Life Death and Meaning David Benatar Chapter Review
Volume Review: The Human Predicament
Reviewer: Andrew Spalding
'What is life all about?' In his new book, The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions, David Benatar argues, 'ultimately nothing' (p xi). Human existence is devoid of cosmic significant. If we are honest, our quality of life is more often than not poor. Only for most people death is no existent escape since it removes what little meaning we practise have. Information technology would be all-time, therefore, if we had never been born.
Benatar is a philosopher at the University of Capetown, and a self-described pessimist. He has previously written a defence of his controversial anti-natalist position, arguing that it is always morally wrong to bring some other homo into being. In The Man Predicament, he advances a more comprehensive cess of the human being condition. Benatar calls his volume a work of unpopular philosophy; this specifically refers to its message rather than its accessibility. Most people, he argues, are naïvely optimistic about their lives and not inclined to mind to 'bad news', no matter how true information technology is.
The Human Predicament advances iii principal arguments regarding pregnant (chapters two and three), quality of life (chapter four), and death (affiliate five), and applies these arguments to the topics of immortality (chapter six) and suicide (chapter vii).
Benatar defines 'pregnant' as whether i's life 'transcends i'south own limits and significantly impacts others or serves purposes beyond oneself' (p18). The partly good news is that at a limited perspective (what Benatar calls 'terrestrial' pregnant), such meaning is possible. Nigh people influence their family and friends, some have an affect on their local communities. As the scope broadens, however, prospects diminish.
Although meaning is possible at the terrestrial level, the same cannot be said at the cosmic level. Benatar notes that 'Whatever other kinds of significant our lives might take, the absence of this meaning is securely disturbing to many' (p36). This, he believes, is what makes theism and then seductive. His principal argument confronting theism is the universal suffering of animals and humans, which forces him to conclude: 'This does not look like a world created by a beneficent deity with unbounded cognition and ability' (p44).
Benatar then makes a example for the generally poor quality of life of homo beings. He includes the rather trivial examples of everyday hunger and thirst, the discomfort of full bladders and bowels, besides as the more severe suffering of burns, quadriplegia, locked-in syndrome, and cancer. There is little comfort, he claims in 'secular optimistic theodicies', which are only palliative care and do non escape the fact that 'the quality of human life is non but much worse than most people remember but really quite awful' (p91).
Death receives a lengthy and detailed treatment, including a refutation of the Epicurean position of indifference. Benatar argues that there are intrinsic goods and evils autonomously from those yous tin sense, and proposes ii such evils that result from expiry: impecuniousness of potential good and annihilation. Although decease provides an escape from assaults on the quality of life and the sense of meaninglessness, information technology does then at peachy toll. Never existing has the reward of avoiding all of these issues.
The decision that death is ever bad does not mean that immortality would be good—specially if we continued to historic period, suffer, and face up logistical problems like overpopulation. Here his words approach lament: 'information technology is possible that we are damned if we die and damned if we don't' (p162). This is followed by what Benatar calls a 'highly qualified' defence of suicide (p165). He believes that we should exist less averse to suicide than has traditionally been the instance, not because expiry is bang-up, but considering life is worse than we usually acknowledge.
What advice does Benatar requite for facing up to the human predicament? His fundamental exhortation is to stop creating more humans! Although having children provides terrestrial significant for parents, there are other means for this to be found without participating in a 'procreative Ponzi scheme' (p208) that only perpetuates human suffering. For people who already exist, the most extreme solution—though sometimes the rational response when quality of life is very poor—is suicide. Yet this is never a good solution, since decease itself is bad. A more moderate response is that of 'pragmatic pessimism', which involves embracing the reality of the human predicament, simply distracting oneself with endeavours that create terrestrial significant.
Many, specially Christian readers, volition notice Benatar's views so farthermost equally to not warrant consideration. Yet a lot of what he says resonates strongly with the biblical pessimist known every bit Qohelet (or Ecclesiastes).
Like Benatar, Qohelet is something of a 'philosopher'. His existential search is for some 'gain' in life (Eccl 1:iii). But at every turn he is frustrated by the futility of his endeavours: wisdom, pleasure, achievements and wealth (2:ane-11). He wrestles with catholic meaninglessness, finding the works of God bulletproof (three:9-eleven). He also observes the depression quality of life: excessive toil (3:22-23), the loss of wealth (5:xiii-fifteen), and unchecked injustice (Eccl iii:16). And all of these problems are exacerbated by the problem of death, which undermines whatever express proceeds or significance that is achieved (ii:16; nine:1-6). Qohelet concludes that 'everything is meaningless' (ane:2; 12:viii). Though he does not counsel suicide, he agrees that information technology would have been better to never have been (four:2-iii; half dozen:three). Similar to Benatar, Qohelet's advice to cope with life's meaningless is to seek lark in some terrestrial significant: nutrient, beverage, a wife, and piece of work (5:18-xx).
Given such biblical affirmation, could information technology be that Benatar'south work is truer than many would care to acknowledge? The Human Predicament is an honest look at life that confronts naïve optimism and provides a strong critique of the cult of self-help. It is unexpectedly refreshing to read an atheist who admits that much about the human being condition is a crusade for despair.
Unsurprisingly, Qohelet and Benatar also disagree at a number of key points. Despite the frustration of his every endeavour to find gain in this life, Qohelet does not give up on God (iii:17). True, he lays blame upon God for the human predicament (seven:13), however, at the same time, he also recognises the good which also comes from him (two:26; 7:14; 12:i). Maintaining his faith in God also permits him the use of a category that is alien to Benatar: 'sin' (7:20). Finally, Qohelet's teaching receives a qualification by the narrator, who has the final word on 'the human predicament'. He makes explicit what Qohelet did not, namely that the true source of wisdom is rooted in the divine revelation: 'fear God and keep his commands, for this is the whole duty of human' (12:xiii; cf. Prov ane:7).
Without the aid of divine revelation, one can only make assumptions about God'southward existence or what lies across the grave. Benatar'southward arguments build upon these such assumptions using analogies that entreatment to common sense. Yet this leads him to an anti-natalist decision that defies common sense. Though he would fence that most people are blinded past their optimism bias, information technology is far more probable that ane of his assumptions has led him astray from the very beginning.
The Christian reader will clearly disagree with Benatar in many places. Yet, his piece of work remains a useful testimony from 'the other side' to the fallenness of the human condition. He is right to a point: the world has indeed been 'subjected to futility' (Rom eight:twenty). Yet without biblical revelation, Benatar fails to provide an adequate account of the cause, or of the remedy so loudly alleged by the resurrection of Christ.
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