Yesterday, University of Chicago law professor Brian Leiter took Vox.com to task on his popular blog in a post entitled “So much for trying to bring philosophy to the public." In it, he addresses a recent editorial decision of Ezra Klein’s Vox to not run a piece that had been solicited from Torbjorn Tannsjo, the Kristian Claëson Professor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University, addressing (and defending) what is known in philosophy circles as the “repugnant conclusion."

Tannsjo’s piece argues that, “You should have kids because it’s your moral duty to do so.” This is because:

“Most people live lives that are, on net, happy. For them to never exist, then, would be to deny them that happiness. And because I think we have a moral duty to maximize the amount of happiness in the world, that means that we all have an obligation to make the world as populated as can be.”

This may seem relatively innocuous, but it is known as the “repugnant conclusion” because, in its full form, it essentially states that it is preferable to have many human lives that are of a lower quality of life than a few with a greater quality of life. This conclusion was most definitively articulated by British philosopher Derek Parfit in his 1984 book entitled Reasons and Persons:

“For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living.”

This conclusion is a function of the assumptions of utilitarian ethics, which hold that morality consists in maximizing the greatest good (which is in most cases happiness defined narrowly as pleasure or material wellbeing) for the greatest number. Therefore, if happiness is aggregated across an entire society, more individuals with less per capita happiness is preferable to less individuals with more per capita happiness.

It is called the “repugnant conclusion” because although most moral philosophers dislike it, it has been difficult to refute without shifting from utilitarian assumptions, which would yield a different kind of ethic entirely (for example, deontological ethics or virtue ethics).

According to Leiter’s post, Prof. Tannsjo’s piece articulating and defending the conclusion was ultimately rejected after going through the editing process.

The rejection email, which came from Dylan Matthews (who had originally solicited the piece), stated that Matthews had:

“...ran the piece by some other editors and they weren't comfortable running it; I think the concern is that people will misinterpret it as implying opposition to abortion rights and birth control, which, while I know it's not your intent, is a real concern.”

In other words, it’s not so much that Tannsjo’s argument was wrong, so much as it could potentially be interpreted as giving aid to those who hold “wrong” (read: “conservative”) opinions on abortion and birth control.

While Brian Leiter is no one’s idea of a conservative (quite the opposite), this, according to Leiter, represents a problem with our current political discourse. The episode demonstrates, “how difficult it is to translate [philosophy] for a mass audience which apparently is more concerned with taking the ‘correct’ view than with the reasoning.”

Ezra Klein, the editor of Vox, posted a piece clarifying the rejection. In it, he states:

“The idea that every human being has a moral obligation to produce as many children as physically possible has, to say the least, a lot of implications. Two of them, though by no means the only ones I raised to Matthews, were that birth control and abortion are, under most circumstances, immoral...I didn't think the piece made its case convincingly enough for us to stand behind a conclusion so sweeping and dramatic.”

Leiter responds that this explanation is “pathetically stupid” and effectively amounts to a rejection of the “Socratic ideal” which “let[s] the arguments run their course.”

Now, it strikes me on one hand that Leiter’s outrage is well-placed. It is frustrating for those who are trained in philosophy to witness the all-to-common inability of the popular media to deal with the genuine give-and-take that philosophy entails. The positing of unpopular – and even “repugnant” – positions for consideration is part of what, for philosophers from Socrates on, distinguishes philosophy from sophistry.

On the other hand, Plato was under no illusions that philosophy will be popular, as a rule. Philosophy is difficult in any age. Socrates was executed in large part for being a gadfly who rubbed powerful people the wrong way. Not because he was wrong, but because he was annoying, and because he asked difficult questions that were viewed as impious and disruptive.

Philosophy is particularly difficult in an age of soundbites, Twitter, and Vox “Explainers” (which purport to take sometimes very difficult and complex topics and explain them in a few paragraphs). It’s not that these things don’t have a place – they do. Making information available to as many as are interested to glean from it is an important success of our technological age.

But there are trade-offs. When these things become primary modes of communication, it can become extremely difficult to follow long, complex arguments to their conclusion. Often philosophical arguments will articulate and engage various potential objections, while citing previous work done on the issue. They will sometimes use technical language. And, yes, sometimes they will result in conclusions that make us uncomfortable, that we may even find repugnant.

Ironically, with the proliferation of available information – and perspectives – it becomes easy to find ourselves even more isolated from perspectives that challenge our own. In ages when books were scarce, arguments at odds with one’s preferred position were easy to come by. In an age where every perspective is represented by numerous outlets, it becomes easy to isolate oneself from ideas and perspectives that are incommensurate with our prejudices.

Philosophy proceeds by engaging with those various points of view, sometimes to defend what is being attacked, and sometimes to attack what is being defended. Indeed, this is how philosophy has proceeded since the time of Socrates. Without this back-and-forth, philosophy becomes all but impossible.

Leiter laments that so few are interested in reasoning. This is true. It is much easier to retreat into the comfort of one’s own unexamined assumptions than it is to challenge them by thinking through difficult arguments that one finds disagreeable, and either assent to them, or learn to refute them.

Nevertheless, free citizens of a republic are obligated to do the hard work of philosophical engagement. Liberty is hard work in this sense, but if liberty is to be sustained, this work is necessary. Unfortunately, by rejecting the piece, Vox has missed an opportunity to participate in the important task of facilitating this engagement.