QuestionsShould we have children?The asymmetry: never existing is better than existing
Should we have children?Better never to have been

The asymmetry: never existing is better than existing

Benatar's asymmetry, anti-natalism

David Benatar born 1966Argues that coming into existence is always a harm, because the absence of pain is good even when no one enjoys it.
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What it claims

Never existing is preferable to existing: coming into existence is always a harm.

Why

The absence of pain is good even if no one exists, but the absence of pleasure is bad only for someone deprived of it.

The same idea through history
Sophocle401 BCIn Oedipus at Colonus, the chorus says that not to be born is best of all: a poetic cry, without an argument.
Arthur Schopenhauer1851Same conclusion (sparing those to come from life), but resting on the idea that life is mostly suffering.Peter Wessel Zapffe1933Same conclusion by another route: the human excess of consciousness.
David Benatar1997Benatar gives the argument its current form: a comparison between existing and never existing, based on an asymmetry between pain and pleasure.
In short

"The asymmetry: never existing is better than existing" is an argument by David Benatar (David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been, 2006, ch. 2; 1997 article, 1997) on the question "Should we have children?" (answer: better never to have been). Its claim: Never existing is preferable to existing: coming into existence is always a harm. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5, P6). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been, 2006, ch. 2; 1997 article
Valid with an implicit premise

Imagine two worlds for the same person: in one she is born, in the other she never exists. Benatar notes that we judge pain and pleasure asymmetrically. Pain is bad and pleasure is good: everyone agrees so far. But the absence of pain is good, even when nobody is there to enjoy it, whereas the absence of pleasure is bad only if someone is deprived of it. If we then compare existing with never existing, life brings an evil that non-existence avoids, and the pleasure of life gives no advantage over non-existence, since nobody is deprived of a pleasure they never had. Benatar concludes that coming into existence is always a harm. He makes clear that his thesis is about bringing people into existence, not about whether those who already exist have reason to go on living. This site presents arguments: it advises no one. If this question touches you closely, talk to someone you trust.

P1The presence of pain is bad.
P2The presence of pleasure is good.
P3The absence of pain is good, even if no one exists to enjoy it.
P4The absence of pleasure is bad only if someone is deprived of that pleasure. If no one exists, it is not bad.
P5 · implicit premiseEvery human life contains some pain.
P6 · implicit premiseIf life contains an evil (pain) and a good (pleasure), whereas never existing contains a good (the absence of pain) and no evil (the absence of pleasure is not one), then never existing is preferable.
Therefore never existing is preferable to existing: coming into existence is always a harm.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P6, the computer finds a world where the four judgments of the asymmetry are true, where life contains pain, and yet never existing is not preferable: it is enough that the pleasure of life makes up for the evil.
Valid with P5 and P6. P1 to P4 set out the asymmetry. P5 says every life has pain, so the evil is always present. P6 makes the comparison: the pleasure of life is not an advantage over non-existence, because its absence there is not bad (P4). Without P5, a life with no pain at all would not be a harm. Without P6, nothing says how to compare the two situations. P6, and the comparison with nothingness that it assumes, is the most discussed point.
Analogy. A doctor sees two people: one sick, one healthy. We say it is good that the second has no illness. But we do not say it is bad for a stone not to feel pleasure, since nobody is deprived of anything. Benatar applies this to someone who does not exist: the absence of pain is good, the absence of pleasure is not bad.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

E
Elizabeth Harman 2009 · attacks premise 3

In her critical study of Benatar's book, Harman doubts that the asymmetry is the best explanation of our ordinary judgments about procreation. We think it wrong to bring into existence a child who will suffer, and we do not think it wrong not to bring into existence a happy child. For Harman, this can be explained without admitting that the absence of pain is good when no one exists. Then premises P3 and P4 are no longer supported by those judgments.

no reply
Benatar did reply, but that text is not yet in our corpus.
The debate goes on (our summary) Benatar answered his critics in a 2012 article (en-b-replique), but we could not read that text, so we do not summarize his answer. The basic disagreement is about what ordinary judgments prove: are they a sign of the asymmetry, or can they be explained otherwise? See also Parfit below, who questions the comparison with non-existence.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the debate remains open. The critics and Benatar agree on the starting judgments and differ on what explains them; no explanation is widely accepted.
Derek Parfit 1984 · attacks the conclusion

In Reasons and Persons (ch. 16), Parfit studies the non-identity problem: if a person would never have existed otherwise, we cannot say that our choice leaves them worse off than they would have been. Applied here, it is hard to say that being born harms someone by comparison with a situation in which they would not exist: there is no one of whom we can say that their life would have been better or worse. Parfit does not discuss Benatar, who writes twenty years later: we are simply bringing the two problems together.

a defender replies
David Benatar defender of the argument · 2006
Benatar addresses this difficulty directly in chapter 2 of his book: for him, the comparison between existing and never existing is possible. His argument is the asymmetry itself: the absence of pain is good even when no one exists to enjoy it, so we can compare without there being a person on the other side.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the basic disagreement is whether a comparative judgment "better for someone" requires that someone to exist in both situations. Parfit thinks this makes the comparison difficult; Benatar grounds it on the asymmetry, which his critics dispute (see above).
Objection Benatar discusses himself (most people are glad to have been born) 2006 · attacks premise 5

Most people say their lives are worth living and are glad to have been born. If life were as bad as Benatar says, they would not say so. Their judgment about their own lives would then be the best evidence that being born is not a harm.

a defender replies
David Benatar defender of the argument · 2006
In chapter 3, Benatar answers that this judgment is unreliable. According to him, psychological biases make us overestimate the quality of our lives: optimism (the tendency to see the bright side), adaptation to difficulties, and comparison with others. For him, one can say one is glad to have been born without life being as good as one believes.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the basic disagreement is whether a person's judgment about their own life is the best measure of its quality, or is distorted by biases. This point remains debated.