[
  {
    "id": "sophaxis-2026.0004",
    "type": "article",
    "genre": "Preprint",
    "title": "The Nobility and Exemplarity of the Celibate Individual: An Antinatalist and Ascetic Reconsideration of Autonomy and Quality of Life",
    "author": [
      {
        "family": "Nemoto",
        "given": "Takuya"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2026,
          8,
          22
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "Zenodo",
    "DOI": "10.5281/zenodo.22058254",
    "URL": "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22058254",
    "abstract": "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.",
    "note": "Preprint, not peer-reviewed. Listed on Sophaxis as 2026.0004"
  }
]