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BETTER NEVER TO HAVE BEEN BELIEVED: BENATAR ON THE HARM OF EXISTENCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2011

Campbell Brown
Campbell Brown*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Abstract

In Better Never to Have Been, David Benatar argues that existence is always a harm (Benatar 2006: 18–59). His argument, in brief, is that this follows from a theory of personal good which we ought to accept because it best explains several ‘asymmetries’. I shall argue here (a) that Benatar's theory suffers from a defect which was already widely known to afflict similar theories, and (b) that the main asymmetry he discusses is better explained in a way which allows that existence is often not a harm.

Type
Research Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 45 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

For helpful discussions and comments on previous drafts I would like to thank Daniel Cohen, Toby Handfield and Yujin Nagasawa.

References

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