The Human Predicament, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Preface
A Reader’s Guide
1. Introduction
Life’s big questions
Pessimism and optimism
The human predicament and the animal predicament
To tell or not to tell?
Life’s big questions
Pessimism and optimism
The human predicament and the animal predicament
To tell or not to tell?
2. Meaning
Introduction
Understanding the question
The (somewhat) good news
Meaning sub specie hominis
Meaning sub specie communitatis
Meaning sub specie humanitatis
Conclusion
Meaning sub specie hominis
Meaning sub specie communitatis
Meaning sub specie humanitatis
Conclusion
Introduction
Understanding the question
The (somewhat) good news
Meaning sub specie hominis
Meaning sub specie communitatis
Meaning sub specie humanitatis
Conclusion
Meaning sub specie hominis
Meaning sub specie communitatis
Meaning sub specie humanitatis
Conclusion
3. Meaninglessness
The bad news
The theistic gambit
Nature’s “purposes”
Scarce value
Discounting the cosmic perspective
Focusing on terrestrial meaning
Sour grapes and varieties of meaning worth wanting
Conclusion
The bad news
The theistic gambit
Nature’s “purposes”
Scarce value
Discounting the cosmic perspective
Focusing on terrestrial meaning
Sour grapes and varieties of meaning worth wanting
Conclusion
4. Quality
The meaning and the quality of life
Why people’s judgments about the quality of their lives are unreliable The poor quality of human life
Why there is more bad than good
Secular optimistic theodicies
Conclusion
The meaning and the quality of life
Why people’s judgments about the quality of their lives are unreliable The poor quality of human life
Why there is more bad than good
Secular optimistic theodicies
Conclusion
5. Death
Introduction
Is death bad?
Hedonism (and its discontents)
The deprivation account
Annihilation
When is death bad for the person who dies?
The symmetry argument
Taking Epicureans seriously?
Hedonism (and its discontents)
The deprivation account
Annihilation
When is death bad for the person who dies?
The symmetry argument
Taking Epicureans seriously?
How bad are different deaths?
Living in the shadow of death
Introduction
Is death bad?
Hedonism (and its discontents)
The deprivation account
Annihilation
When is death bad for the person who dies?
The symmetry argument
Taking Epicureans seriously?
Hedonism (and its discontents)
The deprivation account
Annihilation
When is death bad for the person who dies?
The symmetry argument
Taking Epicureans seriously?
How bad are different deaths?
Living in the shadow of death
6. Immortality
Delusions and fantasies of immortality
Sour grapes
Conclusion
Delusions and fantasies of immortality
Sour grapes
Conclusion
7. Suicide
Introduction
Responding to common arguments against suicide
Suicide as murder
Suicide as irrational
Suicide as unnatural
Suicide as cowardice
Interests of others
The finality of death
Suicide as murder
Suicide as irrational
Suicide as unnatural
Suicide as cowardice
Interests of others
The finality of death
Broadening the case for suicide
A more accurate assessment of life’s quality
Does meaninglessness in life warrant suicide?
Restoring an individual’s control
A more accurate assessment of life’s quality
Does meaninglessness in life warrant suicide?
Restoring an individual’s control
Conclusion
Introduction
Responding to common arguments against suicide
Suicide as murder
Suicide as irrational
Suicide as unnatural
Suicide as cowardice
Interests of others
The finality of death
Suicide as murder
Suicide as irrational
Suicide as unnatural
Suicide as cowardice
Interests of others
The finality of death
Broadening the case for suicide
A more accurate assessment of life’s quality
Does meaninglessness in life warrant suicide?
Restoring an individual’s control
A more accurate assessment of life’s quality
Does meaninglessness in life warrant suicide?
Restoring an individual’s control
Conclusion
8. Conclusion
The human predicament in a nutshell
Pessimism and optimism (again)
Responding to the human predicament
The human predicament in a nutshell
Pessimism and optimism (again)
Responding to the human predicament
Notes
Bibliography
Index
THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT
THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT
A Candid Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions
David Benatar
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Benatar, David, author.
Title: The human predicament : a candid guide to life’s biggest questions / by David Benatar.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016048629 | ISBN 9780190633813 (hardcover : alk. paper) | eISBN 9780190633837
Subjects: LCSH: Life. | Meaning (Philosophy)
Classification: LCC BD435 .B44 2017 | DDC 128—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016048629
To family and friends, who palliate my predicament.
CONTENTS
Preface
A Reader’s Guide
1. Introduction
Life’s big questions
Pessimism and optimism
The human predicament and the animal predicament
To tell or not to tell?
2. Meaning
Introduction
Understanding the question
The (somewhat) good news
Meaning sub specie hominis
Meaning sub specie communitatis
Meaning sub specie humanitatis
Conclusion
3. Meaninglessness
The bad news
The theistic gambit
Nature’s “purposes”
Scarce value
Discounting the cosmic perspective
Focusing on terrestrial meaning
Sour grapes and varieties of meaning worth wanting
Conclusion
4. Quality
The meaning and the quality of life
Why people’s judgments about the quality of their lives are unreliable The poor quality of human life
Why there is more bad than good
Secular optimistic theodicies
Conclusion
5. Death
Introduction
Is death bad?
Hedonism (and its discontents)
The deprivation account
Annihilation
When is death bad for the person who dies?
The symmetry argument
Taking Epicureans seriously?
How bad are different deaths?
Living in the shadow of death
6. Immortality
Delusions and fantasies of immortality
Sour grapes
Conclusion
7. Suicide
Introduction
Responding to common arguments against suicide
Suicide as murder
Suicide as irrational
Suicide as unnatural
Suicide as cowardice
Interests of others
The finality of death
Broadening the case for suicide
A more accurate assessment of life’s quality
Does meaninglessness in life warrant suicide?
Restoring an individual’s control
Conclusion
8. Conclusion
The human predicament in a nutshell
Pessimism and optimism (again)
Responding to the human predicament
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
PREFACE
We are born, we live, we suffer along the way, and then we die—obliterated for the rest of eternity. Our existence is but a blip in cosmic time and space. It is not surprising that so many people ask: “What is it all about?”
The right answer, I argue in this book, is “ultimately nothing.” Despite some limited consolations, the human condition is in fact a tragic predicament from which none of us can escape, for the predicament consists not merely in life but also in death.
It should come as no surprise that this is an unpopular view to which there will be considerable resistance. Thus, I ask my readers to keep an open mind while they read the arguments for my (generally though not entirely) bleak view.
The truth is often ugly. (For some light relief, see the occasional joke or quip in the notes.) Some readers may wonder what the relationship is between this book and my previous book ( Better Never to Have Been1) in which I argued for other grim views—that coming into existence is a serious harm, and the anti-natalist conclusion that we ought not to create new beings. The first part of the answer is that, although the earlier book mentioned some of the topics covered in The Human Predicament, it did not discuss them in any depth.
The one point of significant overlap between the earlier book and the current one is that both discuss the poor quality of human life. Because I had examined that in some detail in Better Never to Have Been, I did consider omitting it entirely from The Human Predicament. However, the quality of life is so much a part of the human predicament that forgoing any examination of it seemed like an egregious omission. That said, the arguments have been developed since I first presented them in Better Never to Have Been. I wrote about them afresh in chapter 3 of Debating Procreation2 and then adapted that chapter for inclusion in The Human Predicament.
While the subject matters of Better Never to Have Been and The Human Predicament are very different, and while the arguments in the latter do not presuppose anti-natalism, they do provide further support for that view.
Although I have been working for many years on the themes covered in this volume, a draft of the book was written while I was a visiting scholar in the Bioethics Department at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda, Maryland. I am required to state—which I do with some amusement, because it is difficult in this case to imagine the confusion—that “the views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Clinical Center, the National Institutes of Health, or the Department of Health and Human Services.”
It is my pleasure to add my thanks to the Bioethics Department for sponsoring my visit and for welcoming me for the stimulating academic year (2014–2015) I spent there. The theme of the Bioethics Department’s Joint Bioethics Colloquium in the spring semester was “death,” a happy coincidence about an unhappy topic. I benefited from discussions there and in a similarly themed reading group. At the NIH, I received helpful feedback on two chapters of the book. One of those chapters was also presented at both a brown bag seminar in the Philosophy Department at George Washington University and a seminar in the Philosophy Department at the University of Cape Town. A paper adapted from one of the chapters was presented at a conference of the International Association for the Philosophy of Death and Dying in Syracuse, New York.
For helpful comments, I am grateful to participants in these forums. Special thanks to Joseph Millum and David Wasserman, who provided detailed written feedback on one chapter; to Travis Timmerman and Frederik Kaufman for written comments on the paper I presented at the conference on death and dying; and to David DeGrazia and Rivka Weinberg, who read and commented on the entire manuscript.
Jessica du Toit constructed the bibliography from my endnotes and converted all the references to the required style, meticulously detecting and correcting some errors in the process.
My thanks are also owed to the University of Cape Town for granting me the leave that enabled me to take up the visiting position at the National Institutes of Health and thus to write the book. I am also grateful to Peter Ohlin at Oxford University Press for his interest in the book and his helpful comments.
Finally, I extend my thanks to family and friends. They share the human predicament but meliorate mine. This book is dedicated to them.
D.B.
Cape Town
August 14, 2016
A READER’S GUIDE
The big existential questions may be thought to be the bread and butter of philosophers. Indeed, many philosophers, along with writers, artists, and others, have grappled with them. However, most of those philosophers who have examined these issues in ways that engage public interest have been philosophers from the (European) “continental”
tradition. Think here of the French and German existentialists. Their style of writing is often more literary and evocative. While it has widespread appeal, analytic philosophers, who are more common in the Anglophone world, have often criticized this writing for being excessively obscure and insufficiently precise.
Analytic philosophers are—or at least profess to be—interested in rigorous arguments in which key terms are explicated, distinctions are drawn, and conclusions are validly inferred from premises. I agree that this sort of methodology is the path to wisdom in these and other matters. However, many—but by no means all, or even most—of those analytic philosophers who have engaged life’s big questions have eviscerated these questions by descending into dry and arcane discussions about them. Readers fascinated by the questions are rapidly reduced to boredom.
Admittedly, it is difficult to navigate the correct path—a path that avoids the obscurantism of excessive rhetorical flourish and grand but imprecise pronouncements, but that also avoids abstruse, dull, hairsplitting analysis. In other words, it is not easy to present an accessible, engaging, and rigorous discussion of complex issues.
This book is not a work of popular philosophy. It is not written in the sort of popular style that appeals to mass audiences, and the views it defends are hardly likely to be popular, for reasons yet to be explained. (In the latter regard, I suppose that one might describe this book as a work of unpopular philosophy.) However, it has been written with the goal of being accessible and readable to intelligent lay readers and yet sufficiently rigorous to satisfy the professional (and aspiring professional) philosophers who constitute the other component of the book’s intended readership. I can only hope that I have struck the right balance.
However, to assist those who may have less patience with the relatively technical and pedantic parts of the book, I provide here a guide to an abbreviated reading.
Chapter 1: Introduction
This short chapter should be an easy read for all. However, the first and last sections will have the broadest interest.
Those readers who are less concerned about understanding some nuances of the nature of pessimism and optimism could skip the section entitled “Pessimism and optimism.” The subsequent section (“The human predicament and the animal predicament”) explains why I focus on the human predicament rather than the animal predicament more generally and may be skipped by those who do not need persuading.
