DE Weekly: Benatar, the Asymmetry Argument, & Camus’s Rebel
Below is an archived email originally sent on May 4, 2026.
Benatar, the Asymmetry Argument, & Camus’s Rebel
Earlier this week, I came across a post on social media from a so-called “anti-natalist,” someone who believes that it is wrong to have children, and that we should not do so. Their reasons, they claim, are philosophical. “When you bring someone into this world,” this person wrote, “you are introducing them to a lifetime of pain and suffering.” The conclusion they draw from this is that it is morally wrong to procreate.
I wish this view of humanity was a one-off. Alas, that is not the case; there have been whole philosophical treatises written on the subject aiming to advance the anti-natalist view.
One such person who has propagated the position is David Benatar. Benatar is a South African academic and author whose book Better to Never Have Been explores anti-natalism and concludes that not only is procreation wrong, in his opinion, but also that our very existence is a “serious harm.”
In other words, Benatar believes that our very existence is harmful for the fact that we exist.
The argument is built on the premise of “non-consensual existence,” i.e., the fact that none of us chose to be born in the first place.
He argues that human existence––life––is full of both good and bad experiences, pain and pleasure. If we were never born, Benatar argues, there would be no pain and no bad experiences at all. Therefore, it would be better if we were never born.
He backs this notion with what he calls the “asymmetry of pleasure and pain.” Somehow, he has weighed all the good against the bad and deduced that the bad outweighs the good. No amount of suffering for Benatar is worth it for the good we might experience in life; therefore, the suffering is not worth it.
He frames a question for us: Would you choose to exist? If you knew all the pain, heartbreak, loss, suffering, and torment you might experience in life, would you choose it?
You might agree with him. You might say no. But imagine one day you were involved in a car wreck. Your vehicle has flipped over, and you are stuck in the car, helpless to get out before it explodes.
Would you be hoping for someone to come and save you? Suppose you were a witness of such a situation from the outside. Would you save the other person trapped in their car before they perished?
I do not propose such a scenario to be crass for the sake of argument. Rather, I find it necessary to push back on Benatar’s nihilistic view of humanity and the existence of anything itself. (And that’s exactly what Benatar’s philosophy is: nihilism.)
You see, if it is the case that, like Benatar says, we would all be better off never having been born, never having lived in the first place, then you should walk right past that person trapped in a car wreck and simply let them die.
Conversely, if it were you in the car, you should accept your fate and hope to die. Because you would be better off, is that not right?
I find it amusing (more interesting than anything, really) how not one of the people who argue in favor of the anti-natalist view, and claim to believe that the suffering they bear in life is not worth it––and forgive me here, for I am being crass in this moment––commit suicide to get it over with.
Put another way, if David Benatar believes that it would be better had he never been born, why does he not take his own life? Why is he choosing to stay alive instead?
I believe that deep down somewhere, he knows he is wrong. He knows the world would not have been better without him. My message to all those who have adopted such a wretched view of humanity and of life itself is that the world is a better place with people in it. With you in it.
I do not believe that life is a zero-sum game. It is not all good or all bad. It is both, always, and it just is.
I imagine on my death bed, I will not be tallying up the “good” and the “bad” events of my life, thinking, “Well, I had 10,000 good experiences and 10,001 bad ones…what a waste! Better to never have been.” No!
I imagine I will be thinking instead, “My God, what a ride, what a time. How lucky I am to have been born, how blessed to have enjoyed so much, to have seen so much, to have watched my children and grandchildren grow and carry on the light of the human race.”
Existentialism holds that suffering is an inevitable facet of existence, of the human experience. It is built into our search for meaning and purpose in a chaotic world.
It is not a malfunction of our existence to suffer the bad, but a catalyst for the good: only because we know the bad can we know the good. Only because we have known difficulty can we grow, only because we know meaninglessness can we know meaning.
I would go so far as to argue that the bad parts of existence are not even bad, necessarily, they just are. All of it is part of the inescapable reality of what it is to be human. To be alive.
Rather than viewing every bad thing as suffering, we can instead embrace the responsibility each of us has––our inherent, radical freedom––to act and to find direction.
There is within each of us, as Viktor Frankl wrote in his masterpiece Man’s Search for Meaning, the innate ability to choose how we respond to such negativity. We can adjust our attitudes, and move on.
In his political work The Rebel, Albert Camus (the greatest of the Existentialists) wrote, “I rebel, therefore I exist.”
The “rebellion” he speaks of goes beyond the political and into the metaphysical: rebellion against meaninglessness is a metaphysical act that brings us together against any injustice. We can simultaneously say “Yes” and “No”: Yes to the inherent dignity of human life and No to any injustice.
In so doing, we evoke the creative force of humanity. We fabricate a universe that does have meaning––we become artists of our own life by creating meaning in revolt of any perceived existential vacuum.
The world might be irrational and oppressive at times, but humanity, existence, and life is not. For in those things lies an inherent dignity, a level of integrity and freedom that brings you to tears.
None of us would be better off never having been, nor would the world be better off if we were no more.
Life is worth living! All of it!
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” –– Albert Camus
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
Choose to live and choose to procreate. The more life the better. All of us deserve the unbridled joy of life, David Benatar included.
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