pessimism

pessimism, an attitude of hopelessness toward life and toward existence, coupled with a vague general opinion that pain and evil predominate in the world. It is derived from the Latin pessimus (“worst”). Pessimism is the antithesis of optimism, an attitude of general hopefulness, coupled with the view that there is a balance of good and pleasure in the world. To describe an attitude as pessimistic need not, however, mean that it involves no hope at all. It may locate its objects of hope and of appraisal in a region beyond ordinary experience and existence. It may also direct such hope and appraisal to the complete cessation and cancelling of existence.

Unsystematic pessimism is a reflection of material circumstances, of bodily health, or of general temperament. It is characteristically expressed in the language of Ecclesiastes that “all is vanity.” There are, however, systematic forms of pessimism, both philosophical and religious. The Orphic-Pythagorean view of the world was one of qualified pessimism, fleshly existence being regarded as a periodic penance undergone by the impure or guilty soul until it can at last be freed from the “cycle of becoming” by ceremonial purification or by philosophical contemplation. This same qualified pessimism in regard to fleshly existence and experience is found in Platonism, for which things in this world necessarily deviate from and fall short of their ideal exemplars. In Plato’s Phaedo fleshly tendencies and experiences only represent hindrances in the carrying-out of activities which will be fully performed after death. Eastern pessimism (of a qualified sort) may be illustrated in Buddhism, where all conscious personal existence is held to involve pain or ill, where the cause of such ill lies in personal striving or desire, and where positive appraisal is directed to a consummation (nirvana), which involves the cessation of striving and of conscious personal existence. It is similarly represented in the main currents of Hindu thought, with the additional thesis that the world is not only painful and evil but also illusory. A qualified pessimism is deeply characteristic of Christianity, where Earth is a fallen world, in which human reason and will are corrupted, and where it is only by redemptive action coming from beyond the world and fulfilling itself in another order that such ills can be rectified.

Philosophical pessimism was strong in the 19th century and was represented in the systems of Arthur Schopenhauer and Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann. Schopenhauer presented a synthesis of Kantianism and Buddhism, the Kantian thing-in-itself being identified with a blind irrational will behind phenomena; the world, being the manifestation of such an unhappy will, must itself be unhappy. In the first half of the 20th century critical philosophy tended to steer clear of the whole issue of optimism versus pessimism; feeling themselves unable to make many general assertions about the world, philosophers were particularly unwilling to make general assessments of its goodness or badness. A qualified pessimism in regard to the world and to human nature was, however, characteristic of several theological systems (e.g., the theologies of Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and the Dutch neo-Calvinists Herman Dooyeweerd and D.H.T. Vollenhoven). Perhaps the most uncompromisingly pessimistic system ever developed is that of the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, for whom death, nothingness, and anxiety were central topics of interest and for whom the highest possible act of human freedom was a coming to terms with death.