Café Philo Bristol and Bath

Is it wrong to have children?

Sun, May 17 · 6:45 PM BST

Industry Bar & Kitchen, 141 Gloucester Road, BS7 8BA, Bristol, GB

Note: Café Philo is a way of meeting interesting, inquiring people who enjoy talking about life's big issues and conundrums in a convivial atmosphere, rather than a heavy-duty philosophy seminar. Read more about our approach here.

Antinatalism is the view that having children may be morally wrong, or at least something we should treat with real caution. The basic idea is simple: since every life involves some pain, loss, illness, disappointment, and eventually death, some philosophers argue that it is better not to create a new life at all than to expose someone to all of that without their consent.

The best-known version of the argument (David Benatar’s “asymmetry argument”) says that avoiding procreation avoids harm without depriving anyone of pleasure, whereas creating a child inevitably leads to both harm as well as good. In other words, if a child is never born, there is no one left wishing they had been born, but there is also no one suffering. Critics counter that this makes non-existence look “better” in a way that is too abstract, and that many lives are clearly worth living because they contain love, joy, achievement, and meaning.

Another major theme is (the lack of) consent. We cannot ask a future child whether they want to be born, so procreation is a decision made entirely by other people on their behalf. Antinatalists think that is a serious problem, especially because the child is being brought into a world full of risks and suffering for reasons that mostly come from the wishes of adults, not the child’s own interests.

Some versions of the argument are also tied to the state of the world. If we are already facing climate pressure, war, inequality, and widespread suffering, then choosing to create more people can seem especially hard to defend. A more moderate view says that this does not make all childbearing wrong, but it does mean the decision deserves much more moral seriousness than it usually gets.

A common response is that antinatalism goes too far. Even if life is sometimes painful, it can also be deeply worthwhile, and many people would choose to live again if given the chance. So the debate often turns on a big question: is the suffering built into life enough to make birth itself morally suspect, or do the goods of life outweigh that concern?

## Questions to ponder

1. Is it ever better for someone not to exist than to have been born?
2. Does the fact that a future child cannot consent make procreation morally troubling?
3. Are the harms of life enough to outweigh the good parts?
4. Do today’s environmental and social problems make the antinatalist case stronger?
5. Is antinatalism a useful ethical warning, or does it go too far? If so, where would you draw the line?

## Resources

1. Should I have children? Here’s what the philosophers say The Conversation
2. Antinatalism: David Benatar’s Asymmetry Argument for Why it’s Wrong to Have Children Philosophy Break
3. I wish I’d never been born: the rise of the anti-natalists The Guardian
4. Antinatalism Wikipedia
5. Anti-Natalism: Interview with David Benatar Philosophy Overdose (video 14 min)

Good grief!

Wed, Jun 3 · 7:30 PM BST

Westbury on Trym, GB

Note: Café Philo is a way of meeting interesting, inquiring people who enjoy talking about life's big issues and conundrums in a convivial atmosphere, rather than a heavy-duty philosophy seminar. Read more about our approach here.

What is grief? For this discussion, grief can be understood as the process of handling certain kinds of losses – typically the loss of someone close, or perhaps a friendship, a job, an opportunity, or youth itself.

Some losses are permanent: the death of a loved one, the end of a profession or company, even the disappearance of a country such as the Soviet Union. Others are temporary or partial: friends drifting away through distance and new commitments, changing companies within the same industry, or simply misplacing your keys and feeling the sudden frustration of absence.

Some initial questions: Does the nature of the loss change the grieving process? Would you call the sadness at the loss of a cherished possession grief, or something else? How would you distinguish mourning from grief?

And is there such a thing as good or bad grief? Some argue that such labels are unhelpful, that grief is entirely personal and beyond comparison, yet perhaps there are patterns worth examining.

What might healthy grief look like? What might destructive grief become? Consider two widowers who lose their spouses at the same time.

Widower 1 struggles with all the tasks his wife once handled: driving, changing lightbulbs, taking out the rubbish. Yet he persists. He leans on an expanding social network and rediscovers interests he had neglected. He thinks often of his wife, believing she would be glad to see him living fully while carrying her memory with him.

Widower 2 faces the same challenges but gives up. He spends his time telling others how much he misses his wife and lamenting the decline of him home. Lightbulbs burn out, the car stops starting, rubbish piles up. Friends gradually withdraw, and he becomes isolated. He too thinks constantly of his wife, wishing above all for her return.

How should these paths be described? Rather than good or bad grief, perhaps limiting grief and growing grief are more useful terms.

Prolonged grief is recognised as a psychiatric disorder, yet this raises difficult questions. How long is too long, and how can grief be disordered if every path is said to be unique?

The five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – are often presented as a sequence. But is grief really so linear? Models such as the grief continuum [1] add a sixth stage, meaning and purpose, while allowing movement back and forth between stages over time.

For an alternative perspective on grief, the philosopher Michael Cholbi proposes that we grieve for those in whom our practical identities have been invested [2]. The more central another person is to our practical identity (whether or not we have actually met them), the greater cause we have for grieving them upon their deaths. Our grief thus focusses not the loss of the deceased but on the transformation of our relationship with the deceased. This provokes a kind of identity crisis, in which a re-examination of the relationship involves our values and beliefs. So for Cholbi there is a particular value in grief: it is a process by which we can reformulate our identities, through which we can gain self-knowledge.

We all experience loss, and there may be many paths through grief.

## Resources

1. Phil Cohen’s The Grief Continuum: Transforming Grief – When I Lost My Only Child https://youtu.be/irvSnfYNquc?si=OBjr4foiaVYHHzNM
2. Michael Cholbi on Grief, Identity Crisis, and What We Learn from Loss https://philosophybreak.com/articles/michael-cholbi-on-grief-identity-crisis-and-what-we-learn-from-loss/
3. Three responses to grief in the philosophy of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Camus: ‘We have the religious turn of Kierkegaard, the existential carpe diem of Heidegger, and the laugh-until-you-die of Camus.’ https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/philosophy-grief/

Good grief!

Mon, Jun 15 · 7:00 PM BST

The Llandoger Trow, Llandoger Row, Kings Street, BS1 4ER, Bristol, GB

Note: Café Philo is a way of meeting interesting, inquiring people who enjoy talking about life's big issues and conundrums in a convivial atmosphere, rather than a heavy-duty philosophy seminar. Read more about our approach here.

What is grief? For this discussion, grief can be understood as the process of handling certain kinds of losses – typically the loss of someone close, or perhaps a friendship, a job, an opportunity, or youth itself.

Some losses are permanent: the death of a loved one, the end of a profession or company, even the disappearance of a country such as the Soviet Union. Others are temporary or partial: friends drifting away through distance and new commitments, changing companies within the same industry, or simply misplacing your keys and feeling the sudden frustration of absence.

Some initial questions: Does the nature of the loss change the grieving process? Would you call the sadness at the loss of a cherished possession grief, or something else? How would you distinguish mourning from grief?

And is there such a thing as good or bad grief? Some argue that such labels are unhelpful, that grief is entirely personal and beyond comparison, yet perhaps there are patterns worth examining.

What might healthy grief look like? What might destructive grief become? Consider two widows who lose their spouses at the same time.

Widow 1 struggles with all the tasks her husband once handled: driving, changing lightbulbs, taking out the rubbish. Yet she persists. She leans on an expanding social network and rediscovers interests she had neglected. She thinks often of her husband, believing he would be glad to see her living fully while carrying his memory with her.

Widow 2 faces the same challenges but gives up. She spends her time telling others how much she misses her husband and lamenting the decline of her home. Lightbulbs burn out, the car stops starting, rubbish piles up. Friends gradually withdraw, and she becomes isolated. She too thinks constantly of her husband, wishing above all for his return.

How should these paths be described? Rather than good or bad grief, perhaps limiting grief and growing grief are more useful terms.

Prolonged grief is recognised as a psychiatric disorder, yet this raises difficult questions. How long is too long, and how can grief be disordered if every path is said to be unique?

The five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – are often presented as a sequence. But is grief really so linear? Models such as the grief continuum [1] add a sixth stage, meaning and purpose, while allowing movement back and forth between stages over time.

For an alternative perspective on grief, the philosopher Michael Cholbi proposes that we grieve for those in whom our practical identities have been invested [2]. The more central another person is to our practical identity (whether or not we have actually met them), the greater cause we have for grieving them upon their deaths. Our grief thus focusses not the loss of the deceased but on the transformation of our relationship with the deceased. This provokes a kind of identity crisis, in which a re-examination of the relationship involves our values and beliefs. So for Cholbi there is a particular value in grief: it is a process by which we can reformulate our identities, through which we can gain self-knowledge.

We all experience loss, and there may be many paths through grief.

## Resources

1. Phil Cohen’s The Grief Continuum: Transforming Grief – When I Lost My Only Child https://youtu.be/irvSnfYNquc?si=OBjr4foiaVYHHzNM
2. Michael Cholbi on Grief, Identity Crisis, and What We Learn from Loss https://philosophybreak.com/articles/michael-cholbi-on-grief-identity-crisis-and-what-we-learn-from-loss/
3. Three responses to grief in the philosophy of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Camus: ‘We have the religious turn of Kierkegaard, the existential carpe diem of Heidegger, and the laugh-until-you-die of Camus.’ https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/philosophy-grief/