It is fair to say that much of antinatalist thought is underpinned by a rejectionist philosophy, a nay-saying attitude towards life, a pessimism about the state of human life and the world at large. The line between such pessimism and antinatalism seems logical: if you believe existence is – overall – a bad deal, an…
Concluding Thoughts
I hope that this discussion on Nietzschean antinatalism has shown the different directions that antinatalism can take. I recognise that life-denial is perhaps the dominant narrative in antinatalist thought but it is certainly not the only one. Antinatalism is a moral position that is separable from an individual’s disposition and particular attitude towards life, even if there are clear and understandable correlations between the two. To recapitulate Akerma’s point, there is no logical reason why you cannot be an optimistic and life-loving antinatalist. It is, moreover, an interesting question, for the individual antinatalist, whether affirmationism or rejectionism is the right philosophy to embrace. What reasons do we have to endorse one but not the other? If rejectionism helps to strengthen the antinatalist position, is this necessarily a reason to prefer it? If either one can be combined with antinatalism, why not opt for the one that also happens to improve one’s life?
My feeling at the moment is that there are benefits to both the yes-saying and the nay-saying attitudes towards suffering, and so the challenge at hand is to figure out when to take one stance over another – or perhaps we must hold both attitudes at once, which Ram Dass alludes to when he talks about the paradox of suffering. I still somewhat hold the prejudice that to be a yes-sayer to life makes antinatalism unthinkable, yet I am not convinced that it is a form of cognitive dissonance to adopt both attitudes simultaneously. The two positions can be combined, without contradiction.
Nietzschean, life-loving antinatalism may rarely be expressed in antinatalist circles. However, I find the worldview fascinating for precisely this reason. To say “yes” to life without wanting to create more lives is a worldview that defies expectations.
