Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jiwoon Hwang
jiwoon@protonmail.com
Epigraph
“Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would
to have never been born at all.” – Heinrich Heine
“Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it
takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old
age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures,
leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all
sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age.” ―
Giacomo Leopardi
Abstract
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Introduction
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value because of the prevention of future suffering it brings. My
view is not that earlier death is necessarily good for everyone,
but in fact good because as a matter of empirical fact,
everyone’s daily[9] life contains a morally considerable amount
of suffering.
(Fig 1)
(Fig 2)
Scenario A Scenario B
X exists X never exists
1: Presence of 20 kilodolors 3: Absence of dolors
(Fig 3: World S)
Scenario A Scenario B
X exists X never exists
1: Presence of 80 kilodolors 3: Absence of dolors
(Fig 4: World L)
If there are two lives which, both twenty years long, but one
contain 20 kilodolors and 40 kilohedons, another contain 80
kilodolors and 160 kilodolors, those believe in the soundness of
Benatar's asymmetry will judge, I assume, the former life as a
preferable one to the latter one. If we were to judge the same
duration – different suffering choices solely based on the amount
of suffering lives will contain, there is no good reason not to judge
different duration – different suffering choices solely based on the
amount of suffering lives will contain.[25] As much as there is no
reason to prefer a bigger wallet to a smaller wallet that is
containing the same amount of money, there is no reason to
prefer a life which hedonistic container is bigger (i.e. the duration
of the life is longer) to a life with the same hedonistic contents
(dolors and hedons) with a smaller hedonistic container (i.e. the
duration of the life is shorter).
On involuntary euthanasia
Negative Utilitarianism
Notes
[6] I shall use the term pain and suffering both mean any kind of
unpleasant subjective experience, physical, mental, etc.. Although
very often pain and suffering are used in different senses, typically
the former meaning physical pain and the latter meaning mental
suffering, I shall use two terms interchangeably. However,
Professor Benatar’s usage of the term person seems not intended
to exclude non-human animals from his anti-natalist arguments.
(see, e.g., Better Never to Have Been. 2-3)
[16] From what Professor Benatar said in his writings (see, e.g.,
pp. 41-2, ibid. or Benatar, David. "Every conceivable harm: a
further defence of anti-natalism." South African Journal of
Philosophy= Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Wysbegeerte 31.1
(2012): 142), it is clear that the axiological assessments of cells 3
and 4, and presumably of cells 5 to 8 are relative assessments
relative to cells 1 and 2.
[17] While there may be cases such as which pains of life are
concentrated in earlier parts of life, and pleasures of life are
concentrated in later parts of life, and when considering whether
life is worth continuing, one’s pains are over and one’s pleasure is
about to start, for sake of simplicity, I shall presume pains and
[27] Kevin Caruso claims “And if you die by suicide, you will not
feel relief from the pain, because relief is only felt by the
living.” (Caruso, Kevin. Suicide Does Not Stop the Pain. http://
www.suicide.org/suicide-does-not-stop-the-pain.html. Retrieved
on Oct 14, 2017). Although it is clear that a (successful) suicide
will not feel a relief in post-mortem existence, it is far from clear
whether most prospective suicides who do not believe in an
afterlife really believe that they will feel relief after death. Rather,
I suspect, most prospective suicides who do not believe in afterlife
desire to die because of their dispreference on the existence and
suffering therein, rather than because of their preference for
a felt sense of relief from suffering.
[29] Ibid.
[34] While death at older ages are protracted and painful in many
cases, some deaths at earlier ages are extremely painful. Consider,
death by a sadistic murder which involves days of extreme torture.
It might be said that days of extreme torture is worse than
decades of so-called ordinary sufferings of life. Although I am not
sure we can say extremely intense but shorter sufferings are worse
than less intense but longer suffering, I assume that death in
[36] Sarah Perry raises a similar point: “I think parents lose their
moral right to commit suicide when they take on the
responsibility for a child”. (Every Cradle Is a Grave: Rethinking
the Ethics of Birth and Suicide, Nine-Banded Books, Charleston,
WV, 2014. 27)
[42] See also, Benatar, David. Better never to have been: the harm
of coming into existence. pp. 218-9.