This paper reconsiders celibacy not as a mere absence of sexual activity but as a substantive ethical and existential stance with a long history in Buddhist, Christian, and classical philosophical traditions. Drawing on antinatalist ethics, Epicurean hedonology, and Schopenhauerian pessimism, I argue that the conventional justification of sexual activity as a societal necessity — grounded in concerns about reproduction and demographic continuity — conflates descriptive biological function with normative ethical value. Once this conflation is set aside, I argue, the ethical evaluation of one's mode of living can be grounded instead in individual autonomy and self-sustaining quality of life (QOL) rather than reproductive obligation. Engaging with David Benatar's asymmetry argument, I suggest that the moral status of humanity's demographic continuity need not be treated as self-evidently overriding individual self-determination. I then draw on Epicurus's distinction between stable and transient pleasure, and on Schopenhauer's account of sexual desire as an expression of a species-oriented will-to-live, to argue that celibacy can constitute a coherent discipline of autonomous, self-sustained flourishing. Finally, I consider four objections — from relational psychology, from the alleged self-undermining character of universalized antinatalism, from the charge of theological parochialism, and from the subjectivity of QOL judgments — and offer replies. I conclude that celibacy, properly understood, merits recognition as one exemplary and defensible path of ethical self-cultivation, rather than as a deficiency to be explained away.
Abstract by Takuya Nemoto, given by the authors in the submission issue, because the DOI metadata has none, shown as plain text without other changes, under CC BY 4.0.
This is a preprint. It has not been peer-reviewed. Listing on Sophaxis means it passed moderation, not that it is correct. Sophaxis does not guarantee its quality. The authors bear full responsibility for its content.
Unmodified copies of the files the authors deposited at Zenodo, kept so that search engines can index the full text. They are shared under CC BY 4.0, by Takuya Nemoto. Cite the DOI.
Use of language models and other generative models
This revised version of the manuscript was prepared with the assistance of Claude (Claude Sonnet 5), a large language model AI system developed by Anthropic, PBC, in August 2026. AI assistance was used to: (i) restructure the argument into discrete, numbered sections; (ii) situate the paper's claims within existing philosophical literature, including Buddhist, Christian, Epicurean, Schopenhauerian, and Kantian sources; (iii) draft an objections-and-replies section addressing relational, self-undermining, parochialism, and subjectivity objections to the paper's central argument; and (iv) expand and copyedit the prose of the original manuscript. The author reviewed, revised, and takes full intellectual responsibility for all claims, arguments, and citations herein. AI assistance was not used to generate original empirical data, and this paper makes no empirical claims beyond what is explicitly cited. The AI system does not qualify as an author of this work; this disclosure is provided in the interest of transparency regarding the drafting process.
Notes and corrections
2026-11-02 The author's errata for the three philosophy papers (https://github.com/cpsbvbng26-dotcom/autonomy-and-self-cultivation/blob/main/ERRATA.md) record that the statement on language models leaves out two things: the manuscript was written in Japanese and the published English text is a translation by a language model, and the tools used for the translation are not named (E5).
Cite
APA
Nemoto, T. (2026). The Nobility and Exemplarity of the Celibate Individual: An Antinatalist and Ascetic Reconsideration of Autonomy and Quality of Life [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22058254
Chicago (author-date)
Nemoto, Takuya. 2026. “The Nobility and Exemplarity of the Celibate Individual: An Antinatalist and Ascetic Reconsideration of Autonomy and Quality of Life.” Preprint, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22058254.
BibTeX
@misc{nemoto2026sophaxis20260004,
author = {Takuya Nemoto},
title = {The Nobility and Exemplarity of the Celibate Individual: An Antinatalist and Ascetic Reconsideration of Autonomy and Quality of Life},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {Zenodo},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.22058254},
note = {Preprint, not peer-reviewed. Listed on Sophaxis as 2026.0004}
}