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Pessimists see the world as uninviting and cruel.
Pessimism, from the Latin pessimus (worst), denotes a belief that the experienced world is the worst possible. It describes a general belief that things are bad, and tend to become worse; or that looks to the eventual triumph of evil over good; it is the antonym of optimism, the contrary belief in the goodness and betterment of things generally. A common conundrum illustrates optimism versus pessimism with the question - does one regard a given glass of water as: "Is the glass half empty or half full?" Conventional wisdom expects optimists to reply with half full and pessimists to respond with half empty, but this is not always the case.

Philosophical pessimism describes a tendency to believe that life has a negative value, or that this world is as bad as it could possibly be. In particular, it most famously describes the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

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 is 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 lame man who can see, but who rides on the shoulders of the blind giant of Will.

Likening human life to the life of other animals, he saw the reproductive cycle as indeed a cyclical process that continues pointlessly and indefinitely, unless the chain is broken by too limited resources to make continued life possible, in which case it is terminated by extinction. The prognosis of either pointlessly continuing the cycle of life or facing extinction is one major leg of Schopenhauer's pessimism.

Schopenhauer moreover considers the desires of the will to entail suffering: because these selfish desires create constant conflict in the world. The business of biological life is a war of all against all. Reason makes us suffer all the more, in that reason makes us realize that biology's agenda is something we would not have chosen if we had a choice, but is helpless to prevent us from serving it, or allow us to escape the sting of its goad (compare this to the role of desire in Buddhism).

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 is 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 could not continue to exist, it is absolutely impossible; and so this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds.

– Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. II, Ch. 46.

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. These are disputable assertions, considering that the planet's orbit is not 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 is 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 should not 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 is to exist at all. Q.E.D.

– Ibid.

Other philosophical or literary pessimists

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?"[1]

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!" [2]

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 is hard, joyless and so full of suffering that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?"


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 cannot describe his biosophy.

Some works of popular literature may also exhibit pessimism, such as Stephen King's Pet Semetary. 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).

Famous Pessimists

See also

References

1. ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy Or: Hellenism and Pessimism, "Attempt at a Self-Criticism," §1
2. ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy Or: Hellenism and Pessimism, "Attempt at a Self-Criticism," §6

Bibliography

  • Dienstag, Joshua Foa, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit, Princeton University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-691-12552-X
  • Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, New York: Vintage Books, 1967, ISBN 0-394-70369-3
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evil is an active force. In the Christian religion, good is, by definition, what God commands, and Satan works to spread evil (disobedience) in the world. Evil thoughts are as serious as evil actions. In Zoroastrianism there are two Gods, the good Ahura Mazda and the evil Ahriman.
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Antonyms, from the Greek anti ("opposite") and onoma ("name") are word pairs that are opposite in meaning, such as hot and cold, obese and skinny, and up and down.
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Optimism is an outlook on life such that one maintains a view of the world as a positive place. It is the opposite of pessimism. Optimists generally believe that people and events are inherently good, so that most situations work out in the end for the best.
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Is the glass half empty or half full? is a common expression, used rhetorically to indicate that a particular situation could be a cause for optimism (half full), pessimism (half empty), realism ("that depends on whether you are pouring or drinking"), functionalism (twice as large
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Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic).
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Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher who believed that the will to live is the fundamental reality and that this will, being a constant striving, is insatiable and ultimately yields only suffering.
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Will, or willpower, is a philosophical concept that is defined in several different ways.

Will as internal drive

Further information: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, and Intrinsic motivation

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In western philosophy, reason has had a twofold history. On the one hand, it has been taken to be objective and so to be fixed and discoverable by dialectic, analysis or study.
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human sexuality is how people experience and express themselves as sexual beings.[1] The study of human sexuality is comprised of a broad range of behaviors, processes, and societal topics.
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Metaphor (from the Greek: metapherin) is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. In the simplest case, this takes the form: "The [first subject] is a [second subject].
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extinction is the cessation of existence of a species or group of taxa, reducing biodiversity. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species (although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point).
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Prognosis (older Greek πρόγνωσις, modern Greek πρόγνωση - literally fore-knowing, foreseeing
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Suffering, or pain in this sense,[1] is a basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm in an individual.
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Buddhism is often described as a religion[1] and a collection of various philosophies, based initially on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, known as Gautama Buddha.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher who believed that the will to live is the fundamental reality and that this will, being a constant striving, is insatiable and ultimately yields only suffering.
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The World as Will and Representation is the central work of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Relationship to earlier philosophical work

The main body of the work states at the beginning that it assumes prior knowledge of Immanuel Kant's theories, and Schopenhauer is regarded by
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For the Big Finish Productions audio play, see .
An extinction event (also known as: mass extinction; extinction-level event, ELE) is a sharp decrease in the number of species in a relatively short period of time.
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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) (IPA: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvilhelm ˈniːtʃə]) was a nineteenth-century German philosopher.
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The term ancient Greece refers to the periods of Greek history in Classical Antiquity, lasting ca. 750 BC[1] (the archaic period) to 146 BC (the Roman conquest). It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western Civilization.
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5th century BC - 4th century BC

530s BC 520s BC 510s BC - 500s BC - 490s BC 480s BC 470s BC
509 BC 508 BC 507 BC 506 BC 505 BC
504 BC 503 BC 502 BC 501 BC 500 BC

- - State leaders - Sovereign states
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Events and trends


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In a figurative sense a tragedy (from Classical Greek τραγωδία, "song for the goat", see below) is any event with a sad and unfortunate outcome, but the term also applies specifically in Western culture to a form of drama defined by
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The World as Will and Representation is the central work of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Relationship to earlier philosophical work

The main body of the work states at the beginning that it assumes prior knowledge of Immanuel Kant's theories, and Schopenhauer is regarded by
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Sigmund Freud

Born May 6 1856(1856--)
Freiberg, Moravia, now the Czech Republic
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Civilization and Its Discontents is a book by Sigmund Freud. Written in 1929, and first published in German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur ("The Uneasiness in Culture"), it is one of Freud's most important and widely read works.
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Peter Wessel Zapffe (December 18 1899-October 12 1990) was a Norwegian author and philosopher. He was born in Tromsø and was well known for his somewhat pessimistic view of human existence.
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Biosophy, meaning wisdom of life, is a humanist movement heavily influenced by the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. It is "the science and art of intelligent living based on the awareness and practice of spiritual values, ethical-social principles and character
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Stephen King

Stephen King
Pseudonym: Richard Bachman
John Swithen
Born: September 21 1947 (1947--) (age 60)
Portland, Maine, U.S.
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Pet Sematary
Author Stephen King
Cover artist Linda Fennimore
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Horror novel
Publisher Doubleday
Publication date 1983
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