#1204 Sarah Dierna: The History and Theory of Antinatalism

Hello everyone, welcome to a new episode of The Decenter. I'm your host as always, Riccardo Lopes, and today I'm joined by Sarah Di Erne. She's a PhD candidate in interpretation studies at the Department of Humanities at the University of Catania in Italy, where she collaborates with the chair of theoretical philosophy. And today we're going to talk about her book. slash monograph E il nacile che non ci voleva storia e teoria dell'antinatalismo that's a title in Italian I mean my translation is it's the birth we didn't want history and theory of antinatalism so Sarah welcome to the show it's a huge pleasure to have you one thank you thank you hi Riccardo hi to all the listener and thank you for the invitation

Of course, I mean, as I said, off record, uh, yours is one of my favorite books of 2025, so I'm really happy to finally have you on the show. So let me start by asking you then, before we get into the actual content of your bookslash monograph, what is anti-natalism for you? Because I've noticed that probably different theorists, different philosophers, different people that are that identify as antinatalists have perhaps a somewhat different conception of it. So what is your conception of antinatalism?

I would say that antinatalism uh for me is a kind of philosophical perspective where we try to to understand what does life is and we try to explain the reason for which not to be born it should be preferable and for me is a perspective that includes all living beings. and I mean all sentient beings but uh uh I for in my work I focus only on uh the human beings I mean right now and uh yeah this is a philosophical position I suppose so it's the more uh yeah the more general reply I can tell you yeah uh I mean so at least at this point you don't try to extend it to all sentient beings is that it Right. Yes, because uh uh also in the type of research I'm doing right now, I'm trying to focus on the role of the consciousness.

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