The End of Sentience

While David Benatar's 2006 book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence remains the most influential formulation of contemporary academic antinatalism, numerous other iterations, both academic and nonacademic, have emerged since its publication. These newer forms reflect differing styles, motivations, and normative commitments across a range of issues, none more contentious than the question of what duties human antinatalists may hold toward nonhuman animals or life more broadly. This debate has produced a significant division within antinatalisms. Anthropocentric forms endorse the voluntary extinction of humanity while allowing other life to continue. Sentiocentric forms recommend the eventual extinction of all sentient life. While humans could voluntarily choose to cease reproducing, sentiocentric antinatalism implies, sometimes explicitly requires, active human intervention to end the reproduction of other sentient beings, potentially involving coercion or violence. This paper builds upon Patricia MacCormack's critique of Benatarian antinatalism and efilism in her 2020 book The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene. By widening the scope of inquiry to include multiple antinatalist traditions, the analysis maps how and why some formulations of antinatalism come to endorse forceful or promortalist positions aimed at achieving the extinction of certain, even all, species.