The Overall Values Of Derek Parfit, By David Benatar

Life entirely is a gift, whether long-lived or short-lived, how one spends it determines the overall value of the last moments. Personally, I enjoy each and every day to my fullest as if there is no tomorrow. I live a life full of no regrets and always choose the most scenic road as a guide for my every moment. I have learned to take my life as beneficial and a blessing because there are so many others who could have been born but were not born and who never had the chance to exist. Those of us brought to existence are destined to be greater and accomplish greater things.

Derek Parfit, a well-known British philosopher, writes an essay where he clearly states, that we can be benefited by being brought into existence, whether one lives a good or bad life, which is something that I firmly believe in. David Benatar, a well-known South African Philosopher, writes an essay that refutes Parfit by stating that everyone is harmed by being brought into

A perfect example, is when a potential parent goes for a doctor visit, and the doctor says that if she was to get pregnant at that moment, the child she would bare would be severely autistic, and a child she would bare a year later would be healthy then this tough decision she makes constitutes as an example of a conundrum of choices that would have huge effects to the future. Parfit at this point cannot answer the wrong doing in the non-identity case intuition, because there isn’t anyone else that one fails to benefit and no one is harmed either. Benatar sees wrong in this intuition, because for him, he finds the victim and in this case if the parent were to choose to bring baby one into existence then this wrong action brings harm to the baby. The state of affairs where we exist is wrong while the states of affairs where we do not are