David Benatar
Biographic Data
| ID | 4492468 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Benatar |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Benatar |
| SIGNATURE | BENATAR D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3115-9172 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 72 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 27 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Religious antinatalism
This article examines the relationship between religion and antinatalism – the view that it is wrong to create new sentient beings. Many people reject antinatalism on religious grounds. In this paper, I respond to such a rejection. First, I argue that antinatalism is not logically incompatible with theism. Second, I consider the pronatalist features of some religious traditions – those of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. These include …
Sentience and Why It Matters
In this article, it is argued that in the actual world, even if not in all possible worlds, sentience is both a necessary and sufficient condition for having moral standing. In arguing for this conclusion, the concepts of sentience and moral standing are explained. Five kinds of interest are then differentiated—functional, biotic, sentient, sapient, and self-conscious. It is argued that having sentient interests, rather than merely any interests,…
Ethically defensible executions? A reply to Daniel Rodger and coauthors
The Paradox of Desert
This article describes a paradoxical phenomenon arising from the fact that those who act rightly often pay a price for doing so. The paradox is that the very thing – acting rightly – that incurs the cost also makes the cost (especially) undeserved. In explicating the paradox, I distinguish between two kinds of cost (internal and external), two kinds of unfairness (intrinsic and comparative), and two manifestations of the paradox (prospective and …
Misconceived
Emotional support animals are not like prosthetics
Sara Kolmes has argued that the human ‘handlers’ of emotional support animals (ESAs) should have the sorts of body-like rights to those animals that people with prosthetics have to their prosthetics. In support of this conclusion, she argues that ESAs both function and feel like prosthetics, and that the disanalogies between ESAs and prosthetics are irrelevant to whether humans can have body-like rights to their ESAs. In response, we argue that M…
Famine, Affluence, and Procreation
Obscurity, falsehood, and innuendo – A response to M. John Lamola
In a paper on a “contextual South African philosophy curriculum”, M. John Lamola makes some sweeping comments about South African philosophers during the apartheid era and insinuates parallels with those today who ask questions about what a decolonised curriculum is. His arguments here are unclear, are based on false and insufficiently nuanced claims, and are pregnant with innuendo. In my response I demonstrate this
The Human Predicament
The Human Predicament engages life’s big questions. Are our lives meaningless? Is death bad? Would immortality be better? Alternatively, should we hasten our deaths by acts of suicide? Many people are tempted to offer comforting, optimistic answers to these existential questions. The Human Predicament offers a less sanguine assessment and defends a substantial, but not unmitigated, pessimism. It is argued that while our lives can have some meanin…
Suicide
This chapter examines suicide as one response to the human predicament. It is argued that while suicide can bring relief from appalling quality of life, it is not a cost-free exit from the human predicament. Even when it is the least bad option, it nonetheless involves annihilation. Moreover, it fails to address the problem of meaninglessness at any level. Indeed, it often (even though not always) exacerbates that problem by limiting the sorts of…
Meaninglessness
This chapter is the second of two chapters concerned with whether life is meaningless. In this chapter, it is argued that life has no meaning sub specie aeternitatis (that is, no purpose or point from a cosmic perspective). Nihilism about cosmic meaning is the bad news. Some people deny that life lacks cosmic meaning while others argue that it does not matter that life lacks such meaning. The chapter responds to such arguments, some of which are …
The human predicament
Are our lives meaningful, or meaningless? Is our inevitable death a bad thing? Would immortaility be an improvement? Would it be better, all things considered, to hasten our death by suicide? Many people ask these big questions - and some people are plagued by them. Surprisingly, analytic philosophers have said relatively little about these important questions about the meaning of life. When they have tackled the big questions, they have tended, …
The Second Sexism
How does anybody live in this strange place? A reply to Samantha Vice
Samantha Vice has argued that ‘white’ South Africans are so tainted by the history of racial oppression in their country that they are incapable of attaining a great degree of moral virtue. She recommends that they should live in humility and political silence. There are a number of flaws in her argument. First, none of the characteristics of ‘white’ South Africans that she says provides the basis for these conclusions can distinguish (almost) al…
Every Conceivable Harm
Many people are resistant to the conclusions for which I argued in Better Never to Have Been. I have previously responded to most of the published criticisms of my arguments. Here I respond to a new batch of critics (and to some fellow anti-natalists) who gathered for a conference at the University of Johannesburg and whose papers are published in this special issue of the South African Journal of Philosophy. I am also taking the opportunity to r…
The second sexism
Choosing Tomorrow’s Children
Procreation and Parenthood
Producing and rearing children are immensely important human activities. This collection offers new and original essays by leading philosophers on some of the main ethical issues raised by these activities.
The Chickens Come Home to Roost
As the number of human deaths from avian influenza grows and as the disease spreads geographically, fears of a 21st century influenza epidemic or pandemic mount. Even if the disease does not reach epidemic proportions imminently, the fears are nonetheless well-founded. Inductive reasoning leads to the conclusion that an influenza epidemic will arise, as such epidemics have arisen many times before, including 3 times during the 20th century. The r…
Better Never to Have Been
This book argues for a number of related, highly provocative views: (i) coming into existence is always a serious harm; (ii) procreation is always wrong; (iii) it is wrong not to abort foetuses at the earlier stages of gestation; and (iv) 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 book argues that these intuitions a…
Theoria Referees
The Trouble With Universal Declarations
A number of problems plague universal declarations. To the extent that those drafting and adopting the declaration represent a range of different views, consensus can only be obtained if the declaration makes minimalist claims that all can support, or makes claims that are vague enough that they can be interpreted to everybody's satisfaction. To the extent that a universal declaration avoids these problems, and takes an unequivocal and controvers…
The Second Sexism, a Second Time
The Second Sexism
Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality
Editors' Introduction I. JEWISH ETHICS A. Literature and Context of 1. Menachem Kellner, The Structure of Ethics: B. Theoretical Issues in 1. Louis Newman, as Law, Law as Religion. 2. David Novak, Natural Law, Halakah, and the Covenant. 3. Harold Schluweid, The Single Mirror of Images. 4. Elliot Dorff, Covenant: Transcendent Thrust in Law: C. Reconceptualizing Ethics in Modern Times: 1. S. Daniel Breslauer, Modernizing American Liberal Dilemma. 2…
Meaninglessness
This chapter is the second of two chapters concerned with whether life is meaningless. In this chapter, it is argued that life has no meaning sub specie aeternitatis (that is, no purpose or point from a cosmic perspective). Nihilism about cosmic meaning is the bad news. Some people deny that life lacks cosmic meaning while others argue that it does not matter that life lacks such meaning. The chapter responds to such arguments, some of which are …
Every Conceivable Harm
Many people are resistant to the conclusions for which I argued in Better Never to Have Been. I have previously responded to most of the published criticisms of my arguments. Here I respond to a new batch of critics (and to some fellow anti-natalists) who gathered for a conference at the University of Johannesburg and whose papers are published in this special issue of the South African Journal of Philosophy. I am also taking the opportunity to r…
The Chickens Come Home to Roost
As the number of human deaths from avian influenza grows and as the disease spreads geographically, fears of a 21st century influenza epidemic or pandemic mount. Even if the disease does not reach epidemic proportions imminently, the fears are nonetheless well-founded. Inductive reasoning leads to the conclusion that an influenza epidemic will arise, as such epidemics have arisen many times before, including 3 times during the 20th century. The r…
Corporal Punishment
Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality
Editors' Introduction I. JEWISH ETHICS A. Literature and Context of 1. Menachem Kellner, The Structure of Ethics: B. Theoretical Issues in 1. Louis Newman, as Law, Law as Religion. 2. David Novak, Natural Law, Halakah, and the Covenant. 3. Harold Schluweid, The Single Mirror of Images. 4. Elliot Dorff, Covenant: Transcendent Thrust in Law: C. Reconceptualizing Ethics in Modern Times: 1. S. Daniel Breslauer, Modernizing American Liberal Dilemma. 2…
Obligation, Motivation and Reward
A Talmudic principle,' attributed to Rabbi Chanina, claims that a person who is commanded to perform an action and who obeys is greater than a person who is not so commanded but nonetheless acts in the way the commandment requires. Although the principle mentions only how people act, there is no reason to think that the principle does not apply equally to omissions-the subjects of negative commandments. Accordingly those who are commanded to refr…
The Second Sexism, a Second Time
The Second Sexism
The Trouble With Universal Declarations
A number of problems plague universal declarations. To the extent that those drafting and adopting the declaration represent a range of different views, consensus can only be obtained if the declaration makes minimalist claims that all can support, or makes claims that are vague enough that they can be interpreted to everybody's satisfaction. To the extent that a universal declaration avoids these problems, and takes an unequivocal and controvers…
Better Never to Have Been
This book argues for a number of related, highly provocative views: (i) coming into existence is always a serious harm; (ii) procreation is always wrong; (iii) it is wrong not to abort foetuses at the earlier stages of gestation; and (iv) 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 book argues that these intuitions a…
Theoria Referees
The Chickens Come Home to Roost
As the number of human deaths from avian influenza grows and as the disease spreads geographically, fears of a 21st century influenza epidemic or pandemic mount. Even if the disease does not reach epidemic proportions imminently, the fears are nonetheless well-founded. Inductive reasoning leads to the conclusion that an influenza epidemic will arise, as such epidemics have arisen many times before, including 3 times during the 20th century. The r…
Procreation and Parenthood
Producing and rearing children are immensely important human activities. This collection offers new and original essays by leading philosophers on some of the main ethical issues raised by these activities.
Choosing Tomorrow’s Children
The Second Sexism
How does anybody live in this strange place? A reply to Samantha Vice
Samantha Vice has argued that ‘white’ South Africans are so tainted by the history of racial oppression in their country that they are incapable of attaining a great degree of moral virtue. She recommends that they should live in humility and political silence. There are a number of flaws in her argument. First, none of the characteristics of ‘white’ South Africans that she says provides the basis for these conclusions can distinguish (almost) al…
Every Conceivable Harm
Many people are resistant to the conclusions for which I argued in Better Never to Have Been. I have previously responded to most of the published criticisms of my arguments. Here I respond to a new batch of critics (and to some fellow anti-natalists) who gathered for a conference at the University of Johannesburg and whose papers are published in this special issue of the South African Journal of Philosophy. I am also taking the opportunity to r…
The second sexism
The Human Predicament
The Human Predicament engages life’s big questions. Are our lives meaningless? Is death bad? Would immortality be better? Alternatively, should we hasten our deaths by acts of suicide? Many people are tempted to offer comforting, optimistic answers to these existential questions. The Human Predicament offers a less sanguine assessment and defends a substantial, but not unmitigated, pessimism. It is argued that while our lives can have some meanin…
Suicide
This chapter examines suicide as one response to the human predicament. It is argued that while suicide can bring relief from appalling quality of life, it is not a cost-free exit from the human predicament. Even when it is the least bad option, it nonetheless involves annihilation. Moreover, it fails to address the problem of meaninglessness at any level. Indeed, it often (even though not always) exacerbates that problem by limiting the sorts of…
Meaninglessness
This chapter is the second of two chapters concerned with whether life is meaningless. In this chapter, it is argued that life has no meaning sub specie aeternitatis (that is, no purpose or point from a cosmic perspective). Nihilism about cosmic meaning is the bad news. Some people deny that life lacks cosmic meaning while others argue that it does not matter that life lacks such meaning. The chapter responds to such arguments, some of which are …
The human predicament
Are our lives meaningful, or meaningless? Is our inevitable death a bad thing? Would immortaility be an improvement? Would it be better, all things considered, to hasten our death by suicide? Many people ask these big questions - and some people are plagued by them. Surprisingly, analytic philosophers have said relatively little about these important questions about the meaning of life. When they have tackled the big questions, they have tended, …
Obscurity, falsehood, and innuendo – A response to M. John Lamola
In a paper on a “contextual South African philosophy curriculum”, M. John Lamola makes some sweeping comments about South African philosophers during the apartheid era and insinuates parallels with those today who ask questions about what a decolonised curriculum is. His arguments here are unclear, are based on false and insufficiently nuanced claims, and are pregnant with innuendo. In my response I demonstrate this
Famine, Affluence, and Procreation
Emotional support animals are not like prosthetics
Sara Kolmes has argued that the human ‘handlers’ of emotional support animals (ESAs) should have the sorts of body-like rights to those animals that people with prosthetics have to their prosthetics. In support of this conclusion, she argues that ESAs both function and feel like prosthetics, and that the disanalogies between ESAs and prosthetics are irrelevant to whether humans can have body-like rights to their ESAs. In response, we argue that M…
Misconceived
Ethically defensible executions? A reply to Daniel Rodger and coauthors
The Paradox of Desert
This article describes a paradoxical phenomenon arising from the fact that those who act rightly often pay a price for doing so. The paradox is that the very thing – acting rightly – that incurs the cost also makes the cost (especially) undeserved. In explicating the paradox, I distinguish between two kinds of cost (internal and external), two kinds of unfairness (intrinsic and comparative), and two manifestations of the paradox (prospective and …
Philosophy (15 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Environmental ethics (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Applied philosophy (3 works) · Computer Science (3 works)