Future People as Future Victims: An Anti-Natalist Justification of Longtermism
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Rex Lee
Abstract
In this paper, I propose a refined version of Seana Shiffrin’s consent argument for anti-natalism and argue that longtermism is best justified not through the traditional consequentialist approach, but from an anti-natalist perspective. I first reformulate Shiffrin’s consent argument, which claims that having children is pro tanto morally problematic because the unconsented harm the child will suffer could not be justified by the benefits they will enjoy, by including what I call the trivializing requirement to better accommodate various criticisms. Based on this iteration of anti-natalism, I argue that future generations should not be seen as far away strangers who are merely anonymous bearers of well-being, but rather as collective victims of the wrongful acts of procreation. As a result, anti-natalism provides us with a rational ground to put a key moral priority on improving the future, not only as restitution to future generations for the unconsented harm imposed on them, but also as part of a long-term effort to nullify the anti-natalist criticism, since the consent argument would no longer apply if our society eventually becomes so utopian that the positive aspects of the average person’s life vastly outweigh its negative aspects.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Regina Rini, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Franz Mang and Kwok Pak-nin for their invaluable feedback, without which this paper would not be possible. I also thank those who commented on a shorter version of this paper during the 2024 Canadian Philosophical Association Conference, as well as the many people with whom I have discussed this topic at York University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Finally, I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of the journal for their insightful feedback, along with Stefan Riedener, who served as the guest editor for this issue on longtermism.
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Section: Symposium on Longtermism; Guest Editor: Stefan Riedener
- Philosophy for the Long Run: Introduction to the Symposium on Longtermism
- Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism as a Metaethical Route to Virtue-Ethical Longtermism
- Capitalism and the Very Long Term
- Future People as Future Victims: An Anti-Natalist Justification of Longtermism
- Regular Articles
- Public Reason, Coercion, and Overlapping Consensus
- Act and Rule Consequentialism: A Synthesis
- The Doctrine of Sufficiency as a Contractualist Principle
- Rawls, Humanity and the Concept of Expression
- A Marketplace for Honest Ideas
- Writing the Other: The Ethics of Out-Group Representation in Art
- Carbon Pricing and Intergenerational Fairness
- Cooperation, Democracy, and Coercion: On the Grounds and Scope of Freedom of Movement
- Attempts at a Marxist Critique of Cancellation
- Defensive Kidnapping
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Section: Symposium on Longtermism; Guest Editor: Stefan Riedener
- Philosophy for the Long Run: Introduction to the Symposium on Longtermism
- Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism as a Metaethical Route to Virtue-Ethical Longtermism
- Capitalism and the Very Long Term
- Future People as Future Victims: An Anti-Natalist Justification of Longtermism
- Regular Articles
- Public Reason, Coercion, and Overlapping Consensus
- Act and Rule Consequentialism: A Synthesis
- The Doctrine of Sufficiency as a Contractualist Principle
- Rawls, Humanity and the Concept of Expression
- A Marketplace for Honest Ideas
- Writing the Other: The Ethics of Out-Group Representation in Art
- Carbon Pricing and Intergenerational Fairness
- Cooperation, Democracy, and Coercion: On the Grounds and Scope of Freedom of Movement
- Attempts at a Marxist Critique of Cancellation
- Defensive Kidnapping
