Antinatalism

Antinatalism, or anti-natalism, is a philosophical position that assigns a negative value to birth. Antinatalists argue that people should refrain from procreation because it is morally bad (some also recognize the procreation of other sentient beings as morally bad). In scholarly and in literary writings, various ethical foundations have been adduced for antinatalism.[1] Some of the earliest surviving formulations of the idea that it would be better not to have been born come from ancient Greece.[2] The term "antinatalism" is in opposition to the term "natalism" or "pro-natalism", and was used probably for the first time as the name of the position by Théophile de Giraud (born in 1968) in his book L'art de guillotiner les procréateurs: Manifeste anti-nataliste.[3]

In religions

The teaching of the Buddha (c. 400 BCE) is interpreted by Hari Singh Gour (1870–1949) as follows:

Buddha states his propositions in the pedantic style of his age. He throws them into a form of sorites; but, as such, it is logically faulty and all he wishes to convey is this: Oblivious of the suffering to which life is subject, man begets children, and is thus the cause of old age and death. If he would only realize what suffering he would add to by his act, he would desist from the procreation of children; and so stop the operation of old age and death.[4]

The Marcionites believed that the visible world is an evil creation of a crude, cruel, jealous, angry demiurge, Yahweh. According to this teaching, people should oppose him, abandon his world, not create people, and trust in the good God of mercy, foreign and distant.[5][6][7]

The Encratites observed that birth leads to death. In order to conquer death, people should desist from procreation: "not produce fresh fodder for death".[8][9][10]

The Manichaeans,[11][12][13] the Bogomils[14][15][16] and the Cathars[17][18][19] believed that procreation sentences the soul to imprisonment in evil matter. They saw procreation as an instrument of an evil god, demiurge, or of Satan that imprisons the divine element in matter and thus causes the divine element to suffer.

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) viewed humans as a biological paradox. Consciousness has become over-evolved in humans, thereby making us incapable of functioning normally like other animals: cognition gives us more than we can carry. We want to live, and yet because of how we have evolved, we are the only species aware that it is destined to die. We are able to analyze the past for broad expectations of the future, both our situation and situations of others; we expect justice and meaning in a world where neither occur. This ensures that the lives of conscious individuals are tragic. We have desires: spiritual needs which reality is unable to satisfy, and our species still exists because we limit our awareness of what that reality actually entails. Human existence amounts to a tangled network of defense mechanisms, which can be observed both individually and socially, in our everyday behavior patterns. According to Zapffe, humanity should cease this self-deception, and the natural consequence would be its extinction by abstaining from procreation.[20][21][22]

Negative ethics

Julio Cabrera proposes a concept of "negative ethics" in opposition to what he views as "affirmative" ethics which affirm being.[23][24][25][26][27] He describes procreation as an act of manipulation; it equates to sending a human being into a immoral, painful and dangerous situation without their consent. For Cabrera, this situation, life, is "structurally negative" in that its constitutive components are inherently negative. As prominent among them, Cabrera cites loss, scarcity, pain, conflicts, fragility, illness, aging, boredom and death. In his opinion, pleasures and positive values are reactive to these negative constitutive elements. Cabrera regards procreation as an ontological and total manipulation: the very being of the human is manufactured and used, so in contrast to intra-worldly situations, no chance of defense against that act is even available. In addition, Cabrera points out that the manipulation of procreation is not limited to the act of creation itself, but is continued in the process of raising the child, where they are shaped according to the preferences of the parents and for their satisfaction. He emphasizes that although it is impossible to consult the unborn child and ask for their consent when one procreates, it is perfectly possible not to procreate, and in such case there is no manipulation. According to Cabrera, in ethics, and also in affirmative ethics, there is one overarching concept which he calls the "Fundamental Ethical Articulation", in short "FEA": the consideration of other people's interests, the non-manipulation and non-harm of others. Procreation for him is an obvious violation of FEA. In his view, values included in the FEA are already widely accepted by affirmative ethics, and if approached radically, they should lead to the refusal of procreation. Cabrera also believes that procreation is a violation of autonomy, and that a rational subject, having reliable information about the human condition and the ability to speak about its possible coming into existence (this is a thought experiment proposed by Richard Hare, who assumes that it would be obvious to choose birth), might not want to be born and experience the harms associated with existence.

Cabrera distinguishes "structural death", in short "SD", i.e. mortality, the process of dying initiated by birth, from "punctual death", in short "PD", i.e. the dated event of factual disappearance. In his view, recognizing death (in the sense of SD) as bad and regretting having to die, should be equal to recognizing birth as bad and regretting being born, since it is not possible to be born in a non-mortal way.

In the moral problem of procreation, Cabrera attaches the utmost importance to what he describes as "moral impediment". According to negative ethics, humans are morally disqualified. We are not able to act morally towards everyone: taking into account someone's interests and being moral towards them, always coincides with not taking into account the interests of many others and not being moral towards these others. Such impediment does not occur because of an intrinsic "evil" of human nature, but because of the structural condition in which we have always been. Humans beings are born in a situation where they are cornered by various kinds of pain, where there is a scarcity of time and space, and in which different interests often conflict with each other. As a result, in order to survive, pursue one's projects or escape from suffering, humans are often compelled to commit acts of disregard against others, even when there is no malicious intent. The impossibility of being moral is for Cabrera the worst thing in human life and in procreation: by procreating, one creates another human who will not be able to live morally. Cabrera also draws attention to the fact that life is associated with the constant risk of experiencing strong physical pain and maintains that the mere existence of this possibility impedes us morally, as well as that because of it, we can at any time lose, as a result of its realization, the possibility of a dignified, moral functioning even to a minimal extent.

Cabrera also considers the issue of being a creator in relation to theodicy and argues that just as it is impossible to defend the idea of a good God as creator, it is also impossible to defend the idea of a good man as creator. In parenthood, the human parent imitates the divine parent, in the sense that education could be understood as a form of the pursuit of "salvation", the "right path" for that child. However, a human being could decide that it is better not to suffer at all than to suffer and be offered the later possibility of salvation from suffering. In Cabrera's opinion, evil is associated not with the lack of being, but with the suffering and dying of what is alive. So, on the contrary, evil is only and obviously associated with being.

Kantian imperative

Julio Cabrera,[28] David Benatar (born in 1966),[29] and Karim Akerma[30] all argue that procreation is contrary to Immanuel Kant's practical imperative (according to Kant, a man should never be used as a means to an end, but always be an end in himself). They argue that a person can be created for the sake of his parents or other people, but that it is impossible to create someone for his own good; and that therefore, following Kant's recommendation, we should not create new people. Heiko Puls argues that Kant's considerations regarding parental duties and human procreation in general imply arguments for an ethically justified antinatalism. Kant, however, according to Puls, rejects this position in his teleology for meta-ethical reasons.[31]

Negative utilitarianism

Negative utilitarianism argues that minimizing suffering has greater moral importance than maximizing happiness.

Hermann Vetter (born in 1933) agrees with the assumptions of Jan Narveson (born in 1936):[32]

  1. There is no moral obligation to produce a child even if we could be sure that it will be very happy throughout his life.
  2. There is a moral obligation not to produce a child if it can be foreseen that it will be unhappy.

However, he disagrees with the conclusion that Narveson draws:

  1. In general – if it can be foreseen neither that the child will be unhappy nor that it will bring disutility upon others – there is no duty to have or not to have a child.

Instead, he presents the decision theoretic matrix:

child will be more or less happychild will be more or less unhappy
produce the childno duty fulfilled or violatedduty violated
do not produce the childno duty fulfilled or violatedduty fulfilled

Based on this, he concludes that we should not create people:[33][34]

It is seen immediately that the act "do not produce the child" dominates the act "produce the child" because it has equally good consequences as the other act in one case and better consequences in the other. So it is to be preferred to the other act as long as we cannot exclude with certainty the possibility that the child will be more or less unhappy; and we never can. So we have, instead of (3), the far-reaching consequence: (3') In any case, it is morally preferable not to produce a child.

Karim Akerma claims we should refrain from procreation because the good things in life do not compensate for the bad things. First and foremost, the best things do not compensate for the worst things such as, for example, the experience of unspeakable pain, the agonies of the wounded, sick or dying.[35][36]

Bruno Constestabile cites the story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin. In this story, the existence of the utopian city Omelas and the good fortune of its inhabitants depend on the suffering of one child tortured in an isolated place and who can not be helped. The majority accepts this state of affairs and stay in the city, but there are those who do not agree with it, who do not want to participate in it and thus they "walk away from Omelas". Constestabile draws a parallel here: for Omelas to exist, the child must be tortured, and in the same way, the existence of our world is related to the fact that someone is constantly harmed. According to the author, antinatalists can be seen just as "the ones who walk away from Omelas", who do not accept such a world, and who do not want to put their hands in it. He poses the question: is all happiness able to compensate for the extreme suffering of even one person?[37]

David Benatar

David Benatar argues that there is a crucial asymmetry between pleasure and pain:

  1. the presence of pain is bad;
  2. the presence of pleasure is good;
  3. the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone;
  4. the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.[38][39]
Scenario A (X exists)Scenario B (X never exists)
(1) Presence of pain (Bad)(3) Absence of pain (Good)
(2) Presence of pleasure (Good)(4) Absence of pleasure (Not bad)

Regarding procreation, the argument follows that coming into existence generates both good and bad experiences, pain and pleasure, whereas not coming into existence entails neither pain nor pleasure. The absence of pain is good, the absence of pleasure is not bad. Therefore, the ethical choice is weighed in favor of non-procreation.

Benatar explains the above asymmetry using four other asymmetries that he considers quite plausible:

  1. We have a moral obligation not to create unhappy people, and we have no moral obligation to create happy people. The reason why there is a moral obligation not to create unhappy people is that we believe the presence of pain is bad for those who are hurt, and the absence of pain is good also when there is no someone who is experiencing this good. By contrast, the reason for which there is no moral obligation to create happy people is that although the feeling of pleasure would be good for them, the absence of pleasure when they do not come into existence will not be bad, because there will be no one who will be deprived of this good.
  2. It is strange to mention the interests of a potential child as a reason why we decide to create it, and it is not strange to mention the interests of a potential child as a reason why we decide not to create it. That the child may be happy is not a morally important reason to create it. By contrast, that the child may be unhappy is an important moral reason to not create it. If the absence of pleasure is bad even if someone does not exist to experience its absence, we would have a significant moral reason to create a child, and to create as many children as possible. If, however, the absence of pain wouldn't be good even if someone would not experience this good, we would not have a significant moral reason not to create a child.
  3. Someday we can regret for the sake of the good of a man whose existence was conditional on our decision, that we created him – a man can be unhappy and the presence of his pain would be a bad thing. But we will never feel regret for the sake of the good of a man whose existence was conditional on our decision, that we did not create him – a man will not be deprived of happiness, because he will never exist, and the absence of happiness will not be bad, because there will be no one who will be deprived of this good.
  4. We feel sadness by the fact that somewhere people come into existence and suffer, and we feel no sadness by the fact that somewhere people did not come into existence and in this place there are happy people. When we know that somewhere people came into existence and suffer, we feel compassion. The fact that on some deserted island or planet people did not come into existence and suffer is good. This is because the absence of pain is good even when there is not someone who is experiencing this good. On the other hand, we do not feel sadness by the fact that on some deserted island or planet people did not come into existence and are not happy. This is because the absence of pleasure is bad only when someone exists to be deprived of this good.[40]

According to Benatar, by creating a child, we are responsible not only for this child's suffering, but we may also be co-responsible for the suffering of further offspring from this child:

Assuming that each couple has three children, an original pair's cumulative descendants over ten generations amount to 88,572 people. That constitutes a lot of pointless, avoidable suffering. To be sure, full responsibility for it all does not lie with the original couple because each new generation faces the choice of whether to continue that line of descendants. Nevertheless, they bear some responsibility for the generations that ensue. If one does not desist from having children, one can hardly expect one's descendants to do so.[41]

Benatar cites statistics showing where the creation of people, leads. It is estimated that:

  • more than fifteen million people are thought to have died from natural disasters in the last 1,000 years,
  • approximately 20,000 people die every day from hunger,
  • an estimated 840 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition,
  • between 541 CE and 1912, it is estimated that over 102 million people succumbed to plague,
  • the 1918 influenza epidemic killed 50 million people,
  • 11 million people die every year from infectious diseases,
  • malignant neoplasms take more than a further 7 million lives each year,
  • approximately 3.5 million people die every year in accidents,
  • approximately 56.5 million people died in 2001, that is more than 107 people per minute,
  • before the twentieth century over 133 million people were killed in mass killings,
  • in the first 88 years of the twentieth century 170 million (and possibly as many as 360 million) people were shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hanged, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners,
  • there were 1.6 million conflict-related deaths in the sixteenth century, 6.1 million in the seventeenth century, 7 million in the eighteenth, 19.4 million in the nineteenth, and 109.7 million in the twentieth,
  • war-related injuries led to 310,000 deaths in 2000,
  • about 40 million children are maltreated each year,
  • more than 100 million currently living women and girls have been subjected to genital cutting,
  • 815,000 people are thought to have committed suicide in 2000[42] (currently, it is estimated that someone commits suicide every 40 seconds, more than 800,000 people per year).[43]

In addition to the philanthropic arguments which "emanate from concern for the humans who will be brought into existence", Benatar also posits that another path to antinatalism is the misanthropic argument,[44] which may be described as follows:

Another route to anti-natalism is via what I call a "misanthropic" argument. According to this argument humans are a deeply flawed and a destructive species that is responsible for the suffering and deaths of billions of other humans and non-human animals. If that level of destruction were caused by another species we would rapidly recommend that new members of that species not be brought into existence.[45]

Harming other animals

David Benatar,[46][47] Gunter Bleibohm (born in 1947),[48] Gerald Harrison and Julia Tanner,[49] are attentive to harm caused to other sentient beings by humans. They would say that billions of non-human animals are abused and slaughtered each year by our species for production of animal products, for experimentation and after the experiments, when they are no longer needed, as a result of the destruction of habitats or other environmental damage and for sadistic pleasure. They tend to agree with animal rights thinkers that the harm we do them is immoral. They consider the human species the most destructive on the planet, arguing that without new humans, there will be no harm caused to other sentient beings by new humans.

Some antinatalists are also vegetarians or vegans for moral reasons, and postulate that such views should complement each other as having a common denominator: not causing harm to other sentient beings.[50][51] This attitude was already present in Manicheism and Catharism.[52]

Impact on the environment

Volunteers of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement argue that human activity is the primary cause of environmental degradation, and therefore the refraining from reproduction is "the humanitarian alternative to human disasters".[53][54][55]

Adoption instead of procreation

Herman Vetter,[33] Théophile de Giraud,[56] Tina Rulli[57] and Karim Akerma[58] argue that presently rather than engaging in the morally problematic act of procreation, one could do good by adopting already existing children. De Giraud emphasizes that, across the world, there are millions of existing children who need care.

Realism

Some antinatalists believe that most people do not evaluate reality accurately, which affects the desire to have children.

Peter Wessel Zapffe identifies four repressive mechanisms we use, consciously or not, to restrict our consciousness of life and the world:

  • isolation – an arbitrary dismissal from our consciousness and consciousness of others of all negative thoughts and feelings associated with the unpleasant facts about our existence. In daily life, this manifests as a tacit agreement to remain silent on certain subjects – especially around children, to prevent instilling in them a fear of the world and what awaits them in life, before they will be able to learn other mechanisms.
  • anchoring – the creation and use of personal values to ensure our attachment to reality, such as parents, home, the street, school, God, the church, the State, morality, fate, the law of life, the people, the future, accumulation of material goods or authority, etc. This can be characterized as creating a defensive structure, "a fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness", and defending the structure against threats.
  • distraction – shifting focus to new impressions to flee from circumstances and ideas we consider harmful or unpleasant.
  • sublimation – refocusing the tragic parts of life into something creative or valuable, usually through an aesthetic confrontation for the purpose of catharsis. We focus on the imaginary, dramatic, heroic, lyric or comic aspects of life, to allow ourselves and others an escape from their true impact.

According to Zapffe, depressive disorders are often "messages from a deeper, more immediate sense of life, bitter fruits of a geniality of thought".[20] Some studies seem to confirm this, it is said about the phenomenon of depressive realism, and Colin Feltham writes about antinatalism as one of its possible consequences.[59]

David Benatar citing numerous studies, lists three phenomena described by psychologists, which, according to him, are responsible for the fact that our self-assessments are unreliable:

  1. Tendency towards optimism (or Pollyanna principle) – we have a positively distorted picture of our lives in the past, present, and future.
  2. Adaptation (or accommodation, habituation) – we adapt to negative situations and adjust our expectations accordingly.
  3. Comparison – for our self-assessments, more important than how our lives goes is how our lives goes in comparison with lives of others. One of the effects of this is that negative aspects of life that affect everyone are not taken into account when assessing our own well-beings. We are also more likely to compare ourselves with those who are worse off than those who are better off.

Benatar concludes:

The above psychological phenomena are unsurprising from an evolutionary perspective. They militate against suicide and in favour of reproduction. If our lives are quite as bad as I shall still suggest they are, and if people were prone to see this true quality of their lives for what it is, they might be much more inclined to kill themselves, or at least not to produce more such lives. Pessimism, then, tends not to be naturally selected.[60]

Thomas Ligotti (born in 1953) draws attention to the similarity between Zapffe's philosophy and terror management theory. Terror management theory argues that humans are equipped with unique cognitive abilities beyond what is necessary for survival, which includes symbolic thinking, extensive self-consciousness, and perception of themselves as temporal beings aware of the finitude of their existence. The desire to live alongside our awareness of the inevitability of death triggers terror in us. Opposition to this fear is among our primary motivations. To escape it, we build defensive structures around ourselves to ensure our symbolic or literal immortality, to feel like a valuable member of a meaningful universe, and to focus on protecting ourselves from immediate external threats.[61]

Abortion

Antinatalism can lead to a particular position on abortion.

David Benatar argues for abortion from a "pro-death" perspective. According to Benatar, a person begins to exist – not as an organism in the biological sense, but as a being in the ethical sense (as the entity with valuable moral interests) – when consciousness arises, when a fetus is sentient, and up until that time, an abortion is moral, whereas continued pregnancy would be immoral. Benatar refers to EEG brain studies and studies on the pain perception of the fetus, which states that fetal consciousness arises no earlier than between twenty-eight and thirty weeks of pregnancy, before which it is incapable of feeling pain.[62] Contrary to that, the latest report from the Royal Academy of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the United Kingdom showed that the fetus gains consciousness no earlier than week twenty-four of the pregnancy.[63] Some assumptions of this report regarding sentience of the fetus after the second trimester were criticized.[64]

Julio Cabrera believes that the moral problem of abortion is significantly different from the moral problem of procreation, because in the case of abortion, there is already an existing being in some point of its development process, and no longer a non-being. He emphasizes that it is difficult to determine whether we kill someone when we have an abortion, but he believes that in its strictly manipulative aspect, abortion is closer to procreation than to abstention, and in his view the abortion of a healthy fetus is killing a human being, and is therefore morally unjustifiable. According to Cabrera it is a violation of autonomy and is immoral for the same reason as procreation.[65]

Criticism

Criticism of antinatalism may come from views that see positive value in bringing humans into existence.[66] Results of surveys on subjective life satisfaction, which show a vast surplus of happy people, could suggest that the overall benefit of procreation is greater than the harm and that therefore procreation is morally justified.[37] David Wasserman in his criticism of antinatalism, criticizes, among other things, David Benatar's arguments and the consent argument.[67]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ K. Akerma, Antinatalismus – Ein Handbuch, epubli, 2017.
  2. ↑ W. Tatarkiewicz, O szczęściu (On Happiness), Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1979, pp. 420-421.
  3. ↑ K. Akerma, Antinatalismus – Ein Handbuch, epubli, 2017, p. 301.
  4. ↑ H. Singh Gour, The Spirit of Buddhism, Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2005, pp. 286–288.
  5. ↑ H. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, Boston: Beacon Press, 1958, pp. 144–145.
  6. ↑ Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, Books 1–3 (The Fathers of the Church, volume 85), Washington D.C.: CUA Press, 2010, pp. 263–271.
  7. ↑ P. Karavites, Evil, Freedom, and the Road to Perfection in Clement of Alexandria, Leiden: Brill, 1999, p. 94.
  8. ↑ P. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, p. 96.
  9. ↑ Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, op. cit., pp. 295–296.
  10. ↑ G. Quispel, Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica: Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel, Leiden: Brill, 2008, p. 228.
  11. ↑ H. Jonas, The Gnostic..., op. cit., pp. 228 and 231.
  12. ↑ I. Gardner and S.N.C. Lieu, Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 7 and 22.
  13. ↑ S.G. Kochuthara, The Concept of Sexual Pleasure in the Catholic Moral Tradition, Rome: Gregorian Biblical BookShop, 2007, p. 165.
  14. ↑ D. Obolensky, The Bogomils: A Study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 114.
  15. ↑ F. Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 236.
  16. ↑ J. Lacarrière, The Gnostics, London: Owen, 1977, p. 116.
  17. ↑ M.J. Fromer, Ethical issues in Sexuality and Reproduction, St. Louis: Mosby, 1983, p. 110.
  18. ↑ S. Runciman, The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1947, pp. 151–152.
  19. ↑ D. Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 133–134.
  20. 1 2 P.W. Zapffe, The Last Messiah, Philosophy Now, 2004, number 45, pp. 35–39.
  21. ↑ P. W. Zapffe, Om det tragiske, Oslo: Pax Forlag, 1996.
  22. ↑ P. W. Zapffe, H. Tønnessen, Jeg velger sannheten: En dialog mellom Peter Wessel Zapffe og Herman Tønnessen, Oslo: Universitets forlaget, 1983.
  23. ↑ J. Cabrera, Projeto de Ética Negativa, São Paulo: Edicões Mandacaru, 1989 (second edition: A Ética e Suas Negações, Não nascer, suicídio e pequenos assassinatos, Rio De Janeiro: Rocco, 2011). English translation of the first chapter.
  24. ↑ J. Cabrera, A critique of affirmative morality (A reflection on death, birth and the value of life), Brasília: Julio Cabrera Editions, 2014 (English edition). J. Cabrera, Crítica de la moral afirmativa: Una reflexión sobre nacimiento, muerte y valor de la vida, Barcelona: Gedisa, 1996 (original Spanish edition, second edition in 2014).
  25. ↑ J. Cabrera (editor), Ética Negativa: problemas e discussões, Goiânia: UFG, 2008.
  26. ↑ J. Cabrera, T. Lenharo di Santis, Porque te amo, Não nascerás!: Nascituri te salutant, Brasília: LGE, 2009. English translation.
  27. ↑ J. Cabrera, Mal-estar e moralidade: situação humana, ética e procriação responsável, Brasília: UNB, 2018.
  28. ↑ J. Cabrera, T. Lenharo di Santis, Porque..., op. cit, pp. 52–67.
  29. ↑ D. Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006, pp. 129–131.
  30. ↑ K. Akerma, Theodicy shading off into Anthropodicy in Milton, Twain and Kant, Tabula Rasa. Die Kulturzeitung aus Mitteldeutschland, 2010, No 49.
  31. ↑ H. Puls, Kant’s Justification of Parental Duties, Kantian Review 21 (1), 2016, pp. 53–75.
  32. ↑ J. Narveson, Utilitarianism and New Generations, Mind 1967, LXXVI (301), pp. 62-67.
  33. 1 2 H. Vetter, The production of children as a problem for utilitarian ethics, Inquiry 12, 1969, pp. 445–447.
  34. ↑ H. Vetter, Utilitarianism and New Generations, Mind, 1971, LXXX (318), pp. 301–302.
  35. ↑ K. Akerma, Soll eine Menschheit sein? Eine fundamentalethische Frage, Cuxhaven-Dartford: Traude Junghans, 1995.
  36. ↑ K. Akerma, Verebben der Menschheit?: Neganthropie und Anthropodizee, Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Karl Alber, 2000.
  37. 1 2 B. Contestabile, The Denial of the World from an Impartial View, Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal, volume 17, issue 1, Taylor and Francis, 2016.
  38. ↑ D. Benatar, Why it is Better Never to Come Into Existence, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1997, volume 34, number 3, pp. 345–355.
  39. ↑ D. Benatar, Better..., op. cit., pp. 30–40.
  40. ↑ D. Benatar, Better..., op. cit., pp. 30–57.
  41. ↑ D. Benatar, Better..., op. cit., pp. 6–7.
  42. ↑ D. Benatar, Better..., op. cit., pp. 88–92.
  43. ↑ International Association for Suicide Prevention, World Suicide Prevention Day.
  44. ↑ D. Benatar, D. Wasserman, Debating Procreation: Is It Wrong To Reproduce?, Oxford University Press, New York 2015, pp. 87-121.
  45. ↑ We Are Creatures That Should Not Exist: The Philosophy Of Anti-Natalism, The Critique, July 15, 2015.
  46. ↑ D. Benatar, Better..., op. cit., pp. 109.
  47. ↑ D. Benatar, D. Wasserman, Debating..., op. cit., pp. 93– 99.
  48. ↑ G. Bleibohm, Fluch der Geburt – Thesen einer Überlebensethik, Landau-Godramstein: Gegensich, 2011.
  49. ↑ G. Harrison, J. Tanner, Better Not To Have Children, Think, 2011, volume 10, issue 27, pp. 113–121.
  50. ↑ K. Akerma, Ist der Vegetarismus ein Antinatalismus?, Pro iure animalis, March 24, 2014. English translation.
  51. ↑ V. Pelley, This Extreme Sect of Vegans Thinks Your Baby Will Destroy the Planet, Marie Claire, January 29, 2018.
  52. ↑ K. Akerma, Antinatalismus – Ein Handbuch, epubli, 2017, p. 305.
  53. ↑ V. Baird, The No-nonsense Guide to World Population, Oxford: New Internationalist, 2011, p. 119.
  54. ↑ An NBC interview with Les U. Knight.
  55. ↑ The official Voluntary Human Extinction Movement website.
  56. ↑ T. de Giraud, L'art de guillotiner les procréateurs: Manifeste anti-nataliste, Nancy: Le Mort-Qui-Trompe, 2006, p. 51.
  57. ↑ T. Rulli, The Ethics of Procreation and Adoption, Philosophy Compass 11/6, 2016, pp. 305–315.
  58. ↑ K. Akerma, Antinatalismus..., op. cit., p. 74.
  59. ↑ C. Feltham, Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary perspectives, Routledge, Abingdon 2016.
  60. ↑ D. Benatar, Better..., op. cit., pp. 64–69.
  61. ↑ T. Ligotti, The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror, New York: Hippocampus Press, 2010, pp. 112–113.
  62. ↑ D. Benatar, Better..., op. cit., pp. 132–162.
  63. ↑ Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Fetal Awareness – Review of Research and Recommendations for Practice, London: RCOG Press, 2010.
  64. ↑ M. W. Platt, Fetal awareness and fetal pain: the Emperor's new clothes, Archives of Disease in Childhood, 2011, volume 96, issue 4.
  65. ↑ J. Cabrera, T. Lenharo di Santis, op. cit, pp. 68–69, 77.
  66. ↑ D. Benatar, D. Wasserman, Debating..., op. cit., pp. 133–259.
  67. ↑ D. Benatar, D. Wasserman, Debating..., op. cit., pp. 148–181.
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