Session #23 - Birth & Antinatalism - Morals of having children

“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist?"
Arthur Schopenhauer.

Antinatalism asks an uncomfortable question:
Is it morally justified to bring a new person into existence?

In a world marked by suffering, uncertainty, inequality, and social fragility, some philosophers argue that not being born may be better than being born at all. This session explores antinatalism, through thinkers like Schopenhauer, and David Benatar.
But this is no longer a purely philosophical question.
Today, birth rates are collapsing across much of the world. States intervene through incentives, restrictions, and population engineering. Technology separates sex from pregnancy and reproduction from the human body itself.
This session explores birth and antinatalism at the intersection of philosophy, demography, politics, and technology.

Introduction (15 minutes)
We start with a short introduction of the guests.

Questions to discuss: (1 hour and 45 minutes):

1. Would you want to be born again?
2. Can it ever be ethical to impose life on someone without their consent?
3. Can we meaningfully say someone is “better or worse off” for never existing?
4. How much suffering is it enough to make life not worth starting?
5. Is it worse to risk suffering, or to deny existence entirely?
6. Does society pressure people into reproduction for economic or cultural survival?
7. If antinatalism is right, what follows? Adoption? Voluntary extinction?
8. Can creating a new life be a morally neutral act, or is it better continuing one that already exists?
9. Is having children an act of hope or an act of denial?
10. Can a society that stops reproducing still be a political community — or only an administrative one? is antinatalism politically destabilizing by definition? (Movie: The children of men, Hannah Arendt)
11. Would politics freeze without generational replacement?
12. Would immortality eliminate progress — or stabilize it?
13. Would immortal societies become conservative by default?
14. Is the “right to have a child” absolute—or should it be conditional?
    If adoption requires screening, why doesn’t biological parenthood?
15. What are the consequences if artificial wombs become viable?
16. What happens when reproduction becomes a technical process rather than a human one? (Recommended documentary: "The Man with 1000 Kids" on Netflix)
17. Was the One-Child Policy an ethical catastrophe — or a brutal but rational response to material limits? If overpopulation causes massive suffering, is coercive birth control ever morally defensible?
18. If parents screen embryos for severe diseases, is that eugenics — or responsibility?
19. Why is state-driven selection immoral, but market-driven selection acceptable?
20. Is the traditional nuclear family the only morally acceptable way to raise a child?