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Should We Not Have Children? | Emil Cioran’s Antinatalism
Should We Stop Having Kids?
Few points of view in the annals of philosophical ideas cause as visceral reactions as antinatalism, the ethical perspective that condemns human procreation by devaluing birth. Although modern debates of antinatalism mostly focus on South African philosopher David Benatar and his formal articulation of the stance in “Better Never to Have Been,” the origins of this viewpoint stretch far further in philosophical history. Among its most vociferous and uncompromising supporters is Emil Cioran, the Romanian-born philosopher whose dark, aphoristic works offer one of the most relentless arguments against the act of creating new life. Born in Transylvania in 1911 and later settled in Paris, where he wrote mostly in French until his death in 1995, Cioran developed a philosophical perspective marked by great pessimism, nihilism, and a sense that life itself constituted a terrible error. By means of works such as “The Trouble with Being Born,” “On the Heights of Despair,” and “A Short History of Decay,” Cioran articulated an antinatalist posture not through formal philosophical arguments but rather through sharp insights into the human condition — insights that still challenge our most basic assumptions about life, reproduction, and ethical responsibility.
