Everything about Philosophical Pessimism totally explained
Pessimism, from the Latin
pessimus (worst), is the decision to evaluate, percieve and view life in a generally negative light.
Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "
Is the glass half empty or half full?" situation. The degree in which situations like these are evaluated as something good or something
bad can be described in terms of one's
optimism or pessimism respectively.
Throughout history, the pessimistic disposition has had effects on all major areas of thinking.
Philosophical pessimism is the similar but not identical idea that life has a negative value, or that this world is as bad as it could possibly be.
Historical account of pessimism
The first idea of an
apocalypse has been traced back to 1400 BC.
Because the
First World War was followed by another, our collective ability to learn moral
lessons from history begins to seem suspect. Operating on the premise that morality is empty rhetoric,
game theory and its political complement
political realism appear as a model for understanding and prescribing behavior. The post war fifties saw the rise of
dystopian literature. Books such as
T. S. Eliot's
Wasteland,
Kafka's
The Trial,
Huxley's
Brave New World,
George Orwell's
1984, and plays such as
Samuel Beckett's
Waiting for Godot expressed a deep pessimism during this time. The Utopian promises of communism revealed themselves as false or unlikely during the
collapse of communism. Reason itself, which once held on unquestioned status of perfect objectivity, as humanity is access to the
truth, and it's understanding of progress, so widespread and unprecedented criticism in
post-modernism and
post structuralism. Likewise, nature, whose power and purity could at one time not be denied, is now the victim of
problematic population growth and
environmental decline. Upon broad analysis of history, some have determined that things in general are bad, and seemed to be in decline.
"I can only see emergency following up on another as wave follows up on a wave" |
--
HAL Fisher
Pessimism by individual
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimism comes from his elevating of
Will above
reason as the mainspring of human thought and behavior. Schopenhauer pointed to motivators such as hunger,
sexuality, the need to care for children, and the need for shelter and personal security as the real sources of human motivation. Reason, compared to these factors, is mere window-dressing for human thoughts; it's the clothes our naked hungers put on when they go out in public. Schopenhauer sees reason as weak and insignificant compared to Will; in one
metaphor, Schopenhauer compares the human intellect to a gay man who can see, but who rides the ass of the blind giant of Will.
Schopenhauer's Proof
Instead of asserting a personal opinion or viewpoint about the appearance of this world being the worst possible, such as a glass being half full or half empty, Schopenhauer attempted to logically prove it by analyzing the concept of pessimism.
But against the palpably sophistical proofs of Leibniz that this is the best of all possible worlds, we may even oppose seriously and honestly the proof that it's the worst of all possible worlds. For possible means not what we may picture in our imagination, but what can actually exist and last. Now this world is arranged as it had to be if it were to be capable of continuing with great difficulty to exist; if it were a little worse, it would be no longer capable of continuing to exist. Consequently, since a worse world couldn't continue to exist, it's absolutely impossible; and so this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds. |
He claimed that a slight worsening of conditions, such as a small alteration of the planet's orbit, a small increase in global warming, loss of the use of a limb for an animal, and so on, would result in destruction. The world is essentially bad and "ought not to be". These are disputable assertions, considering that the planet's orbit isn't wholly consistent to begin with, global temperature fluctuates over time, and animals can still live after losing a limb. However, taking into respect the fact that major fluctuations in global temperature have typically resulted in
mass extinctions in the past and an animal that loses a limb will only rarely survive long in the wild, they may appear reasonable.
Thus throughout, for the continuance of the whole as well as for that of every individual being, the conditions are sparingly and scantily given, and nothing beyond these. Therefore the individual life is a ceaseless struggle for existence itself, while at every step it's threatened with destruction. Just because this threat is so often carried out, provision had to be made, by the incredibly great surplus of seed, that the destruction of individuals shouldn't bring about that of the races, since about these alone is nature seriously concerned. Consequently, the world is as bad as it can possibly be, if it's to exist at all. Q.E.D. |
Freud
Sigmund Freud could also be described as a pessimist and he shared many of Schopenhauer's ideas. He saw human existence as being under constant attack from both within the self, from the forces of nature and from relations with others. The following quote, from
Civilization and its Discontents, is perhaps the best example of his pessimism:
We can cite many such benefits that we owe to the much despised era of scientific and technical advances. At this point, however, the voice of pessimistic criticism makes itself heard, reminding us that most of these pleasures follow the pattern of the "cheap pleasure" recommended in a certain joke, a pleasure that one can enjoy by sticking a bare leg out from under the covers on a cold winter's night, then pulling it back in..... What good is a long life to us if it's hard, joyless and so full of suffering that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?
The source for this is Spengler's
The Decline of the West (1918 - 1923), often cited in the years following its publication.
Oswald Spengler once declared, "Optimism is cowardice."
(External Link
) His description of the western civilization is where the populace constantly strives for the unattainable—making the western man a proud but tragic figure, for while he strives and creates he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached.
Arnold J. Toynbee: Toynbee wrote a similar comparative study of the rise and decline of civilizations,
A Study of History, somewhat concurrently with Spengler, which was released much later, around the conclusion of
World War II.
Others
The term has also been used to describe the position of the Norwegian philosopher
Peter Wessel Zapffe, although he clearly states in his philosophical treatise
Om det tragiske that pessimism is a term which can't describe his
philosophy.
Some works of popular literature may also exhibit pessimism, such as
Stephen King's
Pet Cemetery. King later expressed his reservations about the work: "It seems to be saying nothing works and nothing is worth it, and I don't really believe that" (Bare Bones 144-5).
Pessimism by subject
Moral pessimism
Narratives of decline can be identified in morality.
Friedrich Nietzsche's amorality,
Freud’s description of co-operation as
sublimation,
Stanley Milgram shock experiments. The continued presence of
war and
genocide despite global interconnectedness. The continual rise of
political apathy.
Intellectual pessimism
postmodernism,
Max Weber, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743 – 1819), characterized
rationalism, and in particular
Immanuel Kant's "critical" philosophy in order to carry out a
reductio ad absurdum according to which all rationalism (philosophy as criticism) reduces to
nihilism, and thus it should be avoided and replaced with a return to some type of
faith and
revelation.
Political pessimism
Political realists assert that states always have and always will be amoral wealth-seekers. With the
proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the shifting
balance of power, we may be entering the most dangerous political times ever encountered.
Environmental pessimism
Peak oil,
water shortage,
the depletion of the ozone layer,
bioaccumulation of toxins,
the population problem, the loss of
biodiversity. These problems, though and not simply and knowledge but pessimists, contribute to the the belief that things are in decline, perhaps irreparably.
Cultural pessimism
Cultural pessimists feel the
Golden age is in the past, and the current generation is fit only for
dumbing down and cultural careerism. Some significant formulations have gone beyond this, proposing a universally-applicable
cyclic model of history — notably in the writings of
Giambattista Vico.
Eschatological pessimism
Apocalypse predictions and the low
likelihood of alien contact lead to pessimistic ideas in eschatology.
Pessimism in culture
6teen
Wayne
The Banana Splits
Glum
The Boondocks
Huey Freeman
Death of a Salesman
Willy and Biff Loman
Denver, the Last Dinosaur
Denver, the Last Dinosaur
Fawlty Towers
Basil Fawlty
Futurama
Bender
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
Mandy (Billy & Mandy)
Hamlet
Prince Hamlet
Marvin the Paranoid Android
House
Dr.Gregory House
Monk
Adrian Monk
NASCAR Driver
Mark Marti
Portal
GLaDOS
The Silver Chair, part six in The Chronicles of Narnia
Puddleglum
Spongebob Squarepants
Squidward Tentacles
That '70s Show
Red Forman
Paul Fomenko
Eeyore
Criticism of pessimism
As decay
Nietzsche believed that the ancient Greeks (c. 500 B.C.) created Tragedy as a result of their pessimism. "Is pessimism necessarily a sign of decline, decay, degeneration, weary and weak instincts ... Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for the hard, gruesome, evil, problematic aspect of existence, prompted by well-being, by overflowing health, by the fullness of existence?"
Nietzsche's response to pessimism was the opposite of Schopenhauer's. " 'That which bestows on everything tragic, its peculiar elevating force' " – he (Schopenhauer) says in The World as Will and Representation, Volume II, P. 495 – " 'is the discovery that the world, that life, can never give real satisfaction and hence is not worthy of our affection: this constitutes the tragic spirit – it leads to resignation.' " How differently Dionysus spoke to me! How far removed I was from all this resignationism!"
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