This chapter explores the philosophical implications of a slowly ending world -- a place where humanity faces unavoidable and imminent (but not immediate) extinction. Section 1 introduces this new thought experiment. Section 2 asks why we should think about unavoidable, imminent, non-immediate human extinction. I argue that my slowly ending world is both an interesting thought experiment and a credible possible future. Sections 3 to 5 explore three topics in detail from the perspective of this slowly ending world: philosophical pessimism, procreative ethics, and multigenerational optimism. The goal of the chapter is not to defend any particular conclusions about the philosophy of the ending world, but simply to motivate its exploration.

In the final chapter of the book, I argue that future research in philosophy of parenthood should take either a significantly broader or significantly narrower view of parenthood (or parental rights/obligations). We should not assume that we can use any of these four key concepts of parenthood independently, without taking into account their interrelations with others. We may therefore move forward either by considering problem cases in light of these concepts as an interrelated web (or ‘family’) or by stripping back the questions being asked to investigate more specific concepts. For example, the latter approach to moral parenthood might involve putting aside the widespread presupposition that parental rights and obligations are a concomitant ‘package’ and instead focusing on isolated issues, such as the right not to be separated from one’s biological offspring. The rights and obligations with which philosophers are chiefly concerned should, on this approach, be stripped away from the myth of ‘the parent’ as one straightforward entity with clear and consistent characteristics.

This book delves into the four concepts of parenthood – social, biological, legal, and moral – at play in our understandings of parental rights and obligations, reproductive ethics, governance of parenthood, and ontologies of kinship. Our view of what it means to be a parent in any given context is shaped by all of these concepts, which are themselves subject to the influence of changing expectations, as new technologies are produced, cultural views of the family are transformed, and laws shift in response. These changes give rise to questions: who has the right to raise a child? What do we owe our children? Who should the law recognise as a parent, and what is the meaning of that recognition? Many of these questions are not questions about some independent notion of ‘parenthood’ but about the relationships between different concepts of parenthood. In doing so, I highlight newer but no less important questions for philosophical attention, including the scope of rights to become a biological parent (or to avoid that state), the impact of gendered norms on the social role of ‘parent’, and the legal difference between having a child and acquiring one.

This book delves into the four concepts of parenthood – social, biological, legal, and moral – at play in our understandings of parental rights and obligations, reproductive ethics, governance of parenthood, and ontologies of kinship. Our view of what it means to be a parent in any given context is shaped by all of these concepts, which are themselves subject to the influence of changing expectations, as new technologies are produced, cultural views of the family are transformed, and laws shift in response. These changes give rise to questions: who has the right to raise a child? What do we owe our children? Who should the law recognise as a parent, and what is the meaning of that recognition? Many of these questions are not questions about some independent notion of ‘parenthood’ but about the relationships between different concepts of parenthood. In doing so, I highlight newer but no less important questions for philosophical attention, including the scope of rights to become a biological parent (or to avoid that state), the impact of gendered norms on the social role of ‘parent’, and the legal difference between having a child and acquiring one.

Chapter 1, “Order and Origin,” begins by asking what we mean when we speak of the “modern novel.” Frequently its origins are traced to Gustave Flaubert, but this assumption deserves more scrutiny than it receives. What was preoccupying Flaubert in the months (indeed the very minutes) when he was formulating his beliefs about the novel, the pronouncements that would go on to become articles of faith for Joyce and other modern novelists? He was terrified that he had fathered a child, and he wrote in great detail about his aversion to the idea of creating new life. This chapter argues that this was not an idle distaste. It was, in fact, evidence of a sensibility (astringent, subtractive, devoted to an ideal of order) that undergirds the very idea of the modern novel that Flaubert inaugurated. This chapter provides close study of the procreative morality of Madame Bovary, L’Éducation sentimentale, and Bouvard et Pécuchet to demonstrate how such books, and such attitudes toward the problem of giving life, determined the course of the modern novel.