There are books that one should never give to depressed friends. David Benatar’s “The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions” is one. Although Mr. Benatar doesn’t want to be one ...

David Benatar is probably the most important philosophical pessimist active today. He has presented many original and challenging arguments for life's badness. In this and some ensuing posts, I’ll ...

This essay by Aragon Eloff, on academic responses to student protest in South Africa, was first published in The Con. It was written in response to a piece by David Benatar. It is hard to overestimate ...

Based on: Cutting to the Core: Exploring the Ethics of Contested Surgeries Edited by David Benatar. 236 pp. Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. $75 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). 0-7425-5000-1(cloth); 0 ...

“Life is misery, and it would have been better not to have been born. But who is so lucky? Scarcely one in a hundred thousand.” This Jewish witticism, (first quoted by Freud,) is the epigraph of David ...

In 2006, I published a book called Better Never to Have Been. I argued that coming into existence is always a serious harm. People should never, under any circumstance, procreate ...