public philosophy
For a holiday piece, JHU's media office asked some faculty to explain perplexing holiday phenomena: a biologist on why Rudolph's nose lights up, a cardiologist on the Grinch's heart condition, a physicist on Scrooge's time-travel, and me on questions raised by It's A Wonderful Life (which I had never seen ....). In the end, my contribution was deemed "a bit too depressing for the light, fun holiday mood we were going for." (What did they expect from a culturally Jewish philosopher?!) Here it is, with apologies(?) to Seana Shiffrin.
In the movie It's A Wonderful Life, George Bailey contemplates throwing himself off a bridge. Things have not been going well, and he thinks it would have been better had he never been born. But his "guardian angel" lets him see how things would have been: his uncle is institutionalized, his brother dies young, soldiers his brother would have saved also die, his wife never marries. George decides it would not have been better after all had he never been born, and the movie has its famously happy ending.
We might reach a different conclusion if the movie's main character was a worse person: Pol Pot, say, or some other mass murderer. But many people lead decent lives and enable others to do so as well. No one's perfect, and there are times of trouble; but all in all their living and having lived can be counted as a good thing.
Or no? Some philosophers have argued that, for any person, it would have been better had that person not have been born -- no matter what sort of life they would go on to lead! Different arguments have been suggested for this obviously highly counter-intuitive claim. Pessimists argue that we delude ourselves about the massive amount of harm and pain there is in the world and that we all must face in some form or another. But perhaps more intriguing is an argument that appeals to the importance we place on autonomy -- one's ability to decide for oneself major questions concerning one's life.
The idea is this. Basic respect requires letting people make their own decisions. Even if a doctor thinks she knows better than her patient, she must obtain the patient's consent before performing a procedure. But is there a more important question for a person than whether she comes into existence at all? Yet parents decide to bring kids into the world without obtaining their consent. Do parents thereby fundamentally violate their kids' rights? Can kids legitimately sue their parents on this basis? (Indeed, there have been 'wrongful life' suits.)
An obvious reply is that kids aren't yet capable of making their own decisions, and that's why we let parents make decision for them. But what about the future person the child becomes? The fully capable adult is here without her consent: hasn't her autonomy been violated (even if she later endorses the decision made without her consent)? You might try another reply: We must let parents make decisions for kids so that potential harms are avoided: thus do parents choose what their kids eat, where they go, and so on. But what harm is avoided in deciding to bring the child into the world in the first place? Non-existent kids don't skin their non-existent knees.
Perhaps it's ridiculous to think that every birth is morally irresponsible -- or at least ridiculous that they all be morally irresponsible on grounds like these. But then something must be wrong with the argument. Pin-pointing the error might help us better understand what autonomy is and why we value it. That sound of a bell going off when we manage to understand an important concept a little better, even by exploring a crazy idea? Why, that's the sound of a philosopher earning her wings.