Better Never To Have Been

This is going to be probably one of the hardest blog posts I will have written to date. Last weekend, on the plane ride back to Atlanta from San Antonio (where I was laughing at jokes with philosophers of humor), I read David Benatar’s 2006 monograph entitled “Better Never to Have Been.” For those who are unfamiliar with the work, I will include a synopsis of his argument below:

"This book argues for a number of related, highly provocative, views: (1) Coming into existence is always a serious harm. (2) Procreation is always wrong. (3) It is wrong not to abort foetuses at the earlier stages of gestation. (4) It would be better if, as a result of there being no new people, humanity became extinct. Although these conclusions are antagonistic to common and deeply held intuitions, the author argues that these intuitions are unreliable and thus cannot be used to refute the book’s grim-sounding conclusions.”

Some, perhaps even many, would read the above and dismiss the project of the book offhand. I admit I was one of those people. Reading the book, however, gave me moment for pause, and urged me to take seriously Benatar’s claim that coming into existence is always a serious harm. I will first briefly lay out his views about how life, on three separate views of quality of life, might be considered a harm to the subject who is compelled by birth to experience it. Then I will lay out as succinctly as I can his view about the wrongness of not aborting fetuses in the early stages of gestation. I will conclude this post by gesturing toward a way I am inclined to respond regarding this view, as I fall squarely in the camp of those who believe that abortion is a morally permissible, though oftentimes also morally regrettable, action.

A hedonistic theory posits that the quality of one’s life goes well or badly depending on the “extent to which it is characterized by positive or mental states–pleasure and pain (broadly construed)” (p. 69). Benatar suggests that we cannot consider ourselves to have quality lives on this view, as human life is marked by constant want. If we are not hungry, we are cold. And if we are not cold, we have to go to the bathroom. And if we don’t have to go to the bathroom, we are tired. And if we are not tired, we are hot. And so on. Many humans experience these discomforts chronically, but even those who do not experience these discomforts rotundly are subject to them more times a day than they are not. This is not even to account for those mental pains that plague humans daily. And thus, we cannot possibly understand the human life as being the kind of life which is pleasurable more so than it is painful.

A desire-fulfillment theory, by contrast, measures the quality of one’s life by the extent to which their desires are fulfilled. The problems of the hedonistic theory carry over into the desire-fulfillment theory, as many peoples’ desires are connected to what is pleasurable to them. Benatar cites Arthur Schopenhauer who suggests that “life…is a constant state of striving or willing–a state of dissatisfaction” (p. 76). Even if people came to desire only those things which they knew could be satisfied, however, it seems that this would be a life devoid of meaningful quality–the kind we tend to speak of when we gesture to having a life of quality. Thus, Benatar says that a desire-fulfillment theory does not show how life might be considered a good to those subject to it.

Lastly, Benatar discusses the implications of the quality of one’s life as it pertains to objective list theories. These types of view suggest that every good life is constitutive of certain objective goods. Many of these goods are both pleasurable, and the types of goods which constitute desires that aim to be fulfilled, so Benatar’s earlier criticisms, too, apply to this kind of theory. However, Benatar goes further to suggest that the objective goods which one determines as necessary to a quality human life are goods constructed from a flawed human perspective. We ought to strive for goods from a perspective which Benatar (and Spinoza) calls sub species aeternitatis–that which is objectively, universally, and eternally true. On this account, human life is left wanting, according to Benatar.

Thus, bringing a being into existence is highly problematic on Benatar’s view, as bringing a being into existence is inconsistent with allowing them to achieve a life that is on the whole positive. And it is better not to have been if one is made to endure the suffering of the world than to have been born. Which leads us to another of Benatar’s deliciously controversial conclusions: “Therefore, if it is better never to come into existence it is better, prior to this time, to be aborted than to be brought to term” (p. 148). This is because one only comes into existence in the morally relevant sense at around twenty-eight or thirty weeks gestation, which means that to fail to terminate the pregnancy prior to that point would be tantamount to ensuring that the child would endure a net negative life that they otherwise would not have been made to experience.

Regardless of whether somebody buys into this view or not, it is compelling. I will do my best to superficially respond to this charge. Though I consider myself pro-choice, I cannot bring myself to believe that somebody commits a wrong when they fail to abort a a fetus they plan to carry to term. And this is even though I take it to be the case that life is inevitably and incontrovertibly filled with more harm than it is filled with pleasure. Despite the suffering which riddles life, one is able to benefit from living life in two profound (and I think, overriding) ways. The first is that life can be rendered meaningful, even if it is characterized by profound suffering. I think Benatar can be exactly right that life is more painful than it is pleasurable. If we all were really honest with ourselves, I think we would come to agree with him. But that is not an overriding reason to prevent life whenever one can. We can use the pain and the suffering we endure to derive meaning for ourselves. And the meaning we accumulate over a lifetime comes to characterize the people we are both to ourselves and to others.

Secondly, life, at least for human beings, is an enterprise which endows a great many of us with autonomy. We are able to claim authorship of our actions, and though we may suffer as we do so, there is a profound sense in which we come to develop a great deal of satisfaction in understanding who we are and who we want to make ourselves. This power enables us to see ourselves as precious, though ultimately flawed, and I think that the potential to experience this kind of existential self-esteem is an overriding reason to bring somebody into this world–so that they might experience it.

These responses are imperfect. I am only a masters student. But I think that it is a mistake to reduce life–especially the life of human subjects–to the experience of pleasure, pain, and its variable iterations. Clearly, Benatar himself does not subscribe to this view as he dedicates his book:

“To my parents, even though they brought me into existence; and to my brothers, each of whose existence, although a harm to him, is a great benefit to the rest of us.”