The Geography of Genethics and the Ends of Life1 - University of ...

Heyd’s second argument for an asymmetry between genethics and mortethics invokes a
desire-based account of the badness of death. “[Categorical] desires make us not only
wish to go on living (not to commit suicide), but also to be happy that we did not die two
years ago. But they cannot make us happy to have been born at all, since had we not been
born there would not have been any such categorical desires” (1992: 123). I am not
convinced that one can account for the harm of death by appeal to desire, but let me
waive that concern here, for Heyd’s argument fails even if we accept a desire-based
account of death’s badness. If frustrated desire is able to explain death’s badness then it
can also explain the badness of having come into existence. It is true that I wouldn’t have
had any categorical desires had I not been born, but it is also true that I wouldn’t have had
any categorical desires now had I died two years ago. Heyd seems to confuse the claim
that an actual person might wish to not have been born with the claim that a non-actual
person might have had wishes. 3 The latter claim is incoherent, but the former claim is not.
If it is coherent to prefer a future X over future Y on account of the fact that fewer of one’s
categorical desires are left unsatisfied in X than in Y, then it is coherent to regret that the
actual world is one in which one has many unsatisfied categorical desires (and few
satisfied ones), rather than a world in which one doesn’t (and didn’t) exist and thus has no
unsatisfied categorical desires (or, of course, satisfied ones).
Bernard Williams once remarked that “while [a man] can think egoistically of what it
would be for him to live longer or less long, he cannot think egoistically of what it would
be for him never to have existed at all” (Williams 1973: 87). Can one think egoistically of
what it would be for the world to carry on without one? I think so. One can certainly wish
to avoid a future of unrelieved suffering, and in this sense one can have an egoistic
preference for a future that lacks oneself over a future that includes one. And if that is so, I
don’t see why one can’t wish—on egoistic grounds—that one had never come into
existence.
I have not attempted to tackle no-faults genethicism head-on. Instead, I have argued that
no-faults genethicists are committed to an Epicurean view of death. Epicureans, no doubt,
will be nonplussed by this approach, but true Epicureans are few on the ground. Coupled
with its intrinsic counter-intuitiveness, it seems to me that this result gives us good reason
to look elsewhere for an acceptable genethical model. At the very least, this result
provides us with a useful constraint on genethical theory building.
3 Holtug 2001 also makes this point.
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