Q&A: It Is Better for a Person Not to Have Been Created
It Is Better for a Person Not to Have Been Created
Question
Hello. Lately I’ve had a lot of discussions with an anti-natalist friend (I’ll explain in a moment what that is), and he managed to convince me of what Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai already said, and what is quoted in the title. First of all, I’d ask that you answer the question more as a person and less as a rabbi (since of course it’s well known that the Torah commanded “be fruitful and multiply”; the question is whether it’s moral). What he says is that the moment a person brings a child into the world, he is basically taking a gamble with a human life, because it could very well be that the child too will arrive at the conclusion of Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai. I can give you a very long list of things (depression, cancer, car accidents, etc. etc. etc.) that could happen to him. How can giving birth be justified in that case? It seems that anti-natalism (the position against bringing children into the world) follows already from the words of Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, because if it is better for a person not to have been created, and if once he was created he should examine his deeds, then he will examine his deeds and conclude that he should not bring more children into the world. There is also the more Torah-oriented aspect: after all, if you don’t bring a child into the world, then the child won’t sin, etc. (again, setting aside “be fruitful and multiply”). I’m really at a loss here. Maybe you can find one for me? Thanks
Answer
That doesn’t seem likely to me.
First, almost everything you do is a kind of gamble. Even when you send a child to school or take him to an after-school activity at the community center, maybe he’ll suffer from it. A person makes a reasonable judgment and doesn’t worry about remote and extreme cases. Unless the child is reasonably expected in advance to have a bad life; then it would be worth discussing.
Second, the judgment of whether bringing a child into the world is moral or not assumes that there are human beings. If we all avoided doing so, the question would never arise at all, and there would be no morality either (in the absence of human beings, there is no morality). This is connected to Kant’s categorical imperative.
The Torah aspect was already raised by Hezekiah and rejected: “What have you to do with the secrets of the Merciful One?”
On the moral plane, I do not agree with Beit Hillel that it is preferable for a person not to have been created. I think that even they themselves do not mean that the child will have a bad life (that he will suffer), but rather the risk that the child will not fulfill commandments. In any case, you asked a moral question, not a Torah one.
Discussion on Answer
By the way, if you want to dig a bit deeper into the philosophy of the arguments, I can recommend the book Better Never to Have Been, which sums everything up excellently.
It’s hard for me to discuss things at such long intervals. I’ll respond briefly.
1. He’ll suffer a little and enjoy a lot. Overall, most people prefer to live. The comparison to a state of non-existence is not a comparison, as I explained. So just as you write that there is no reason to assume it is better, there is also no reason to assume it is worse. There is no possibility at all of making comparisons between those two states. Something that doesn’t exist does not lack existence, but I am discussing the question of what claim can be made by the one who does exist. He comes with complaints about the fact that he was created.
2. I meant that the comparison is valueless, as above. When there are human beings, you can compare between different states of theirs, but there is no room for comparing existence and non-existence. These are not two states of the same object.
Thanks for the reference (there are also essays in Hebrew. I remember an article by David Heyd, and also articles and maybe a book by some religious lawyer that can be found online. There are surely more).
I just received a follow-up from Sh:
1. “He’ll suffer a little and enjoy a lot” — that already brings us to Benatar’s asymmetry claim. He basically argues that there is a major asymmetry between feelings of pleasure and feelings of suffering (one example he gives is an animal that is being eaten and suffers, as opposed to an animal that is eating and enjoying. Which feeling is more extreme and significant?). Even if in your opinion the suffering is worth the pleasure, that will not necessarily be the child’s opinion (and I personally know quite a few people who would have preferred not to be born after thinking about it). By the very fact that you bring him into the world, you are basically assuming that his opinion will be identical to yours. I think that even if the chance that his opinion will be identical to yours is high, that still doesn’t give you the right to bring him into the world, since something that doesn’t exist does not lack existence, while something that does exist can detest existence.
“There is no reason to assume it is worse” — of course there is! After all, existence is accompanied by suffering, and suffering is something it is desirable to avoid, isn’t it?
I didn’t understand exactly what question you are discussing. Are you discussing whether the child has justified grounds to accuse his parents of a sin? (If so, then in my opinion it depends on whether they took the child’s welfare into account before creating him.)
2. I didn’t understand why there is no room for comparison. After all, you know the disadvantages of existence (suffering), and you know there are no disadvantages at all in non-existence, so why is there no room for comparison?
(Sorry if my arguments here are a bit messy. Honestly, I’d be much happier if you read the book and wrote a column/reaction about it here, because obviously the author understands and explains the arguments better than I do and lays them out in much greater detail than I can.)
We’re repeating ourselves a bit.
1. I don’t understand what that has to do with our discussion. The question is whether, in the bottom line, it is preferable for a person to live — that is, whether his life has positive value overall (the pleasure outweighs the suffering) or not. What does this have to do with the relation between when you eat and when you are being eaten? If you mean that it is hard to compare feelings and assign them quantitative values, that is certainly true. Exactly as it is difficult to quantify conflicting values and make value judgments in conflicts (the incommensurability of values). And still, we make such decisions, and also assess utility. I spend money to use amusement-park rides. I don’t like spending money, but I like roller coasters. How do I compare one to the other? Is the suffering involved in spending money of the same kind as the pleasure of using the ride? No. And yet we measure and make a decision whether or not to spend the money. So that is not an argument.
Your mathematics is wrong. The fact that something that doesn’t exist does not lack existence, while something that exists can detest existence — so what? The thing that exists can also enjoy existence, but you have decided that it detests it. That is precisely our dispute. Moreover, as I wrote to you, we are dealing with one who exists and not with one who does not exist. No wrong is done to one who does not exist. Wrong is measured in relation to one who exists. Therefore the relevant question is not whether to bring him into the world (that is a question with no answer), but whether, once he was brought into the world, he wants that or not. The people I ask generally think that they do.
I don’t have time to read books in order to review them here. If there is something I have read and it seems interesting to me, I can review it. It doesn’t seem likely that I’ll do that for this book anytime soon.
Note that maybe it is *more comfortable* for a person not to have been created, but not *better* not to have been created.
Obviously it is good, otherwise the Holy One, blessed be He, would not have done it.
(Sorry it took me two weeks to answer; it’s a little hard for me to think about this topic.)
1. True, but because we don’t live in paradise, it can be said with a high degree of certainty that everyone who is born will suffer on one level or another. The question is whether existence plus suffering is better than non-existence (in which you lack nothing). In my opinion there is no reason at all to think it’s better, because something that doesn’t exist does not lack existence. Basically, the argument is that forcing existence and suffering on a child is less moral than not doing that.
2. I didn’t understand your second point. So what if it assumes that there are human beings in the world? It assumes that it’s a bad thing that there are human beings in the world (because they suffer). It’s a bit similar to the question of whether to try to escape from the kidnapper who kidnapped you (that question also wouldn’t arise if there were no kidnappers). I don’t see the difference.
Feel free to forget the Torah context I tried to connect here; it came out less successfully than I thought.