David Benatar's philosophy-bomb of contrarian pessimism was relit recently by somewhat unlikely acolyte Peter Singer in the New York Times. Singer's endorsement of Benatar's philosophy lends some legitimation to the controversial thesis. My review follows.

Benatar's monograph extends and intensifies the argument for ontological pessimism he sketched out a decade earlier in the essay, Why It is Better Never to Come into Existence, published in the American Philosophical Quarterly. Benatar, the head of the philosophy department at University of Cape Town, South Africa, defends the unpopular view that "it is better not to come into existence." This conclusion, he contends, proceeds in a plainly logical fashion from the antisymmetrical nature of the deontic and hedonic facts of life and non-life.

Population ethics has been a hot-button social issue ever since Thomas Malthus read J. S. Mill in The Black Dwarf and concluded that ecological questions were profound moral problems and that the discussion, moreover, stood to benefit from the penetrating intellect of a misanthropic statistician. These ideas are still being debated and in academic philosophy constitute a field of broad applicability and active interest. The recondite view that existence is bad per se doesn't hold the same popular appeal, but Benatar's brand of pessimism exudes more logical rigor and cheeky contrarian zeal than that of the average Schopenhauer sycophant's and his article and book have caused something of a stir in academia.

The logical nucleus of Benatar's argument for pessimism comprises four claims about the relationship between pleasure and pain that, by his account, reveal an asymmetry that justifies his contention that bringing persons into existence is always harmful. Properly considered, there are three arguments on offer. His defense of metaphysical pessimism is the crux of the essay, establishing a foundation for the somewhat ancillary arguments that existence is more painful than pleasurable and that persons shouldn't be brought into the world. Benatar argues most forcefully for the first, relegating the consequential ethical charges to a comparatively pragmatic discussion in the denouement, taking care to emphasize their pedagogical detachment. "It must be stressed that the view that it is better never to come into existence is logically distinct from my view about how great a harm existence is," he notes. "One can endorse the first view and yet deny that the harm is great. Similarly, if one thinks that the harm of existence is not great, one cannot infer from that that existence is preferable to non-existence." This bluff of surplus proof is unnecessary; the ontological severity of harm is a pointless consideration for his titular claim if it is in fact the case that it is better to never come into existence. The bulk of the essay, in any case, is given over to the defense of his claim of asymmetry.

Benatar concedes up front that pain is bad and pleasure is good. This is all rather obvious, he says, especially if we measure human life by a calculus of ethical propriety that marks off the actions and events therein as 'benefits' and 'harms.' So considered, it only stands to reason that: (1) The presence of pleasure is good, and (2) The presence of pain is bad. But this symmetry does not hold, he argues, for the absence of pain and the absence of pleasure. The balance is in this case lopsided because: (3) The absence of pain is good no matter what, while (4) The absence of pleasure is bad only to the living.¹

Benatar does not endeavor to substantiate the first two claims—nor is he obliged to do so. Whether or not the goodness of pleasure follows therefrom analytically or necessarily is not, as far as his argument goes, a pertinent point of contention because in order to dispute or disconfirm his claims one would have to concede the very same epistemic foundation. Rather, these primitive considerations should be taken axiomatically.  The latter contrastive ontological claims, on the other hand, are indispensable to his argument.

Benatar, in countering a rather obvious objection to (3)—that the absence of pain in the absence of persons is neither good nor bad, and furthermore could not possibly be good or bad unless it were good or bad for someone or if it were good or bad to someone—discloses the form and terms of the argument. "This objection would be mistaken," Benatar claims, "because [3] can say something about a counterfactual case in which a person who does actually exist never did exist." However, we are thus logically precluded from comparing pleasureless empty worlds to counterfactual worlds in which there are persons who actually exist. The absence of pleasure, in the absence of people, is, by this manner of reasoning, not amenable to a similar counterfactual because whereas in (3) we move from a something (or a someone) to nothing; the reversed case—in which we move from nothing to something—gives us no ontological hook on which to hang such existential predication.  The presence of pleasure, for those to whom it is conceivably applicable, cannot be so counterfactually considered, per Benatar's argument, because under the supposition that were 'one' not to exist or had never existed there would be no entity for which qualitative predication could meaningfully persist. The validity of his asymmetry stands independently of the contingent moral value of actual or conceivable persons, because whether or not the entity in question led, or were to lead, a pleasurable or painful life, his formula should hold; the asymmetry claim is staked on logical grounds.

In fairness, as Degrazia observes, "Benatar does not claim that those who never exist are literally better off than those who do exist which would be a claim of questionable coherence inasmuch as nonexistence is not a state of an individual. He claims, rather, that coming to be is always bad for those who do." And Benatar does concede this point: "The non-existent are not, and so things cannot literally be better for them or to their advantage," he writes. "When I say that non-existence is preferable, that judgment is made in terms of the interests of the person who would or has otherwise come to exist." But in conflating those who do exist and those who would exist—entities for whom the respective counterfactual ontologies stand in contradiction—Benatar's argument relinquishes the technical delimitation by which his premises are defined.

But suppose we counterfactually consider only those individuals who do exist. The supposition to which we are led, however, would necessarily have to be one in which the non-existent fictive counterpart to an actual person somehow conforms to an unbounded ontological symmetry such that in coming into existence—in a second-order subjunctive mode—necessarily inherits the existential properties of the actual entity under consideration. This is problematic; as Degrazia notes, "The individual in nonidentity cases is not made worse off than she was before because she was not before; nor is she made worse off than she otherwise would have been because otherwise she would not have been. It follows, according to this reasoning, that no one is harmed by being brought into existence, no matter how bad his condition or circumstances, so long as avoiding the disadvantage in question was incompatible with that individual’s coming into existence at all."

Furthermore, Benatar's conception of pleasureless realms requires that his counterfactual ideation pluck its referent from the actual world, since the conditional asymmetry thus asserted could not feasibly confer a comcomitant predication on an entity that never was. This latter specimen Benatar denies the privilege of pleasure (not erroneously) on account of its suppositional personhood, but then rewards with the exemption of pain for having the requisite vacuous metaphysical properties. "What is happening here is that in certain moments of his argumentation, Benatar uses a different notion of 'possible being,' a concept that could be called 'empty,' according to which a 'possible being' would be the one that simply is not present in the world and neither is counterfactually represented," Julio Cabrera argues. "Clearly, these two concepts are incompatible: when using the counterfactual conception, it is irrelevant that the being is not present in the world, since he/she is counterfactually represented; and when using the empty conception, it is irrelevant to making considerations of any kind about the possible being because, in this conception, there is no such a being at all."

But the counterfactual scenario that Benatar has in mind for the world in which actual persons do not exist is similarly ontologically vacant. It is true that such a world would not be bad, but it would not be better than a world in which persons were immersed in pleasure, or at least in lives for which pleasure were to outweigh pain. (That such a calculation could only be true in the deluded minds of the miserable, as Benatar suggests, is a separate issue.)

The presence of pain is bad, Benatar says, and if we are to take his argument seriously, we should conclude that it is bad no matter what. It would be bad in worlds like ours and it would be bad in worlds in which there were no persons whatever—it would have to be. Of course we are expected to acknowledge that such ontologically vacant realms are painless and that this painlessness is a good thing. But this propositional breed of propriety is unrelated entirely to the hedonistic value to which it is contrasted and we can therefore likewise say that it is a bad thing that these empty worlds are not populated by persons and pleasures—in contravention of Benatar's admonition to the contrary—for in so saying we are not committing any crimes of logical deviation; these detached judgments have a common dative of advantage—us. The badness and the goodness of each is meaningful only in terms of conceptual counterfactuals made by persons and for persons and the pain and pleasure of empty worlds are extant only in these counterfactual suppositions. In worlds in which there are no persons—if there are worlds in which there are no persons—there is not, nor could there be, any pain or any pleasure.

Benatar nevertheless argues that we have a duty not to bring persons into the world, but that, "there is no duty to bring happy people into existence because while their pleasure would be good for them, its absence would not be bad for them." This formulation of the asymmetry argument is tempered with explicit moral force and more clearly discloses the modal inflection of the metaphysical contingencies that spring from his philosophy. This is a conditional claim and the condition to which it applies is the one in which actual persons bring other persons into existence. However, this assertion that the absence of pleasure would not be bad "for them" directly contradicts (4) because, as we have seen, Benatar explicitly claims that the absence of pleasure would, in fact, be bad for the living. If the condition Benatar had in mind was instead the absence of persons (which requires a charitably imaginative interpretation on our part), we are left with the pointless observation that 'their' non-existence would not be bad.

But this is a nonsensical claim to contrast against the suppositional pleasure that such a person would experience, for if "they" are understood to be non-existent then the former admission—that such a state of affairs would be a good thing—likewise impeaches (4) because we must now suppose that it is meaningful to move from nothing and nobody to something and somebody in our counterfactual ontology. However, it was only under the presumptive denial of this possibility that the counterfactual distinction Benatar adduced to substantiate the asymmetry lent meaning to his argument in the first place.

So if we are to accept the legitimacy of the hedonistic metrics of counterfactual suppositions tendered on behalf of the non-existent, we should forfeit considerations of the pleasure that would thence obtain only if we go along with Benatar's more fundamental claim that no lives are genuinely pleasure-positive.

This suggests an even deeper flaw in Benatar's theory. Campbell Brown illustrates this succinctly: "Consider three worlds, A, B, and C, and a person, Jemima, such that: in A, Jemima doesn’t exist; in B, Jemima exists but experiences neither pleasure nor pain; and in C, Jemima exists and experiences only pleasure," Brown writes. "It follows from [3] that A and B are equally good for Jemima, and so are A and C. But it follows from [4] that C is better for Jemima than B. This seems simply incoherent."    

Benatar's asymmetry is insufficient to entail his conclusion. He gives us no good answer to Holtug's query: "How can anything be worse for a person who does not exist?" Furthermore, Benatar has the unlucky obligation to show nevertheless that all lives are necessarily painful, for this is a point that is neither analytical nor entailed by his logical exploits, but required to carry the argument.

 A persistent curiosity of Benatar's argument is that he emphatically claims that all lives are in fact overwhelmingly painful while nevertheless insisting that the balance of pain and pleasure for any given person in particular is given over to the contingencies of chance. So, while he doesn't argue explicitly that existence is necessarily painful or that it is a moral predicate, he might as well. Even if pleasure were measured to countervail pain, it turns out, no exception should be inferred; the difference could be in the comparative order, or the intensity, or "a few more noticeable 'highs,'" instead. "It will not do therefore to calculate how bad a life is," he cautions. (A somewhat contradictory pledge—"in the current chapter I consider how bad it is to come into existence" is fulfilled in another chapter.)  

Furthermore, for a theory contrived on modal claims, Benatar's reluctance to specify just what it would take for a life to be pleasure-positive is odd. Instead, he offers numerous putative scenarios that might strike you as having such a balance, but then follows each with a discussion of why the average human—which is alleged to have the introspective powers of the Hamburglar—is mistaken. Every intuitive notion of pleasure, it turns out, is either caused by pain, compelled toward pain, or else is just is pain. And, as Elizabeth Harmon suggests, "suppose we grant to Benatar that ordinary lives contain many minor distresses that we do not normally pay attention to in considering how good our lives are. Nevertheless, we might claim, there are certain positive features of our lives that are much more valuable than these negative features are bad."  Given the evident human difficulty in evaluating pleasure and pain, Benatar's own prerogative authority on such matters is self-undermining. Inasmuch as this assertion is one for which Benatar adduces only his own judgment, the veracity of his claims of asymmetry deliver nothing firmer than his strident pessimism.

   

By this I don't mean that most lives—or even any lives—are necessarily worth living; I mean only that it is as likely as the thesis in question. And it is not only people under the persuasion of the Pollyanna principle who think so. There are numerous theories of goodness and betterness and value in philosophy. For instance, one David Benatar came up with this rather mawkish defense of common sense (we all go through a poetry phase): "Indeed the kind of meaning wanted by those who think our lives are meaningless is the very kind of meaning that is beyond our reach."

Benatar is likewise convinced that ours is an existential tragedy immune to the auspicious promise of transhuman improvement. "The longer our species lasts the more suffering there will be," he claims. Assuming population growth, this follows simply from his dire pronouncements for the present. Nevertheless, we can conceive of futures in which there is less suffering or in which population growth slows. In fact, many of the calamitous phenomena Benatar adduces for his bleak futurism seem to predict such a scenario, the admitted futility of such prognostication notwithstanding.

Now it is true that while Benatar's argument is ostensibly about the worth of existence in a general sense, his titular claim attains viable pedagogical force precisely in the context of procreation. But he ultimately backs off making any bold demands for antinatalism. "These issues merit more substantial treatment than I am able to offer here. I am unsure, therefore, whether the suggested argument for the permissibility of (sometimes) having children is sound," he wanly concedes. He nevertheless strongly implies that there is a moral duty to not bring people into existence, but the point is peripheral to his central claim and conditional on judgments to which he resists committing absolutely. In the end, he offers only the comparatively feeble claim that "there can be no duty to bring people into existence." Phrased in terms of permissibility rather than obligation, his moral conviction is considerably softened. However, "If people realized how bad their lives were," Benatar says, "they might grant their coming into existence was a harm even if they deny that coming into existence would have been a harm had their lives contained but the smallest amount of blood."

Now were we to go further and to acknowledge the imperative inflection of the argument—i.e., that no one should have children—we should hold Benatar to justify his ethical claims with clarity and rigor. Benatar suggests that there is a moral imperative to not bring people into existence because it is better to prevent pain than to promote pleasure. This point he tries to substantiate with a rather discursive appeal to a consequentialist, welfare-maximizing, system of justice. And so the best way to proceed ethically, according to Benatar, is to act on John Rawls's maximin rule. In Rawls's words, "the maximin rule tells us to rank alternatives by their worst possible outcomes: we are to adopt the alternative the worst outcome of which is superior to the worst outcomes of the others." Because such a system would result in the fewest expected people coming into existence, it would prosper Benatar's ethics.  There is significant inferential overhead in accommodating Benatar's brand of ethics and much of the discussion of justice and reverse-utilitarianism is peripheral to the central argument (and redundant where it is not), but no matter how it is articulated Benatar's argument has to rest, necessarily, on some primitive alinement of normativity and hedonism and thence on some question-begging calculus of happiness. The problem here is Benatar's insouciant confidence that all this goes without saying. It is not at all obvious that actions taken to prevent pain should categorically exclude pleasure, or that the same genesis antisymmetry relations should hold for current and future people—among other counter-arguments met with accusations of glibness and angry denouncement from Benatar.

Benatar's scandalous one-liner that "it would be better if, as a result of there being no new people, humanity became extinct," represents the point of mildest follow-through in the book. "Although it may be bad for anyone of us to die," Benatar claims, "it is still worse to die earlier than we need to.  Secondly, there is a moral difference between some cases of killing-extinction and cases of dying-extinction.  Were anti-natalists to become pro-mortalists and embark on a 'speciecide' program of killing humans, their actions would be plagued by moral problems that would not be faced by dying extinction."

Suicide and Apocalypse are thus preferable to bringing people into existence by his deontological calculus of duty—but nonetheless uncouth because preventing pain is of greater importance than promoting pleasure. And although it's true that most every gritty slogan in the book seems to flatter the dignity of suicide, Benatar judiciously refrains from asking his readers to kill themselves.

Ultimately, Benatar's arguments are stronger than many of his critics are willing to acknowledge, but not nearly as strong as their author thinks they are. Yet there is something laudatory in his go-for-broke effort to push his pessimism rigorously. At any rate, if he generates enough controversy, he might be able at the very least to keep Pat out of his Google Search Results, and that should count for something.

¹Actually there are two (sometimes referentially conflated) asymmetries: the familiar deontic version and a second, more fundamental asymmetry. Further, the essential claim that "no lives are worth starting," Benatar says—in a response to a hostile review—applies only to the latter. "I did not attempt to infer that coming into existence is always a harm from the deontic asymmetry. I did refer to the deontic asymmetry, as well as to many other widely accepted claims, but I suggested that these are all best explained by a much deeper asymmetry between pleasure and pain."