Pessimism
pessimism
(Latin: pessimus, worst)
A state of mind characterized by extreme melancholy seeing only the evil and painful aspect of life.
In philosophy, the theory that the world is essentially evil, the worst possible universe, consisting of blind, hopeless strivings of a never-to-be-sated Will, whose consciousness is synonymous with pain. (Schopenhauer)
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Pessimism
I. A TEMPER OF MIND
In popular language the term pessimist is applied to persons who habitually take a melancholy view of life, to whom painful experiences appeal with great intensity, and who have little corresponding appreciation of pleasurable ones. Such a temper is partly due to natural disposition, and partly to individual circumstances. According to Caro (after von Hartmann), it is especially prevalent in periods of transition, in which old ways of thought have lost their hold, while the new order has not yet made itself fully known, or has not secured general acceptance for its principles. In such a state of things men’s minds are driven in upon themselves; the outward order appears to lack stability and permanence, and life in general tends consequently to be estimated as hollow and unsatisfactory. Metchnikoff attributes the pessimistic temper to a somewhat similar period in the life history of the individual, viz.: — that of the transition from the enthusiasm of youth to the calmer and more settled outlook of maturity. It may be admitted that both causes contribute to the low estimate of life which is implied in the common notion of the pessimistic temperament. But this temperament seems to be far from rare at any time, and to depend upon causes too complex and obscure for exhaustive analysis. The poetic mind has very generally emphasized the painful aspect of life, though it is seldom wholly unresponsive to its pleasurable and desirable side. With Lucretius, however, life is a failure and wholly undesirable; with Sophocles, and still more with Æschylus, the tragic element in human affairs nearly obscures their more cheerful aspect: “It is best of all never to have been born”; the frank and unreflective joy in living and in the contemplation of nature, which runs through the Homeric poems, and is apparent in the work of Hesiod and that of the Greek lyrists, is but seldom found among those who look below the surface of things. In proportion as human affairs outgrew the naive simplicity of the early periods of history, the tendency to brood over the perplexities of emerging spiritual and social questions naturally increased. Byron, Shelley, Baudelaire and Leconte de Lisle, Heine and Leopardi are the poets of satiety, disillusion, and despair, as the genius of Goethe and Browning represents the spirit of cheerfulness and hope.
At the present moment it would seem that the variety of interests which science and education have brought within the reach of most persons, and the wide possibilities opened up for the future, have done much to discourage pessimistic feelings and to bring about the prevalence of a view of life which is on the whole of an opposite character. We must not, indeed, expect that the darker aspect of the world will ever be wholly abolished, or that it will ever cease to impress itself with varying degrees of intensity upon different temperaments. But the tendency of the present day is undoubtedly in the direction of that cheerful though not optimistic view of life which George Eliot called Meliorism, or the belief that though a perfect state may be unattainable, yet an indefinitely extended improvement in the conditions of existence may be looked for, and that sufficient satisfaction for human energy and desire may be found in the endeavour to contribute to it.
II. A SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY
As a philosophical system, Pessimism may be characterized as one of the many attempts to account for the presence of evil in the world (see EVIL). Leibniz held that “metaphysical” evil is necessarily involved in the creation of finite existences, and that the possibility of sin and consequent suffering is inalienable from the existence of free and rational creatures. The principle from which evil arises is thus made to be an integral part of the actual constitution of nature, though its development is regarded as contingent. With Schopenhauer, the originator of Pessimism as a system, as with those who have accepted his qualitative estimate of the value of existence, evil in the full sense is not merely, as with Leibniz, a possible development of certain fundamental principles of nature, but is itself the fundamental principle of the life of man. The world is essentially bad and “ought not to be”.
Schopenhauer holds that all existence is constituted by the objectivization of will, which is the sole and universal reality. Will is blind and unconscious until it is objectivized in human beings, in whom it first attains to consciousness, or the power of representation (Idea; Vorstellung). Hence arises the constant suffering which is the normal condition of human life. The essential nature of will is to desire and strive; and the consciousness of this perpetual unfulfilled desire is pain. Pleasure is merely an exception in human experience, the rare and brief cessation of the striving of the will, the temporary absence of pain. This theory recalls that of Plato (“Phædo”) who regarded pleasure as the mere absence of pain; and the conception of conscious life as essentially painful and undesirable is nearly identical with the Buddhist notion (quoted with approval by Schopenhauer) that conscious existence is fundamentally and necessarily evil. Hence, further, comes the ethical theory of Schopenhauer, which may be summed up as the necessity for “denying the Will to live”. Peace can be attained only in proportion as man ceases to desire; thus the pain of life can be minimized only by an ascetic renunciation of the search after happiness, and can be abolished only by ceasing to live. On the same principle, the poet Leopardi extolled suicide; and Mainländer took his own life.
Schopenhauer’s philosophical system of Monism has generally been regarded as in a great degree purely fanciful and self-contradictory. The teleological function attributed to the unconscious will, which produces phenomenal existence through the intervention of quasi-Platonic ideas, is obviously out of place; and the notion that we can through consciousness perceive will as apart from consciousness in our automatic bodily functions and thence also in the external world, creates a confusion between the rational will which we know in ourselves as the cause of action, and mere tendency or instinct, for which the characteristics of will are arbitrarily assumed.
Von Hartmann endeavoured to improve upon Schopenhauer by taking the unconscious (Unbewusst) as the foundation of reality. Will and idea are with him twin functions of the unconscious, which energizes both in them and apart from them. The idea becomes conscious through its opposition to will, and from this opposition arises the incurable, because essential, evil of life. In order to induce men to continue to exist, the unconscious leads them on to the pursuit of an unattainable happiness. The delusion presents itself in three successive forms, or stages, corresponding to the childhood, youth, and manhood of the race. In the first stage happiness is considered as attainable in the present life; in the second it is relegated to a transcendental future beyond the grave, and in the third (the present day) it is looked forward to as the future result of human progress. All are equally delusive; and there occurs, as a necessary consequence, at the end of each stage, and before the discovery of the next, the “voluntary surrender of individual existence” by suicide; and when, in its old age, the race has discovered the futility of its hopes it will desire nothing but unconsciousness and so will cease to will, and therefore to be.
Meanwhile, the moral duty of man is to co-operate in the cosmic process which leads to this end. He is “to make the ends of the Unconscious his own ends”, to renounce the hope of individual happiness, and so by the suppression of egoism to be reconciled with life as it is. Here von Hartmann claims to have harmonized Optimism and Pessimism, by finding in his own Pessimism the strongest conceivable impulse to effective action. With von Hartmann, life is not, as with Schopenhauer, essentially painful; but pain predominates greatly over pleasure: and the world is the outcome of a systematic evolution, by which the end of the unconscious will eventually be attained in the return of humanity into the peace of unconsciousness. The world is not, as Schopenhauer considered it, the worst possible, but the best, as is shown by the adaptation of means to ends in the evolutionary process. Nevertheless it is altogether bad, and had better not have been.
The unconscious of von Hartmann is involved in the same self-contradiction as the will of Schopenhauer. It is difficult to attach any real significance to the conception of consciousness as a function of the unconscious, or to that of purposive action by the unconscious. Considered simply as a reasoned basis for a doctrine of Pessimism, von Hartmann’s system appears much like a Gnostic mythology, or such quasi-mystical imagery as that of Jacob Boehme, representing the pessimistic aspect of the actual world. From this point of view it may be said that both Schopenhauer and Hartmann rendered some service by emphasizing the perpetual contrast between desire and achievement in human affairs, and by calling attention to the essential function of suffering in human life. Schopenhauer and von Hartmann stand alone as the originators of metaphysical systems of an essentially pessimistic character. The subject has also, however, been treated from a philosophical standpoint by Bahnsen, Mainländer, Duprel, and Preuss, and has been discussed from a more or less optimistic point of view by Dühring, Caro, Sully, W. James, and many others. The extravagant speculations of Nietzsche are to a great extent founded on his early sympathy with the point of view of Schopenhauer.
The view to be taken of the contention of Pessimism depends mainly on whether the question can be settled by an estimate — supposing that one can be formed — of the relative amount of pleasure and pain in average human life. It may well be thought that such a calculus is impossible, since it must obviously depend in a great degree on purely subjective and therefore variable considerations. Pleasure and pain vary indefinitely both in kind and intensity with persons of differing idiosyncrasies. Life, it is contended, may still be happy, even though its pains may exceed its pleasures; or it may be worthless even if the reverse is the case. The point of view involves a judgment of values, rather than a quantitative estimate of pleasure and pain. The true pessimistic estimate of life would be that it is rather unhappy, because it is worthless, than worthless because it is unhappy. But again, values can be estimated or judged only according to the degree of personal satisfaction they imply; and we are brought back to a merely subjective view of the value of life, unless we can discover some absolute standard, some estimate of the comparative importance of its pleasures and pains which is invariable and the same for all. Such a standard of value is to be found in religious belief, and exists in its most complete form in the faith of Catholics. Religion fixes the scale of values by reference not to varying individual sensibilities, but to an eternal law which is always ideally and may be actually the reason of the individual judgment. Moreover, the recognition of such an absolute standard itself provides an absolute satisfaction, arising from action in accordance with it, which cannot exist in the absence of such recognition, and which is only travestied by Schopenhauer’s pseudo-mystical delight in contemplating the “kernel of things”, or by von Hartmann’s personal adoption of the assumed “ends” of the unconscious.
Thus the Christian law of duty gives to action, in itself possibly quite the reverse of pleasurable, a value far outweighing that of the satisfaction arising from any specific pleasure, whether sensuous or intellectual. The inevitable Christian tendency to depreciate satisfaction arising from pleasure as against the performance of duty has caused Christianity to be classified as a system of Pessimism. This is, for example, the view taken of it by Schopenhauer, who declares that “Optimism is irreconcilable with Christianity”, and that true Christianity has throughout that ascetic fundamental character which his philosophy explains as the denial of the will to live.
Von Hartmann, in like manner, rejecting as mythical the foundation of the Christian Faith and its hope of the hereafter, takes its historical and only important content to be the doctrine that “this earthly vale of tears has in itself no value whatever, but that, on the contrary, the earthly life is composed of tribulation and daily torment.” It can hardly be disputed that the Christian view of life in itself is scarcely less pessimistic than that of Schopenhauer or Hartmann; and its pains are regarded as essentially characteristic of its present condition, due to the initial misdirection of human free-will. No estimate of the essential painfulness of human life could well exceed that of the ‘Imitatio Christi” (see, e. g., III, xx). But the outlook is profoundly modified by the introduction of the “eternal values” Which are the special province of Christianity. The unhappiness of the world is counterbalanced by the satisfaction which arises from a peaceful conscience, and a sense of harmony between individual action and eternal law; faith and love contribute an element of joy to life which cannot be destroyed, and may even be enhanced, by temporal suffering; and in some cases at least the delights of supernatural mystical contemplation reduce merely natural pain and pleasure to comparative insignificance.
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SCHOPENHAUER, The World as Will and Idea, tr. HALDANE AND KEMP (London, 1886); VON HARTMANN. The Philosophy of the Unconscious, tr. COUPLAND (London, 1893); BENEKE, Neue Grundlegung zur Metaphysik (Berlin, 1822); DÜHRING, Der Werth des Lebens (Leipzig, 1881); MAINLÄNDER, Philosophie der Erlösung (Berlin, 1886); CHALLEMEL-LACOUR, Etudes et réflexions d’un pessimiste (Paris, 1901); CARO, Le pessimisme au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1878); PIERENS-GEVAERT, La tristesse contemporaine (Paris, 1899); JAMES, The Will to Believe (Philadelphia, 1896); IDEM, Pragmatism: lecture VIII (London, 1897); SULLY, Pessimism (London, 1901); SCHILLER, The Relation of Pessimism to Ultimate Philosophy in International Journal of Ethics, VIII (1897); RENOUVIER, Notre pessimisme in La crit. philos. (1872); WENLEY, Aspects of Pessimism (London, 1894); MALLOCK, Is Life Worth Living? (London, 1879); MÜNSTERBERG, The Eternal Values (Boston, 1909); METCHNIKOFF, The Prolongation of Life (tr. London, 1907).
A. B. SHARPE. Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Pessimism
the opposite of Optimism (q.v.), is the doctrine that the universe is the worst possible, or the worst conceivable. This is the broadest form in which the doctrine can be stated or held. In a non-limited application it might be defined as the doctrine that human existence, in its conditions and its destiny, is only an evil. SEE EVIL and SEE ORIGIN OF EVIL. Popularly applied, pessimism might be defined as the doctrine that the evil outweighs the good in the universe at large or in the condition of man.
The term is of recent coinage, and has only become current in its philosophical or popular meaning within the last twenty years, chiefly through the influence of Arthur Schopenhauer (q.v.) and Eduard von Hartmann. The very recent introduction of the term indicates, if it does not prove, that the doctrine itself as a formal theory is of recent origin. It is true that all literatures and all philosophies abound in complaints and meditations and proposed remedies having respect to the evils of human existence, and the apparent defects in the constitution or the workings of the universe. But these theories and complaints and remedies all presuppose that some good reason can be given, or some valuable end suggested, as the explanation or the compensation for the evil which is accounted for or bemoaned. None of the ancient philosophies or theologies are avowedly and consistently pessimistic except that of Buddhism, which formally teaches that all the present forms of existence are only evil, and that the only good conceivable is in Nirvana. What this may be is not so clear as might be desired: whether the termination of conscious and sentient existence, or the actual cessation of all forms of active desire and hope, which work conflict or disappointment.
With the exception named, all the older philosophies and theologies are in theory optimistic, so far as they all resolve the existence of physical evil into some permanent or preponderating good, under the conduct of one supreme Deity or reason, or many subordinate deities, who in some way were supposed to bring greater good out of abounding evil. Even the theory of Lucretius cannot be said to be pessimistic. The temper in which the great thinkers and the leading philosophers of antiquity regarded the economies of the universe and the ordering of human affairs varies with the greater or less hopefulness of the times in which they wrote, and the clearness and firmness with which they held to faith in divine guidance and the divine goodness. It is worthy of observation that the universe and the condition of man never seemed darker nor more hopeless, in the judgment of reflecting and sympathizing thinkers, than a little before and after Christianity made its appearance in the world, offering the solutions and the comforts which it brought as pre-eminently a religion of contentment, thankfulness, and hope.
But with all the consolation and hope which Christianity afforded to man, it did not put to rest all speculation and misgiving in respect to the mystery of evil. Indeed, it is no more than the truth to say that Christianity brought special difficulties of its own, which, according to some interpretations made of its teachings, have seemed to darken the mystery of evil, and to complicate the explanation of its existence. It is no part of our duty to recite the theories of Christian philosophy in respect to the existence of physical and moral evil. It is enough that we call attention to the fact that their theories are in form or in fact optimistic. They all find the explanation of evil in some greater and superabounding good, of which this evil in its infliction or permission is the condition or the means. They all recognize the existence of a wise and benevolent Ruler of the universe, who from seeming evil is ever educing good, and whose wisdom and goodness will be amply justified when the reasons of his administration are fully understood. In theory and in fact, no theistic theory of the universe can be conceived of as pessimistic.
With the denial of theism, pessimism is possible, but not necessary. Spinoza seems to be an optimist when he asserts that finite evil and good are only relative conceptions; that what seems to be evil is the necessary manifestation or outworking of the universal substance. Logically considered, his argument is not valid, for, in order to make it such, it must be assumed or proved that the existence of the universal substance or God is itself a good. The philosophy of Hegel found in the necessary evolution of the absolute a place for every form of evil as a necessary stage in the process by which the idea at last comes to self-consciousness in man, and thus marks the steps of its advancement or evolution in the history of each individual, and in the progress of the race. But in order to justify the occurrence of these transient evils, this development of the lower into the higher must be assumed to be good. Pessimism is by no means excluded by this theory of Hegel, except by the assumption that an outcome of preponderating evil in the universe would be unreasonable, and unreason is evil only, and cannot be actual. But this solution only illustrates a fundamental weakness or limitation of the system itself in its conceptions of good and evil.
Schopenhauer makes the two elements or factors of the universe to be will i.e. force and thought; i.e. Vorstellung; conceiving, however, of neither nor of both as implying a personal God. He does, indeed, make the force which is blind when it begins to work to come at the end of its operations to a consciousness of itself and of its work; but the discovery which it makes of both is anything rather than satisfactory. As soon as the blind will comes to the clear knowledge of the unsatisfactory character of its work, it recoils with horror, and strives for self-annihilation. Schopenhauer gives his reasons for holding that all life is only suffering: 1. The constitution of the human individual; 2. The nature of enjoyment; 3. The consequents of possession and gratification; 4. The relation of man to the external world; 5. The aimless operation of history. From these data he concludes that the universe is the worst possible, arguing that if it were a shade worse it could not possibly exist. The only transitory happiness which man can find or should value are the passionless pleasures of science and art. These have as little as possible of the elements of feeling and impulse, and therefore are liable to the least possible alloy.
Hartmann contends that the universe as a whole is uncontrolled by design. Each part is adapted to every other, but no design controls the whole. This he argues from the unsatisfactory results of the universe, with which he contends no reasonable being could possibly be content, and therefore the universe as a whole is neither reasonable nor good. In proof, he cites
(1) The law of nervous exhaustion;
(2) The pleasure found in relief from pain does not usually outweigh the pain;
(3) The most of our pleasures are unobtrusive; the contrary is true of pains;
(4) All gratifications are usually brief, while sufferings are enduring. The remedy which Hartmann proposes is to elevate and strengthen the will to a passionless indifference to existence and its evils, and a passionless enjoyment of its blessings. SEE STOICISM.
The affinity of these philosophical theories with the hypotheses of blind evolutionism and the survival of the fittest, as taught by many modern expounders of natural history, is too obvious to need exposition. The moment we abandon the position that design controls the universe, and that the tendency of its forces and movements authorizes us to believe in the goodness of a personal God, it is impossible to set aside the reasonings which lead to the hopeless and repulsive conclusions of pessimism. In literature pessimism is nearly allied to nihilism, or that faithless and hopeless view of life’s duties and life’s activities which is the result of the overstimulated and the overindulged curiosity and tastes that characterize most of our modern life. Indeed, it is in this practical form only that pessimism is likely to be current or dangerous. There are comparatively few men who will be attracted by this doctrine as an abstract theory of the universe. Its assumptions are too remote and doubtful, and the deductions are too attenuated. But there are multitudes in this our own cultivated age who have found life so empty, and the gratification of passion so unsatisfying, and even the pursuit of art and literature so unrewarding, as to be ready to accept the conclusion that the universe is badly ordered, and human existence is only vanity and vexation of spirit. Theoretic pessimism is, on the one hand, compatible with the grossest debauchery, the most shameless self-seeking, and the most cruel oppression; and on the other with stoic indifference for one’s personal sufferings, and passionless unsympathy for the sorrows of others. No influence can be more unfriendly to individual or national character than the absence of faith in God and man which such n theory implies or engenders. No heroism nor self-sacrifice nor self-culture in its highest forms can flourish in a community of educated men who have persuaded themselves that their life is a burden, that the universe is false to its promises, and that their very nature is necessarily in conflict with the impulses and hopes which impel it to action. Neither art nor literature nor philosophy can escape the blight which pessimism, as a philosophy of the universe or a theory of life, must of necessity bring upon all that is noble and aspiring in man and his achievements. See Huber, Der Pessimismus (Munich, 1876); Volkelt, Das Unbewusste und der Pessimismus: Studien zur modernen Geistesbewegung (Berlin, 1873); Taubert, Der Pessimismus und seine Gegner; Von Hartmann, Ist der pessimistische Monismus trostlos? Gesammeltephil. Abhandlungen (Berlin, 1872); Pfleiderer, Der Pessimismus (Berlin, 1875); Christlieb, Infidelity, v. 40; Ueberweg, Hist. of Philosophy (see Index); Christian Quar. April, 1874, p. 284-88; North Amer. Rev. July, 1873, art. 2.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Pessimism
(Lat. pessimus, the worst) The attitude gained by reflection on life, man, and the world (psychiatrically explained as due to neurotic or other physiological conditions, economically to over-population, mechanization, rampant utilitarianism; religiously to lack of faith; etc.) which makes a person gloomy, despondent, magnifying evil and sorrow, or holding the world in contempt. Rationalizations of this attitude have been attempted before Schopenhauer (as in Hesiod, Job, among the Hindus, in Byron, Giacomo Leopardi, Heine, Musset, and others), but never with such vigor, consistency, and acumen, so that since his Welt als Wille und Vorstellung we speak of a 19th century philosophic literature of pessimism which considers this world the worst possible, holds man to be born to sorrow, and thinks it best if neither existed. Buddhism (q.v.) blames the universal existence of pain, sorrow, and death; Schopenhauer the blind, impetuous will as the very stuff life and the world are made of; E. v. Hartmann the alogical or irrational side of the ill-powerful subconscious; Oswald Spengler the Occidental tendency toward civilization and hence the impossibility of extricating ourselves from decay as the natural terminus of all organic existence. All pessimists, however, suggest compensations or remedies; thus, Buddhism looks hopefully to nirvana (q.v.), Schopenhauer to the Idea, v. Hartmann to the rational, Spengler to a rebirth through culture. See Optimism. — K.F.L.