9 quotes
Regretting having to die should be structurally identical to regretting being born, because it is not in our power being born in a non-mortal way.
The fundamental fact of life that we need to understand is that human beings are able to desire intensely and unconditionally something that lacks value.
Philosophers have always spoken of life as a "preparation for death", and of philosophy as a "learning to die". But there is a wisdom prior to that: learning to abstain; not putting anyone in the situation of having to learn to die.
We are not nihilistic towards life - it is life that is nihilistic towards us. It is life that denies us, expels us, and kills us. Do we not want to live intensely and forever? Are we the ones denying life? Is it not life that denies us day by day?
Devorando Nietzsche: por um niilismo sul-americano (2022)
The parent knows perfectly well that they are giving a product of dubious quality only for their own accomplishment and happiness; in admitting that the person may want to return it, they themselves fully understand the dubious nature of the gift.
The best would have been not to be born. Not being born is, in a negative ethics, the absolute good; but it is, precisely, the good that cannot be sought. (Attention: the situation is more radical than in the case of goods that can be sought but never achieved; not being born cannot even be sought).
Killing someone and giving birth to someone are two violent actions through which, magically, man tries to put himself in God’s place. The victim of a homicide is always helpless, but never as helpless as the victim of a birth. There is as much innocent blood spilled in a childbirth as in a homicide. If procreation is a free choice, then life is fundamentally unnecessary pain.
Projeto de Ética Negativa (1989)
All of the inescapable and tyrannical bodily necessities are already presented to the baby in the form of new cries and sufferings. Progenitors will become increasingly conscious of this and they will keep saying: “He’s crying; maybe he’s hungry”; “He’s crying; maybe he's cold”; “He’s crying; maybe he’s tired”, without ever arriving at the ominous “He’s crying because he was born”.
If freedom, according to traditional morality itself, is a fundamental ethical value, the very basis of ethics, one must be aware that the creation of a child may be the first huge disrespect of the freedom of the human person. The issue of freedom suffers here from the same problem as the issue of pain: it is a matter of ethical value that the traditional affirmative ethics is unable to radicalize.
Projeto de Ética Negativa (1989)