The Value of Human Life

We did not have a choice in the matter of our own birth, but we do seem to have a choice whether or not to subject others to life’s vicissitudes, whether by deciding to have children ourselves or supporting, personally, socially and politically, others’ choices to do so. In 2022-2023 the Centre for Moral and Political Philosophy will dedicate its activities to the question: Should we?

Much speaks against it. To a long list of familiar causes for concern—political unrest, rising barriers to economic well-being, and, first and foremost, impending climate catastrophe—was recently added a global pandemic, reminding us all of the threat of the unknown: of unexpected and unforetold dangers we can hardly begin to predict.  Without credible hope that things will get better—without any reliable grounds for belief in progress—why shouldn’t we welcome the global decline in birth rates and cheer on childlessness, voluntary or otherwise? Decreasing birth rates are correlated with many of the common measures of progress like rising economic wellbeing and increased levels of education among women. And, after all, it increasingly seems that in indulging their desires for children, people might be wronging not only the children they bear—“ushering souls into hell,” as the philosopher David Benatar once quipped—but wronging others and perhaps the world itself, overburdening a sad, spent planet. Life is what got us into this trouble to begin with; who needs more of it?

First, we will ask: Is it possible to offer a philosophical answer to this challenge? Is it permissible, valuable and perhaps even good to bring children into the world? If so, under what conditions?

Second, we will also seek to think through some of the assumptions that have guided these conversations in the past few decades: What is the relationship, ethical and metaphysical, in which we stand to persons who will live in the future? Can we benefit or harm a person merely by causing them to exist? Is bringing forth new life a matter of causing people to exist, at all? And, perhaps most basic of all, what is human life?

In all of our programming we hope to bring together a wide range of philosophers working in the analytic and continental traditions as well as those exploring related themes from an historical perspective.

 
The project coordinator will be Anastasia Berg. 

Post-doctoral Fellow 2023

Uri Eran

I am a historian of philosophy, working primarily on Kant’s ethics and moral psychology. I published on Kant’s conceptions of feelings and desires and how they are related to contemporary conceptions of emotions. As a postdoc fellow at CMPP, I am developing a Kantian approach to the alleged duty to ensure humanity's survival. Drawing on Kant's understanding of value, happiness, and moral teleology, I argue that  if our reason to ensure human survival is not to be overridden by considerations regarding other species, humanity must serve some moral end more important than other species' survival, such as Kant's Highest Good.

Distinguished Visiting Fellow 2023

Samuel Scheffler

Samuel Scheffler is University Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law at New York University. He received his B.A. from Harvard and his Ph.D. from Princeton.  He taught at Berkeley from 1977 to 2008, before moving to NYU. He works primarily in the areas of moral and political philosophy and the theory of value. His writings have addressed central questions in ethical theory, and he has also written on topics as diverse as equality, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, toleration, terrorism, immigration, tradition, and the moral significance of personal relationships. He is the author of six books: The Rejection of Consequentialism, Human Morality, Boundaries and Allegiances, Equality and Tradition, Death and the Afterlife (Niko Kolodny ed.), and, most recently, Why Worry about Future Generations? He has received Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships, and has been a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, and a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

PhD Summer Workshop Fellows

TBA

Annual Conference 2023