Is it better to exist than to never have come into existence?
Bad things happen to all of us. It is an unavoidable feature of humanity. When we are born, we are born to suffer. So what if we had never been born? What if we had never been introduced into this world of inevitable hardship? Would we be better off? Such thoughts are entertained by David Benatar in his essay ‘Why it is Better Never to Come into Existence’ (Benatar, 1997)- who, rather unsettlingly for his readers, argues that it is rational to think that it is not better to exist than to have never come into existence.
In an attempt to comprehend this titular question, I will embark upon a close analysis of Benatar’s argument, as I believe it offers one of the strongest cases against coming into existence. I will begin by outlining his argument, secondly identifying two key assumptions, and finally attempting to show that Benatar’s argument is only strong insofar as one takes a hedonistic approach to life- that is, to judge pleasure (and the absence of pain) as the greatest value of life.
Benatar’s asymmetry argument
In ‘Why it is Better Never to Come into Existence’ (Benatar, 1997), David Benatar argues that by bringing a person into existence, one harms him, and thus to bring anyone into existence is wrong. This notion is based upon a subtle distinction between weighing up pain and pleasure within an already existing being’s life, and weighing up pain and pleasure for a non-being.
It is Benatar’s belief that when people defend the notion that its better to exist than to never have come into existence, they do so using arguments that appeal to pleasures outweighing pain. For example, let us take the expression it is better to have loved and lost than to have n...
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... If, however, on the other hand, we take an approach similar to Nozick and later Nagel that experience itself gives existence meaning and a purpose then we arrive at the conclusion that existence is better than non-existence.
Neither approach is without fault- and to accept either comes with a certain degree of bullet-biting. Thus in conclusion I would like to say that it is it better to exist than to never have come into existence insofar as one does not define one’s life in terms of pain and pleasure, but with the capacity to have genuine experiences. I would prefer to exist than to never have come into existence because I value my capacity to experience above any other value in my life- and if I had never come into existence I would not have had that privilege. However with this acceptance I must also accept that I have a duty to bring people into existence.
Without God live is meaningless. We have no purpose for existence except to exist and at the end of life all that is left is death. If there is no life after death and no offer of immortality then life itself is absurd (Craig).
Life drives us to inevitable places, places where we must cross the metamorphic bridge towards the inescapable. We are not fixed individuals. We hit upon experiences for the sole purpose of change, hence, the “metamorphic bridge”. However, there are certain conditions that all living breeds are destined to encounter overtime, while abiding to a divine plan that many claim was arranged from the moment of birth. Those conditions can be considered fixed; we cannot avoid their occurrences. The ultimate one is death, and the certainty of it provokes religious ambivalence. The crossing of that bridge symbolizes various climactic points in which one results
In the beginning of Death, Nagel presented the question of whether it is a bad thing to die. He furnished two positions on the subject. The first position is that life is all one possesses and to lose life is the greatest loss one can encounter. The second position is that death is a blank, not an unimaginable condition, that has no positive or negative value whatsoever. Stating his aim to be considering whether death is in itself an evil, Nagel clarified that the state of being dead, or nonexistent, is not in itself evil for several reasons. First, death is not an evil that one is able to accumulate more of. A person cannot receive a larger portion of death no matter how long they have been in that state. Secondly, one would not regard temporary life suspension as harmful. In the case of long-term suspended animation or freezing, one can view this as a continuation of their present life. Thirdly, few people regard the long period of time before their birth as a misfortune. From these points, Nagel concluded that humanity does not object to death because it involves indeterminable periods of nonexistence. He then proposed that if death is an evil at all, it can only be because of what it deprives us of, since it has no positive features. He did not, however, agree with the idea that death is bad because it brings an end to all the good things in life. Nagel formulated that if all good and bad life experiences were removed, what i...
For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed."
In conclusion, life without experience or memory is meaningless. When all freedom is taken away from an
Thomas Nagel’s discussion about death is very intriguing and contemplative. In trying to prod for answers, Nagel began his essay, by writing about common views of death held by different people. His main purpose of writing this paper is to incisively and contemplatively discuss if death is a bad or evil thing. Nagel discusses the some people’s thought about death being evil. They say this because it denies us of living “more life”. He noted that most people are of the view that life is good, despite the fact that some life experiences are unpleasant and tragic. He then adds that when these unpleasant experiences of life are set aside, life is positive, and not just simply "neutral" (10).
At the core of Jean-Paul Sartre’s views was that existence precedes essence. This contrasted with the Aristotelian and Scholastic views that individual existence is an expression of essence or being (Brennan, 2003). Instead, Sartre believed that existence defines the essence of an individual such ...
Confrontation of death and the anxiety created by its inevitability can be considered as notable dilemma for humans (Letho, 200...
... existence” (Krakauer22). This new life Chris was living meant more than anything in the world and his happiness was all that matters for him.
In Thomas Nagel’s “Death,” he questions whether death is a bad thing, if it is assumed that death is the permanent end of our existence. Besides addressing whether death is a bad thing, Nagel focuses on whether or not it is something that people should be fearful of. He also explores whether death is evil. Death is defined as permanent death, without any form of consciousness, while evil is defined as the deprivation of some quality or characteristic. In his conclusion, he reaffirms that conscious existence ends at death and that there is no subject to experience death and death ultimately deprives a person of life. Therefore, he states that Death actually deprives a person of conscious existence and the ability to experience. The ability to experience is open ended and future oriented. If a person cannot permanently experience in the future, it is a bad or an evil. A person is harmed by deprivation. Finally, he claims that death is an evil and a person is harmed even though the person does not experience the harm.
“Bernard Williams is a distinguished twentieth-century english moral philosopher” (Jacobsen, p. 104). His perception of death and desire varies greatly from Lucretius who was a Roman follower of the ancient atomism and defended the views of Epicurus who like Lucretius, declared that death is a bad thing for people. On the contrary, Williams asserts that death gives meaning to life and that immorality might not be such a good thing and rather he believes that it is to be undesirable. The reasons as to why Williams thinks that a person’s death is a bad thing is due to the fact that when a person dies they are no longer able to fulfill/satisfy the desires we had when we were alive.
Greater levels of unfolding will be revealed in retrospect to life and death and how the two cannot share the same space, or simultaneously exist as one. Furthermore, in relation to the principle of dying the death, a revelation is found by sharing the mind of God unto you. As we know, life and death ca...
Epicurus believed that death was not a misfortune. He Believed that once an individual passes away, he or she looses their wordily sensation. He drew that sensation is a necessary condition of value to a person, so without it, the person will not sense, therefore be incapable of feeling. Contemporary philosophers however object this theory. Arguing that death is bad precisely because it deprives a person of good experiences which one could not possibly experience when deceased. In paragraph one of this essay, it expands on the epicurean argument for death not being a calamity for the one passing away. The second paragraph will look at the with this view and lastly paragraph three will consider the objective argument of Thomas Nagel and Fred Feldman.
In a time where science and materialism reign, the topic of the soul is rarely mentioned, ostensibly left in the past with the philosophers of old. Nichols, however, candidly broaches this difficult topic and gives new life to the argument that humans do indeed have an immaterial, immortal soul. Nichols summarizes several popular arguments for the existence of the soul as he builds his own argument, which discusses a soul as limited in relation to its environment as well as a soul that is one with the mind and a controller of the body. He discusses both the strengths and challenges to his argument, offering rebuttals to the challenges. Because this soul is the organizing principle of the body it is involved in the Resurrection as well, bridging the gap between the material and spiritual worlds. However, I disagree with Nichols’ assessment, instead choosing the side of materialism where an immaterial soul does not exist.
Jean Paul Sartre's Existential philosophy posits that is in man, and in man alone, that existence precedes essence. Simply put, Sartre means that man is first, and only subsequently to his “isness” does he become this or that. The implication in Sartre's philosophy is that man must create his own essence: it is in being thrown into the world through consciounsess intent, loving, struggling, experiencing and being in the world that man is alllowed to define itself. Yet, the definition always remains open ended: we cannot say that a human is definitively this or that before its death and indeed, it is the ultimate nothingness of death that being is defined. The concepts that Sartre examines in Being and Nothingness