According to the book History of Antinatalism – How Philosophy Has Challenged the Question of Procreation, philosophy has started to challenge the question of procreation more or less since philosophy has started to challenge any question. The first mentioned and quoted philosophers in the book are the first philosophers mentioned and quoted in any book, meaning the pre-Socratics, including whom who is considered to be the first philosopher in history – Thales of Miletus who was born according to estimation between 624 to 620 BC, as well as Heraclitus (540-470 BC), Parmenides (515-450), and Anaxagoras (500-428 BC), and ancient Greek playwrights such as Sophocles (495-406 BC) and Euripides (480-406 BC). The book’s editor considers Thales to be not only the first philosopher to challenge the question of procreation but to be the first antinatalist, since when he was asked why he is childless, he replied ‘because I so love the children’.
The book is full of examples such as this, as well as many indirect but significant contributions to challenging the question of procreation, from several philosophers, in the course of almost 3,000 years. From the mentioned Thales, to Aristotle to whom an entire chapter is devoted, to Blaise Pascal, Leibniz, Montesquieu (“we should bewail people when being born and not after their death“), Schopenhauer obviously, Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, to explicit and unmistakable antinatalist philosophers such as Peter Wessel Zapffe and Emil Cioran, and until present day antinatalist philosophers.

However, as impressive as this detailing of the history of Antinatalism is, the fact that the philosophical challenges of the question of procreation are ancient, and were made by various thinkers, from various thought traditions, including plenty of religious ones, is actually very depressing since it means that many people, from various different cultures and thought traditions, including religious ones, had plenty of time to seriously challenge procreation, yet they haven’t.

I find the book very frustrating not because its content is too premature to be considered antinatalism, or because it turns out that philosophy has not seriously challenged the question of procreation, or since the ideas mentioned in it are merely proto-antinatalism and not more, or because the promise of an old and rich history doesn’t live up to expectation, but exactly because it does. The history of the philosophical challenges to procreation is indeed ancient and many of them are quite impressive, and the ones taken from the New Testament and from Christian theology are also very surprising. Notwithstanding, it is all very saddening, since none of it made a significant practical impact.
There is something very depressing about the fact that philosophical challenges to procreation go so way back and are so culturally extensive, yet they haven’t infiltrated the public.

In the chapter devoted to Christianity there are many quotes that I found surprisingly sympathetic to antinatalistic ideas. However, the fact that many ideas in Christianity are sympathetic to antinatalistic ideas and yet de facto Christianity is a very pro-natalistic ideology, is a very strong indication for people’s desires and limitations. That is especially the case with the concept of hell which should have been, and still must be, a very strong antinatalistic argument yet it absolutely isn’t. However, since I have already addressed this issue in the former text, and since the book focuses more on Christian Scriptures and Christian theology than the concept of hell, I’ll not get in to it here. And as for christian texts, it doesn’t matter that much what is written in the Scriptures, the Gospels and theological books but what people practically see in them, and they usually see what they want or what is in their interests. For example, Jesus advocated for simplicity, humbleness, and peacefulness, but allegedly in his name people engaged in countless wars, and accumulated inapprehensible wealth. No religion is more capitalistic than Protestantism, and no religion is more ostentatious than Catholicism. People, as usual, interpreted things as they desire.

Even if early Christianity, that of the Gospels, had truly contained many antinatalist tendencies, it clearly evolved into an extremely pro-natalist ideology, with the Catholic Church officially forbidding the use of contraception and abortion. And one must be highly conspiracist to believe that such a radical shift was possible despite that people’s natural dispositions were compatible with these ideas. It is much more plausible that if anything, it is the ideas of early Christianity which didn’t quite suit people’s natural tendencies which are not exactly celibacy and asceticism, and the later ones were way more fitting, evidently, they have been extensively endorsed and remain up to this day.

People don’t need a religious propaganda about family and fertility, they have a built-in biological one. Long before Christianity emerged, humans have lived in a familial structure and were highly inclined to procreate. And except for some marginal extraordinary examples, that is basically cross cultural and from time immemorial. It is not as if before Christianity most humans throughout history have lived solitarily and abstinently, but exactly the opposite. Unfortunately humans are naturally very social and sexual animals. Celibacy, continence, chastity and barrenness are completely unnatural for humans. Familialist and fertilist religious propaganda is needless, it is literally preaching to the quire.

Since people naturally desire to procreate they stress the pro-natalistic aspects and conceal or ignore the antinatalistic ideas. They always do that when they are facing demands they find undesirable. Especially when they are asked to stop doing things they want to keep doing. For example, one of the most common ways they justify the consumption of animal products is that humans are animals and animals eat each other, thus it is natural for humans to eat animals. Even if for the sake of the argument we’ll accept that it is natural – and ignore the fact that none of the ways humans consume animals is natural, that none of the animals that humans are consuming are natural, that there is nothing natural about adult humans consuming the milk of another species (it is unprecedented in the natural world), and of course that even if it was natural it wouldn’t make it ethical since naturalness has nothing to do with goodness or rightness as something can be natural yet terrible (and the fact is that most of the natural things are indeed terrible) – humans are contradicting themselves when at the same time, often literally in the same conversion, they are also claiming that they are not at all animals or at least a special kind of species, a superior one and therefore deserve a special treatment and a special place on earth, and shouldn’t be treated  equality to animals. How does it settle? It doesn’t. And it doesn’t need to, since as conceptually wrong as speciesist humans are, practically they are right that they are a superior species, and a superior species doesn’t have to be conceptually right, rational and consistent as long as its mastery and power is not threatened, as long as it makes all the decisions anyway. People don’t do what is right and consistent but what is worthwhile and desirable… for them.

Obviously we can’t expect masses of people to stop procreating, let alone all together and entirely, because they have heard or read some philosophical fragments. But we can expect that societies won’t become so pro-natalist because its members have heard and read some philosophical fragments. Yet all societies did become pro-natalist. It is not that people were convinced by these philosophical fragments but didn’t stop breeding as a result of the need for helping hands, because their sexual desire overpowered their perceptions, and because during some eras among some societies it was a civic duty to produce new citizens, it is that they weren’t convinced. Otherwise as soon as people had alternatives they would have stopped breeding, otherwise births wouldn’t have been celebrated but treated as something that happen since people have sex and because people need working hands and because nations need soldiers. But people didn’t stop and births were always celebrated. Had some of these ancient ideas had some presence in some of people’s minds, on the practical level procreation probably would have only very slightly decreased before the contraception age, but on the theoretical level it should have been viewed entirely different a long time ago, and for the last two hundred years it should have been decreasing. None of that had happened.

It is probably a good place to clarify that I am not suggesting that the book implied that if people would realize how ancient and extensive the history of antinatalist ideas is, they would be convinced by them, or anything like that. It is a history book, surely one that was written by people with a very clear agenda, but it’s still a history book, not a book-length pamphlet aiming at convincing the readers that antinatalism’s antiquity origin is somehow evidence of its trueness. I am discussing such a claim while addressing the book not because it was made along it, but because that is one of the more probable practical implications to take from it.
And we can often observe such a move in relation to animal rights. Many activists and writers are pointing out that compassion towards animals is actually ancient, mainly by quoting all kinds of prominent historical figures, as well as mentioning that some of them such as Pythagoras, Plato, Plutarch, da Vinci, Newton, Voltaire, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, Henry David Thoreau, Susan B. Anthony, Tolstoy, Kafka, Van Gogh, George Bernard Shaw, Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer and Albert Einstein were vegetarians. But it seems that they don’t realize how depressing it is that such a basic idea wonders around for so long yet is still so far from becoming the norm. And vegetarianism (not even veganism) is way more basic and easy than antinatalism.

The question of procreation may be seriously challenged since ancient times, but it had only started to be significantly challenged by the public in the late 60’s, and that is mainly by environmentalists concerned about overpopulation (some may go earlier for that matter to Thomas Malthus though I don’t know how effective his warnings were on the practical level). And as important as the environmental concern is in itself, and as important as the fear of world hunger is in itself, and both most certainly are, these are not philosophical challenges to procreation. They are obviously extremely important ethical questions but since they are ethically circumstantial and not fundamental, it is not really the same category. But obviously you are the last people who need to be reminded that overpopulation is very far philosophically from antinatalism, and even if one anyway counts it in, at least as part of challenging the question of procreation, as aforementioned, concerns about overpopulation definitely don’t have a long history but started to engage parts of the public only in the mid-seventies. And by some parts of the public I unfortunately mean very few people. Even nowadays, in the climate change era, most of the environmentalist groups don’t dare to suggest that people should have fewer children.

The only philosophical challenge of procreation that truly had a serious effect on the actual number of people who decided not to procreate is Liberalism, and its effect is indirect. The philosophical tradition of Liberalism which put the individual in the center of attention as opposed to the nation, society, god and etc., made people realize they don’t have to procreate if they don’t want to, because it is their desires that count most. And many people indeed decide not to procreate because they don’t want to. Nowadays, people don’t feel the same level of social and religious pressure to procreate as people felt just until a few decades ago, and some of these people feel that they don’t want to procreate because it might collide with other life choices they find more attractive than becoming parents, or that they don’t want to become parents because they find becoming parents undesirable. People have various options to manage their lives and some don’t include or might collide with being parents.

Having said that, pro-natalists social pressures are still very powerful, and most people still want to procreate, and not because of external pressures, but because of internal ones.

And anyway, Liberalism is not a philosophical challenge to the question of procreation, but a philosophical challenge to the question of choice, so in relation to procreation, it may challenge social pressure on people to procreate despite that they don’t want to, as well as challenging social pressure on people not to procreate despite they do want to (LGBT people, or ethnic minorities which are prevented from fertility treatments, ova donations, sperm donations and surrogacy, for example). So liberalism per se is most certainly not a philosophical challenge to the question of procreation, and in liberal societies, it is often the case that liberal notions are in fact a challenge to antinatalism.

More people in more areas of the world having more choices regarding procreation is obviously a very welcome social change as otherwise there would have been many more people in the world, and correspondingly many more victims. But that is not an evidence of the success of antinatalists ideas. The reproduction decrease in many areas of the world in the last couple of decades is not an evidence for antinatalists ideas finally starting to be implemented after a long history of them being merely theoretical, it is not due to late blooming of ancient antinatalists ideas, but mostly due to contemporary social, cultural and economic processes, and if philosophy had anything to do with it, it is the indirect effect of liberalism, not the direct effect of moralism.

The fact that most of the people who abstain from procreation are doing it because they don’t want to, and not because they think that ethically no one is allowed to, doesn’t really leave that much room for optimism. And the fact that both ideas: that one doesn’t have to procreate, and that one must not procreate; have a very very long history, yet both, even the child-free notion, are still relatively marginal; actually creates even more room for pessimism.
A long history of a philosophical idea doesn’t guarantee its implementation in the future.

Of course I am not suggesting that books about the history of ideas shouldn’t be written, they have a purpose and a benefit, however we must also consider their depressing aspect.
We must consider that the longer the history of very logical and basic ideas, the smaller their chances to become the norm. The fact that some ideas are out there for such a long time but were never picked up by the masses, can be an indication that as logical and basic as they may be, they are undesirable by the majority. Environmental ideas for example also have a very long history. And as opposed to antinatalism and antispeciesism, which I can understand why they are viewed as conceptually threatening to some people as both are anti-anthropocentric (on the face of it, it seems as if it is mostly antispeciesism but since antinatalism practically necessarily results in human extinction it is also an anti-anthropocentric view), protecting the environment is not necessarily anti-anthropocentric, it can be quite the opposite if it is presented as protecting the human race’s home (despite that it is only one species out of about 8.7 million other species). So environmentalism is not necessarily contradictive to anthropocentrism, and it is hard to think of other reasons why despite it being so basic and logical and historical, it is still such a marginal viewpoint.
And if you think that it is not really that marginal, as many people would agree that protecting the environment is important, surly much more than people who agree with antinatalism and antispeciesism, then consider that many people may also say that people have a right not to procreate and that animals have a right not to be tortured, but both are empty statements since to really agree with antinatalism is to not breed and to agree with antispeciesism is to not consume animal products, and in the same line of thought, considering how important and urgent environmental issues are, agreeing that protecting the environment is important is also an empty statement, as clearly the planet is under severe climate change and people know this for decades now, yet they still consume animal products despite their immense carbon footprint, they still use private cars on a daily basis, and many use airplanes occasionally, most don’t recycle, and of course, keep creating more people despite that it is the worst thing that a person can privately do in terms of climate change.
And that is because people are egocentric and most are also egoistic and very small minded. They are extremely concentrated on their small little lives here and now, therefore it is highly unlikely that the history of ideas would wake them up. But it should wake us up. It should wake the few people who do care, and who are not concentrated on their small little lives here and now, but on everyone’s lives, everywhere, at all times.

History books must make us realize that caring for others always has been and always will be a marginal position. Ethical ideas such as antinatalism would never prevail.

For me, the main practical function of a book such as History of Antinatalism, is as an alarm clock. We need to read this history book with an eye to the future. We must think that the worst thing that can happen is that the chapters about current antinatalism would become in the future additional chapters about the history of antinatalism, instead of being the last ones. We must think that this book should be the first and last history of antinatalism book, because another history of antinatalism book in the future means that antinatalism has failed, as for it to succeed there must be no future.

References

Kateřina Lochmanová et al. History of Antinatalism: How Philosophy Has Challenged the Question of Procreation (2020) ISBN 9798645624255