Antifrustrationism is an
axiological
Axiology (from Greek , ''axia'': "value, worth"; and , ''-logia'': "study of") is the philosophical study of value. It includes questions about the nature and classification of values and about what kinds of things have value. It is intimately c ...
position proposed by German philosopher Christoph Fehige, which states that "we don't do any good by creating satisfied extra preferences. What matters about preferences is not that they have a satisfied existence, but that they don't have a frustrated existence." According to Fehige, "''maximizers of preference satisfaction'' should instead call themselves ''minimizers of preference frustration''."
What makes the world better is "not its amount of preference satisfaction, but the ''avoided preference frustration''." In the words of Fehige, "we have obligations to make preferrers satisfied, but no obligations to make satisfied preferrers." The position stands in contrast to classical
utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.
Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different chara ...
, among other ethical theories, which holds that creating "satisfied preferrers" is, or can be, a good in itself. Antifrustrationism has similarities with, although it is different from,
negative utilitarianism
Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the tota ...
, the teachings of
Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in L ...
,
Stoicism,
philosophical pessimism
Philosophical pessimism is a family of philosophical views that assign a negative value to life or existence. Philosophical pessimists commonly argue that the world contains an empirical prevalence of pains over pleasures, that existence is onto ...
, and
Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work '' The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the pr ...
's philosophy.
[: "An outline of the ancestors and near and distant relatives of antifrustrationism will have to wait another occasion. (See, however, the sources listed in notes 2 and 21.) It is instructive, for example, to compare the doctrine of the relevant teachings of Buddha, the Stoics, Schopenhauer, or Albert Ellis, to Seana Shiffrin’s recent work, to pessimism (in the various meanings of that word), and to what has become known as ‘negative utilitarianism’. Some similarities notwithstanding, all of these differ from antifrustrationism in important respects."] In particular, negative preference utilitarianism states that we should act in such a way that the number of frustrated preferences is minimized and is therefore directly based on antifrustrationism. The difference is that antifrustrationism is an
axiology, whereas negative preference utilitarianism is an ethical theory.
The moral philosopher
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a Secularit ...
has in the past endorsed a position similar to antifrustrationism (negative preference utilitarianism), writing:
See also
*
Antinatalism
Antinatalism or anti-natalism is the view that procreation is wrong. Antinatalists argue that humans should abstain from procreation because it is morally wrong. In scholarly and literary writings, various ethical arguments have been put forth ...
*
The Asymmetry (population ethics)
*
Buddhist ethics
Buddhist ethics are traditionally based on what Buddhists view as the enlightened perspective of the Buddha. The term for ethics or morality used in Buddhism is ''Śīla'' or ''sīla'' (Pāli). ''Śīla'' in Buddhism is one of three sections of ...
*
Deprivation
*
Frustration
In psychology, frustration is a common emotional response to opposition, related to anger, annoyance and disappointment. Frustration arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of an individual's will or goal and is likely to in ...
*
Negative utilitarianism
Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the tota ...
*
Painism
*
Pessimism
Pessimism is a negative mental attitude in which an undesirable outcome is anticipated from a given situation. Pessimists tend to focus on the negatives of life in general. A common question asked to test for pessimism is " Is the glass half emp ...
*
Stoicism
*
Suffering-focused ethics
Citations
References
*
*
*{{cite news, url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1980/aug/14/right-to-life/ , title=Right to Life? , last=Singer , first=Peter , newspaper=The New York Review of Books , date=1980-08-14
Axiology
Utilitarianism