing at all, not existing in a better state.

Critics therefore argue that procreation does not wrong the child, assuming the life is above some minimal threshold of acceptability. Antinatalists often respond that moral evaluation need not be framed in terms of harm to a particular individual; instead, we can evaluate outcomes impersonally, or appeal to duties not to create serious, avoidable harms, regardless of whether any specific person is worse off.

Consent and the Limits of Application

The consent-based argument is criticized on the grounds that:

• Many beneficial actions (e.g., rescuing an unconscious person) are performed without prior consent yet are not considered wrong.
• It may be incoherent to demand consent for existence, because possible persons do not yet exist as bearers of rights or interests.

Proponents respond that the analogy fails: rescuing an existing person restores or protects their interests, while creating a person brings into being a whole new set of interests and potential harms that did not need to exist at all.

Practical and Ethical Counterconsiderations

Many critics argue that antinatalism conflicts with:

• Widely shared intuitions about the value of children, family life, and cultural continuity.
• Duties to preserve human culture or to avoid human extinction.

Antinatalists often distinguish between (1) valuing existing people and relationships, and (2) assuming a duty to create additional people. They typically deny that there is a moral obligation to ensure continued human existence, although positions vary.

Philosophical Significance

The antinatalism argument has important implications for several areas of philosophy:

• In population ethics, it raises questions about how to compare worlds with different numbers of people, and about whether there are moral reasons to create happy individuals.
• In applied ethics, it intersects with debates on reproductive rights, disability ethics, climate change, and global catastrophic risks, by questioning whether creating new lives in harmful conditions is permissible.
• In metaethics, it probes the nature of value, the relationship between well‑being and existence, and how moral reasons apply to merely possible individuals.

Despite being a minority view, antinatalism functions as a powerful challenge to taken‑for‑granted assumptions about procreation and progress. It compels defenders of procreation to articulate more clearly why creating new people is morally permissible or even good, and under what conditions, thereby enriching broader discussions in moral and political philosophy.