Tea at Trianon: Extreme Antinatalism

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, May 5, 2023

Extreme Antinatalism

From UnHerd:

Promortalism — the belief that death is always preferable to life — is one of these ideas that feels too fringe to attract much of a following. It instinctively feels more like a footnote in a philosophy class, the far end of the spectrum when talking about negative utilitarianism, for instance. Or it might come up in a discussion about E.M. Cioran, the Romanian philosopher who wrote The Trouble With Being Born, a book of aphorisms about the futility of having come into existence at all. Or it might appear in a YouTube listicle about “10 morbid subcultures you won’t believe exist”.

But as far as a real, robust community is concerned? It is too convoluted, too dark. It is the provenance of only the most depressed among us. Online spaces for the suicidal have always existed, sometimes barely euphemistically described as “sanctioned suicide”. But, surely, this philosophy runs up against the limits of its own repulsiveness? (Read more.)