Project MUSE - George Moore and Decadent Antinatalism (original) (raw)

Abstract:

Decadent literature of the fin de siècle drew substantial inspiration from Catholicism, but also was infused with much of the Schopenhauerian pessimism that animates antinatalism, an increasingly popular brand of philosophical pessimism that advocates the extinction of human life through a refusal to reproduce. Irish novelist George Moore's plays with the ideas of voluntary species extinction in his decadent novel Mike Fletcher (1889). Far from glorifying its antinatalist protagonist, however, I contend that Moore's novel ultimately demonstrates the horrific and pathetic consequences of a radically materialist philosophy divorced from a particularly Christian notion of life's inherent dignity.

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