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TechnoratiThe ultimate miserabilist
Just when you thought philosophers couldn't get any more pessimistic, one of them surprises you.
What is there about utilitarians that makes them such miserabilists? The greatest happiness for the greatest number is the heart of their philosophy, but just try to find a happy utilitarian. The first of them, Jeremy Bentham, was such a sourpuss that he seemed pickled in vinegar. And in fact, he was, sort of. His embalmed body (pictured) still sits in a cabinet in University College London, one of its principal tourist attractions. He had no wife and no children. The greatest of them, John Stuart Mill, made utilitarianism a mainstream philosophy. But he suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of 20, stole another man's wife and had no children of his own. And while Peter Singer, the most notorious of contemporary utilitarians, may be a karaoke champ in private life, his writings suggest otherwise.
However, these are bit players in the drama of miserabilism compared with South African academic David Benatar, author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. Although the book has not been widely reviewed in the popular press, it was published by Oxford University Press and has been presented as a serious contribution to the increasingly influential philosophy of utilitarianism.
Professor Benatar's thesis is that life is so horrid that we all would be better off had we never existed. And not just us, but all sentient life. He introduces his thesis with a Jewish witticism: "Life is so terrible, it would have been better never to have been born. Who is so lucky? Not one in a hundred thousand!"
But Benatar is serious. "The central idea of this book is that coming into existence is always a serious harm." And, he continues, "coming into existence is always bad for those who come into existence. In other words, although we may not be able to say of the never-existent that never existing is good for them, we can say of the existent that existence is bad for them."
How does he reach this conclusion, which, even by his own reckoning, seems absurd and repellent? As a utilitarian, he calculates the benefits of existence by balancing benefits against harms. What possible benefit could a non-existent person receive that would outweigh a pinprick of pain? Since most people find this hard to accept, Benatar spends a chapter demonstrating that "human lives contain much more bad than is ordinarily recognised".
Given his distaste for life, why has he hung around so long? Hard to say. Perhaps he agrees with American writer Dorothy Parker:
-
Razors pain you, Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you, And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful, Nooses give,
Gas smells awful. You might as well live.
As you might expect, the extinction of the human race seems like an excellent idea to Prof B, although he acknowledges that it might be difficult for society to manage in a humane fashion. However, if a couple of asteroids could be persuaded to collide with Earth, it would be a positive outcome for all concerned.
The 19th century German Arthur Schopenhauer is generally reckoned the most pessimistic of all philosophers, but in Benatar he has no mean rival. For the South African has more than a philosophy, he has a practical bioethical program. Although, as a libertarian, he acknowledges that people have a right to have children, he feels that it is generally unethical, since it brings them into a world of harm. Supporters of abortion contend that women have a moral right to have abortions, but Prof B begs to differ: they have an moral obligation to have abortions, lest they add to the total amount of suffering in the world. Needless to say, this applies to animals, too. He describes his standpoint, somewhat defiantly, not as pro-choice, but as "pro-death".
Philosophers have often inspired poets. Epicurus had Lucretius; Thomas Aquinas had Dante; Shaftesbury had Pope; Kant had Coleridge; Mme Blavatsky had Yeats. But I can't think of a poet who could bear to warble on about Prof Benatar's vision. Perhaps the novelist H.G. Wells comes closest. In his classic The Time Machine, the Time Traveller goes so far into the future that all life is extinct:
"All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives -- all that was over. As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black."
Sounds like a great place to send Prof B for his Christmas holiday.
As one Amazon reviewer of Better Never to Have Been pointed out, "you need a PhD to be this stupid". Benatar's pessimism is the blind elaboration of the central utilitarian thesis: that good is a balance of pleasure and pain. But everyday life gives the lie to this. Utility is a soulless way to assess happiness and to know what is good. You don't have to be a martyr to realise that the pain of raising children is amply compensated by their love. Or that the pain of work is outweighed by the joy of achievement. Or that a sunrise over Everest obliterates the pain of climbing there.
Are these watertight refutations? No, and, to be fair, Benatar deserves a few rounds of philosophical fisticuffs with a fellow academic. But common sense is enough. The great Samuel Johnson was once challenged to counter Berkeley's theory that matter was a figment of our imagination: "I never shall forget," says his biographer Boswell, "the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, 'I refute it THUS.'"
Nonetheless, Better Never to Have Been has its own utility. It unveils "the greatest good of the greatest number" as the secret password of nihilism. And it is a lesson in intellectual history: after two centuries, the bitter streams gushing from Bentham and Mill have finally trickled into the Dead Sea of the University of Cape Town philosophy department. Anyone toying with the seductive arguments of Peter Singer and his ilk should read it. There they will see what happens when the precepts of utilitarianism are taken to their logical conclusions.
Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. He has borrowed the useful term "miserabilist" from Spiked.
- David Page: You ask (as many others have done before): “whether one can be happy in heaven while loved ones are twisting in the flames of hell”. C. S. Lewis answers this one very fully, in various writings (see especially The Great Divorce). Basically, he says that the only people who go to the “place below”, do so by their own choice - and why should the others (the ones who make the sensible choice) be blackmailed by those who choose misery, and simply refuse (they have too much pride) to choose otherwise? (I guess we’ve all encountered people who just won’t be happy whatever the circumstances, and try to insist on everyone else being miserable as well). It’s all about choices. In your first comment, I really think you’ve got to define “life” (as in “life hating")- I bet the “life” which you value is a different thing from the “life” which I, as Christian, value. It’s all about ends and means to ends (see my first comment).
B.N.,
I was once a Catholic. The Catholics are more consistent in their beliefs than some of their Protestant brethren. They are against abortion but,unlike the Fundamentalists, they believe that children should be taken care of even after they are born. Catholics are against the death penalty, against war, and support many fine charities. Although I strongly disagree with them in their opposition to Gay rights, most of my disagreements with Catholics are purely Philosophical.
You said, “Though this life is, as St. Theresa put it, merely ‘a bad night at a bad inn’ it is also extremely fruitful, necessary and beautiful.” You can’t have it both ways. It is either, as Saint Theresa implies, a shabby waiting room or fruitful, necessary and beautiful. I choose the latter.
It still leaves unanswered the question of whether one can be happy in heaven while loved ones are twisting in the flames of hell.
Mr. David Page
(Yes I am a Christian)
I have to disagree with you. Though this life is, as St. Theresa put it, merely “a bad night at a bad inn” it is also extremely fruitul, necessary and beautiful. It is necessary as we humans have the ability, with full freedom to choose God, or to choose ourselves. We have full freedom to choose to love Him. Don’t you ind that God is such a gentleman? He gives us tthe choice.
This life is meant to show that choice, and so that we as humans, should help eachother to make this decision also. (not force or pressure because lets face it if God didn’t want to force us who are we to force) but help. God didn’t make to be miserable on Earth while waiting eternal hapiness in heaven. According to the Catecism of the Catholic Church (CCC) God made us to “be love him here on Earth and to be happy with Him together in heaven.” (or words to that effect; I don’t have the CCC handy and wont look it up).
As the late John Paul II said (though this is not the exact quote as I forget the wording)the greatest biological disaster is the death of one human being.
Well… I regret to admit that I’m not entirely sure what utilitarianism means or entails…
Regardless, that guy sounds like a nutjob.
My main problem with him isn’t even that he has a problem with life; it’s that he has a problem with -other people’s- life. “A couple of asteroids would do us all good!”
Except, what about the people who -like- life, and want to -live-? I’m disgusted at the thought of cruelty against innocents, and that’s what he seems to be advocation. He can take his own life, and I wouldn’t care. Heck, if he got a bunch of followers, and they -all- killed themselves, well, that’s their choice. It’s a mistake, but it’s their to make. But it makes my skin crawl when he talks about killing off the entire planet. Nobody should even -think- about having that much power.
To consider Christianity and Judaism as life-hating religions is to misunderstand them. “I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly”. Hell is being permanently and irrevocably deprived of God - poena damni, the pain of loss. Poena sensu - pain of the senses - is (perhaps) an alleviation or distraction. But free-will - to choose God or self - is the essential. Had we been around when God was dreaming all this up, we might have pointed out the trouble it would cause - but no, there was no telling Him, He knew better!
Thanks for this apt quote, David. My favourite Blake quote (tho’ I am not sure where he wrote it) is: ‘And throughout all eternity/ I forgive you/you forgive me.’(This is also my contribution to your riposte to John Michael, above.)
Francis Phillips’ post reminded me of a quote from William Blake that I always liked. “Where man is not, nature is barren”
Thank you, Michael, for drawing our attention to this ‘miserabilist’.I have identified another of this deadly cohort: the eco-warrior. We must beware these little green men (who do not come from Mars, by the way). I was alerted to them by reading a book called ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan Weisman. Its thesis is not the entirely acceptable one that we must clean up our act in order to leave the world a better place for our children; it is the deeply sinister one suggesting that our species has been the wicked spoliator of nature and the the world will be much better off (greener) when we have disappeared for ever. It advocates a draconian one-child policy for every woman of child-bearing age and regards children not as a sign of hope in the future but simply as future pollutants. I recognise that this is a very extreme version of the ‘Green Agenda’, but it reminded me to beware of anyone peddling the notion that humankind is the problem rather than the solution to the ills of the earth. I wonder how much ‘people-hating’ goes on in politically correct ecological circles, under the guise of concern?
John Michael, thank you for misunderstanding me so completely.
I assume you are a Christian. If this is so then you should have answered me in that context. By the way, you’re quick with the name calling. (ludicrous, deluded) Do I detect the sin of pride?
Christians, as I understand it, believe that everything good comes from God and all sin comes from Man or the Devil or both. They believe God has given them free will. They believe that in order to avoid eternal torture by fire they must subjugate their will to God in all things. They think that they will be happy in in Heaven even as people they loved on Earth, even their children, are being tormented by fire. They are willing to abandon everyone who disagrees with them, even their own children. There isn’t a shred of evidence to support these beliefs. Don’t talk to me about ludicrous and deluded.
“If Dr Johnson’s foot were anaestheticised, he would not feel a thing, therefore his “proof” has no universal validity.”
Nor does this objection have even local validity. Re-read the quote: “striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it.” The refutation comes from Newton’s Third Law of Motion, not from what Johnson may or may not have felt.
As for the ludicrous, “Life, for the true believers, is just one long apology for their flawed existence,” I examine my conscience each night to identify my errors during that day so that I can avoid them in the next. Just from the standpoint of getting along better with my friends, family, neighbors and co-workers this is hardly meaningless. What is meaningless is a deluded existence that admits to no personal flaws: it is a stagnant pond of illusory perfection - and no doubt excruciatingly boring to be around.
“But I can’t think of a poet who could bear to warble on about Prof Benatar’s vision.”
The strange philosophy of Tlon Uqbar in a story of Jorge Luis Borges comes close. One of its tenents: “Sexual intercourse and mirrors are evil, for both multiply the numbers of mankind.” Fortunately, the story was a short one.
I have always considered Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to be life hating religions. Life, for the true believers, is just one long apology for their flawed existence. What can be more meaningless than that?
I think the difference is: Life As We Know It, or Life As A Means To An End. Yes, life as we know and experience it probably does contain a little more disappointment, pain, boredom, frustration and misery, than happiness. But when it is seen as the means to the end, everything falls into its rightful place, and has meaning. As a Christian, of course, I believe that the End is eternal life with God. If you believe that this present is all there is, then, yes, “Sleep is good, death is better, but the best of all would be never to have been born at all” (actually, Heinrich Heine’s words, quoted by me, are the real origin of this image/idea). The world is full of wonderful things - but only when we remember that they are valuable because they point beyond themselves; if there is only this life/world, then, indeed, plants are just bits of matter, and great paintings just meaningless marks; but when Truth is beleived in, all that is beautiful points to it, reveals it. Ever wondered why so much modern art is ugly? - because it was created by a materialist society/mindset.
The greatest error of utilitarians (and also of Dr Johnson when he thought he was refuting Bishop Berkeley) is that they consider pleasure and pain to be real, and not just relative, illusory products of our minds. If Dr Johnson’s foot were anaestheticised, he would not feel a thing, therefore his “proof” has no universal validity. If Dr Benatar, Peter Singer et al. understood this simple truth, they would have nothing to worry about (and, of course, no lucrative university posts to spout their nonsense from.)
Saint Augustine, in his earlier writings, right after his conversion and before his baptism ponders for several months on the idea of existence as a good thing, even the existence of a rock is better than non existence. Also, unlike Heidegger, Nietzsche and Sartre, Kierkegaardian existentialism finds happiness in doing the absurd through the trust in the One who is not absurd . On the other hand, Hegelian existentialism unites the finite with the infinite making this absurd an Absolute. In Hegelian philosophy, this unity of suffering and obedience, and redeeming love and power is manifested in Christ, and through Him to his followers. Without this union of suffering and rejoicing in suffering in Christ Benatar’s philosophy makes perfect sense. Like Augustine says that human are made for God, and without Him they cannot find rest in this world. If God is dead, there seems to be no purpose in living because nothing else satisfies human souls. Even children become a burden instead of a source of joy. Joy cannot be found in self unless this self returns to its creator and exists in Him.
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