Now compare the Ecclesiastes above with Pascal's Thinking reed below and add some gloss if you can.tbieter wrote:Here is the text from Scripture, Ecclesiastes 9:4-6:tbieter wrote:I came upon the text below in my reading. It contradicts Professor Benatar's thesis. Do you think it applies to Benatar? Do you think he enjoys Mozart at the symphony? If so, do you think that the total amount of his pleasures exceed the total amount of his sufferings each day? If so, how does this result affect his thesis?Encolpio wrote:David Benatar in “Better never to have been” says that every life is not worth starting, because human lives are so ridden with harm, even the best ones, that is preferable not to be over coming into existence in a world of suffering.
He then maintains that it is preferable not to procreate anyone, and, if a woman happens to get pregnant, we should take on a “pro-death” stance, which means that we should defend the right not to abort, abortion (or means that prevent conception) being the preferable, “normal” case. This somehow reverses the view of pro-choice activists, who in the end support life while advocating women’s right not to carry a child to term.
He says that after he (in my view successfully) demonstrated that even the happiest lives are in fact very bad, and life is full of suffering. However, what strikes me as contradictory is that he says that coming to existence is also very bad because you cannot avoid death and one cannot live as long as one desires.
Now, since human life – and the conscious lives of any other animals for that matter – is equalled to a harm, how could it be that death qualifies as a harm, as it can be defined as the (irreversible) cessation of a harm? I cannot see how the two stances hold together: either life is an unmitigated harm or death is. If death occurs to end something which is defined as a harm, now that’s a good.
Death and suicide are bad things, that’s for sure, but in my view that is true not because they shorten life – which I believe is a harm, as Benatar maintains –, but because they cause pain to our surviving loved ones. They’re not bad in themselves, then, but only relative to their consequences for the people (friends, spouse/partner, relatives, etc.) that have to go through the experience our demise.
"Nothing is more widespread among men than the certitude of the all-importance of existence: as the saying goes, a living dog is better than a dead king. But we also know that, what they know as men, philosophers are liable to forget as philosophers, ..." p. 45
http://www.amazon.com/Being-Some-Philos ... ilosophers
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=KJV
This morning I was watching the news program on ABC. A segment featured a homeless vet who lived in a tent in a small patch of woods in Washington, D.C. He said that his most valued possessions were his books, especially his mother's Bible, which he got when she died. He opened the Bible and pointed to "his favorite passage," which was Ecclesiastes 9:4-6! He said that the words came true. He was then shown in an apartment which he was getting from a charitable group that helps homeless vets.
Which is preferable: the vet's theology, or Professor Benatar's philosophy, for the ordinary man?
Ecclesiastes 9:4-6 King James Version (KJV)
4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.
5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
6 Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.
King James Version (KJV)
by Public Domain
http://www.the-philosophy.com/pascal-man-thinking-reed
This is the most famous quote by Blaise Pascal, a French philosopher. This is an excerpt of Thoughts:
“Man is a reed, the weakest of nature, but he is a thinking reed. It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush: a vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than what kills him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage that the universe has over him, the universe does knows nothing”
Blaise Pascal > Quotes > Quotable Quote
Blaise Pascal
“Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. but even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.”