QuestionsShould we have children?If children were made by pure reason
Should we have children?Better never to have been

If children were made by pure reason

Schopenhauer and pity for coming generations

Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 · 1860Life swings between suffering and boredom.
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What it claims

If having a child were an act of pure reason, each person would have enough pity for the coming generation to spare it the burden of existence, and the human race would not continue.

Why

Only pain is real, well-being being merely its absence: the sum of suffering makes life regrettable.

The same idea through history
Sophocle401 BCThe chorus of Oedipus at Colonus says that not to be born is best of all, and that, once born, the best is to go back quickly to where one came from.
Qohélet (l'Ecclésiaste)250 BCQohelet judges the one who has not yet been happier than both the living and the dead, having not seen the evil done under the sun.
Arthur Schopenhauer1851Schopenhauer makes it a question addressed to reason: what would we do if procreation did not come from desire?
David Benatar1997Benatar takes up the conclusion with another line of reasoning, based on an asymmetry between pain and pleasure.
In short

"If children were made by pure reason" is an argument by Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena II, 1851, ch. XII, § 156, 1851) on the question "Should we have children?" (answer: better never to have been). Its claim: If having a child were an act of pure reason, each person would have enough pity for the coming generation to spare it the burden of existence, and the human race would not continue. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Parerga and Paralipomena II, 1851, ch. XII, § 156
Valid with an implicit premise

For Schopenhauer, pleasure is only the passing end of a lack, whereas pain is quite real: life is therefore mostly suffering. In a passage of the Parerga he proposes a thought experiment: what if making a child were neither a need nor a pleasure, but a matter of pure reflection? Would the human race continue? Would not each person have enough pity for the coming generation to spare it the burden of existence? It is a question he asks, not advice: he himself goes on to note that he will be told his philosophy is comfortless. This site presents arguments and advises no one. If this theme touches you closely, talk to someone you trust.

P1Well-being and enjoyment are negative: they consist only in the absence of pain, which alone is positive, that is, real. The happiness of a life is therefore measured by the absence of suffering, not by its joys.
P2The sum of misery, pain and suffering in existence is such that it would be much better if life had not appeared on earth.
P3 · implicit premiseIf life is like this, and if one decided to bring children into being by pure reason and not under the push of desire, one would pity the children to come and spare them existence.
Therefore if having a child were an act of pure reason, each person would have enough pity for the coming generation to spare it the burden of existence, and the human race would not continue.

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 P3, the computer finds a world where life is mostly suffering, where the decision is made by pure reason, and yet people still bring children into being: for instance because they judge that the good of life, even if rare, is worth giving.
Valid with P3. P1 and P2 say that life is mostly suffering, so much so that it would be better if it did not exist. P3 is the missing step: if that is true, a purely reasoned and compassionate decision would spare children existence. Without P3, one can grant P1 and P2 and still hold that a reasonable person would bring children into being, for instance because they think life is worth offering anyway. The conclusion is a conditional: it says what reason alone would do, not what we ought to do.
Analogy. Imagine inviting someone on a journey, knowing that the road is almost always hard and that pleasure is only the rest between two trials. If you had to decide calmly, without the urge to leave, would you have the heart to take them along without their asking? That is Schopenhauer's question, asked about life itself.

Objections

2

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

Friedrich Nietzsche 1882 · attacks premise 2

In The Gay Science (§341), Nietzsche refuses to measure a life by adding up its evils. He proposes a test: if a demon told you that you would have to live this life again identically, would you curse it? Or would you love it so much that you wished for nothing more than this eternal confirmation? For him, the question is not whether the sum of pains exceeds that of joys, but whether one can say yes to one's life. If this yes is possible, P2 is false or beside the point.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1882, after the author's death (1860).
The debate goes on (our summary) Schopenhauer died in 1860, before Nietzsche, who read him with passion and later moved away from him. No reply from him is possible. Nietzsche does not deny suffering: he refuses to make it a verdict on the value of life. See the argument "The greatest weight" (nietzsche-eternel-retour), which itself cites Schopenhauer.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: basic disagreement. For Schopenhauer the value of life is read in the balance of its evils; for Nietzsche it is read in the ability to say yes. Neither side has a proof that compels the other.
Albert Camus 1942 · attacks premise 2

Camus starts like Schopenhauer from a world without consolation, but draws another conclusion. At the end of The Myth of Sisyphus he writes that the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart, and that one must imagine Sisyphus happy. For him, the unhappiness of the human condition does not remove the possibility of a full life.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1942, after the author's death (1860).
The debate goes on (our summary) Schopenhauer died in 1860 and cannot answer. Camus speaks of how to live a life already given, not of the decision to bring someone into being: the comparison therefore does not directly touch the question of procreation. See the argument "Living without appeal" (camus-absurde-refus-suicide).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: both authors see a world without consolation; they differ on what follows. An open question remains: can a life that may be accepted once lived be imposed on someone who could not refuse it?