Benatar on the Badness of All Human Lives

This paper presents a critique of David Benatar’s arguments on the badness of all human lives. I argue that even if Benatar is right that there is an asymmetry between the good and the bad in life so that each “unit” of bad is indeed more effective than each “unit” of good, lives in which there is a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhilosophia (Ramat Gan) Vol. 49; no. 1; pp. 333 - 345
Main Author Landau, Iddo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.03.2021
Subjects
Education
Epistemology
Ethics
Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Science
Happiness
Well-being
Pessimism
Meaning in life
Meaning of life
Suffering
Desires
Standards
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Summary:This paper presents a critique of David Benatar’s arguments on the badness of all human lives. I argue that even if Benatar is right that there is an asymmetry between the good and the bad in life so that each “unit” of bad is indeed more effective than each “unit” of good, lives in which there is a lot of good and only little bad are still overall good. Even if there are more unfulfilled than fulfilled desires in life, a distinction should be drawn between desires to fulfill important goals and desires to fulfill trivial ones, and Benatar’s claim is untrue of the former. Benatar’s claim that we cannot really know that the quality of our own lives is good is problematic, but even if it were true, it would not show that we cannot estimate correctly the quality of other people’s lives, which is the point at issue.
ISSN:0048-3893
1574-9274
DOI:10.1007/s11406-020-00207-4