Why did the stoics and socrates advocate abortion and the killing of deformed babies...

why did the stoics and socrates advocate abortion and the killing of deformed babies? And the killing of babies from inferior parents?

I'm confused.

Muh duty

whats confusing you about it user?

Well Socrates said to commit no injustice to no one. And then advocates in the republic to leave deformed babies to die from exposure.

The stoics advocated abortions too because it was rational. The best for the Roman state. Some emperors outlawed it but not for reasons that concerned the unborn baby. But that it deprived the father of an heir.

I don't care that a lot of women did it for selfish reasons, that women often killed their babies with or without their husbands approval.

I care that moral thinkers thought it was right to abort deformed babies. While I agree that it is rational, I think nature should run it's course. I mean if suffering was inevitable in life then how come when it comes to deformed babies/fetuses that it is just to "put it out of it's misery"

Primitives cultures didn't consider babies people

Infant mortality was too high, you had to at least make it past childhood to be considered a real person

Also in pre-modern times food was in short supply constantly, nobody wants to waste precious food on some useless retarded baby

Are you aware that ~90% of babies in Europe and America which are screened for down syndrome are aborted?

It's simply the right thing to do for the human species, and one of the only ways to eradicate diseases.

For a long while for a baby to be considered born it had to have a human shape and it couldn't have been stillborn (note, it could die shortly after, but if it were stillborn it wouldn't count). Now this is a very broad generalization of the Roman and medieval European thought on the matter. And i don't know how it came to be.

In Rome a fetus (nascitur, unborn child) was considered a living creature, however this was more of a legal assumption. It is alive, however if it is stillborn it no longer counts as being alive at any point in time.
This is due to inheritance reasons.
Let's say the father dies in war. Then his unborn child has a right to property.

Killing deformed children in-utero is still legal in the first world senpai.

>asking why the stoics didn't give into emotional reasoning
What the fuck were you thinking while typing?

Why the fuck is this still frowned upon? Why do we pretend that the child the parents chose to keep who literally can't even help himself regardless of age is a "blessing"? It's weird and it doesn't make sense. Abort the child and try again. Don't make it struggle through life doomed to such an awful existence just to appease your conscience.

Unironically this. Why is it unethical to kill a baby but not unethical to purposefully bring a human into a life of mostly suffering.

Holy shit who keeps these fucking monsters?

Painful existence is better than no existence at all.

while i agree with the notion that sick and othervise anomalous fetuses should be aborted and so on, im aware that these are just my personal biases based on my personal resentments, and im also aware theres a emotional dimension tied to this

the rattionale makes sense on its own, and its realy easy to understand why ancient cultures had such practices and why thinkers and philosophers condoned it, especialy in times of strife or lack, and considering the conditions of life bringing such a child into the world back then could not be seen as anithing other than irresponsible waste, but theres something else behind it

in a very profound way its morbid, not in the sense that its infanticide, but in the sense that the basic logic of it is one that would tell life what and how it has to be, that there is a way life should be and a way life shouldnt be, meaning its a sort of neurotic rejection of life, a resentment towards life as such, a drive to controll, to mortify, to force into form and negate or destroy all that which is unsatisfactory

the problem with such a approach is that it extends to all life, the notion of eugenic infanticide is just one aspect of it, it is a refusal of acceptance, and trough this it is a way to force life into being something we would prefer over what it actualy is, and this is necrophilic, and pretty much leads to destruction, disfunction and death

still, if i had a child with a woman and we found out its 'not right' id have her abort or leave, but then again, i realy hate life, and cant even imagine a situation in which i could accept my own child being like that, since in that case life dosent even have 0 value, it goes into the negative

this is probably why people who believe life has value find these things problematic, like op does, unles hes just baiting

Why?

Regarding deformed babies, I suspect the reasoning was that they would be a chronic drain on societal resources, with no offsetting societal value in later years.

It goes beyond just a food issue. A deformed or retarded child would also represent a significant drain on the time of both parents, leaving less time available for societal purposes.

They couldn't just kill the babies, because that gets into fuzzy gray areas regarding murder. So, they devised the practice of benign neglect. No crime, no foul, and the social grouping doesn't have to expend resources.

So that we wouldn't have people like you.

You could say that a deformed baby is a burden for the polis and therefore it's unjust to let the other citizens carry the burden for him. Justice means different things for different people.

Post figures...

You would kill Thom Yorke?

You're completely retarded. Plenty of "deformed", "crippled", or "retarded" people are happy as fucking hell, while plenty of "normal" people are miserable. One can never know how a child will turn out. Therefore, from the utilitarian perspective you are arguing from, one should always have the baby.

God your stupidity hurts.

Except my argument wasn't a utilitarian appeal. And I wasn't arguing for deformed people. I was appealing to those who will not have a happy life and are doomed to a shitty existence.
Next time try to argue against my argument instead of something you made up.

Because the last part requires people to recognize how objectively awful existence is, which is a bit of a problem when you're stuck in the middle of it.

Feel free to waltz over to wikipedia and get the basics of anti-natalism (and pessimism in general) instead of embarassing yourself on a peruvian bicycle board.

because you'll be wasting time on a dead end.
your sons and daughters are supposed to carry on your legacy and fulfil your wishes if you weren't able to do it in life - a mongo is fully dependent of you and once you past away he will have to be someone's pet and that's why it's good that their life expenctancy is so low

You're not planning to have a child though, since you hate life, right?

Captcha: Hickey street

these things often happen unplaned

Subjective.

So we should abort all normal people and just have retards?

>plenty of drunks make it home safe, and plenty of sober drivers crash!

Because they were too naive to recognize and respect Natural Law

come over here and i'll give you a painful existence