Development of pessimist thought
In religion
Buddhism
Historically, philosophical pessimism seems to have first presented itself in theNow_this,_
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,_is_the_noble_truth_of_suffering:_birth_is_suffering,_aging_is_suffering,_illness_is_suffering,_death_is_suffering;_union_with_what_is_displeasing_is_suffering;_separation_from_what_is_pleasing_is_suffering;_not_to_get_what_one_wants_is_suffering;_in_brief,_the_five_aggregates_subject_to_clinging_are_suffering.
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, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.
Most often, hope brings with it disappointment, enjoyment produces satiety and disgust; in life, the sum of sorrows is greater than that of pleasures; to seek happiness, or only pleasure, is therefore vain and contradictory, since in reality, one will always find a surplus of sorrows; what one must tend to is only to avoid sorrow; now, in order to feel less sorrow, there is only one way: to make oneself indifferent to the pleasures themselves and to what produces them, to blunt sensitivity, to annihilate desire. Indifference, renunciation, here is thus the only palliative of life.
Judaism and Christianity
TheThe words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.In chapter 4, the author also expresses antinatalistic thoughts, articulating that, better than those who are already dead, is he who was not yet been born:
Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed—and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors—and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.Some parallels have been made between the Book of Ecclesiastes and an ancient Mesopotamian literary composition named the
Gnosticism
Ancient Greece
Hegesias of Cyrene
Complete happiness cannot possibly exist; for that the body is full of many sensations, and that the mind sympathizes with the body, and is troubled when that is troubled, and also that fortune prevents many things which we cherished in anticipation; so that for all these reasons, perfect happiness eludes our grasp.Hegesias held that all external objects, events, and actions are indifferent to the wise man, even death: "for the foolish person it is expedient to live, but to the wise person it is a matter of indifference". According to
Middle Ages
17th century
Baltasar Gracián
Blaise Pascal
18th century
Voltaire
In response to theJean-Jacques Rousseau
For19th century
Giacomo Leopardi
Though a lesser-known figure outside Italy,The sense of the nothingness of all things, the inadequacy of each and every pleasure to fill our spirit, and our tendency toward an infinite that we do not understand comes perhaps from a very simple cause, one that is more material than spiritual. The human soul (and likewise all living beings) always essentially desires, and focuses solely (though in many different forms), on pleasure, or happiness, which, if you think about it carefully, is the same thing. This desire and this tendency has no limits, because it is inborn or born along with existence itself, and so cannot reach its end in this or that pleasure, which cannot be infinite but will end only when life ends. And it has no limits (1) either in duration (2) or in extent. Hence there can be no pleasure to equal (1) either its duration, because no pleasure is eternal, (2) or its extent, because no pleasure is beyond measure, but the nature of things requires that everything exist within limits and that everything have boundaries, and be circumscribed.Going against the Socratic view present ever since
German pessimism
Although the first manifestations of philosophical pessimism date back to antiquity, never before did it take such a systematic turn and been so reflected upon as in Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century. For almost fifty years, the issue of pessimism was discussed in the context of ''Arthur Schopenhauer
The first presentation of philosophical pessimism in a systematic manner, with an entire structure ofIn nature-without-knowledge her inner being sa constant striving without aim and without rest, and this stands out much more distinctly when we consider the animal or man. Willing and striving are its whole essence, and can be fully compared to an unquenchable thirst. The basis of all willing, however, is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them again by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom come over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself become an intolerable burden for it. Hence its life swings like a pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact its ultimate constituents.Schopenhauer saw human reason as weak and insignificant compared to Will; in one
For what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.Moreover, Schopenhauer argued that the business of biological life is a war of all against all, filled with constant strife and struggle, with each different phenomenon of the will-to-live contesting with one another to maintain its own phenomenon:
This universal conflict is to be seen most clearly in the animal kingdom. Animals have the vegetable kingdom for their nourishment, and within the animal kingdom again every animal is the prey and food of some other. This means that the matter in which an animal's Idea manifests itself must stand aside for the manifestation of another Idea, since every animal can maintain its own existence only by the incessant elimination of another's. Thus the will-to-live generally feasts on itself, and is in different forms its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as manufactured for its own use.He also asserted that pleasure and pain were asymmetrical: pleasure has a negative nature, while pain is positive. By this Schopenhauer meant that pleasure does not come to us originally and of itself, that is, pleasure is only able to exist as a removal of a preexistent pain or want, while pain directly and immediately proclaims itself to our perception:
We feel pain, but not painlessness; care, but not freedom from care; fear, but not safety and security. We feel the desire as we feel hunger and thirst; but as soon as it has been satisfied, it is like the mouthful of food which has been taken, and which ceases to exist for our feelings the moment it is swallowed. We painfully feel the loss of pleasures and enjoyments, as soon as they fail to appear; but when pains cease even after being present for a long time, their absence is not directly felt, but at most they are thought of intentionally by means of reflection. For only pain and want can be felt positively; and therefore they proclaim themselves; well-being, on the contrary, is merely negative. Therefore, we do not become conscious of the three greatest blessings of life as such, namely health, youth, and freedom, as long as we possess them, but only after we have lost them; for they too are negations.Schopenhauer saw in artistic contemplation a temporary escape from the act of willing. He believed that through "losing yourself" in art one could sublimate the Will. However, he believed that only resignation from the pointless striving of the Will to live through a form of
Post-Schopenhauerian pessimism
During the final years of Schopenhauer's life and subsequent years after his death, post-Schopenhauerian pessimism became a popular trend in 19th-century Germany. Nevertheless, it was viewed with disdain by the other popular philosophies at the time, such asJulius Bahnsen
The pessimistic outlook of the German philosopherPhilipp Mainländer
Eduard von Hartmann
In his work entitled ''Philosophy of the Unconscious'', the first edition of which appeared in 1869 and became famous already in the first years of its publication,Friedrich Nietzsche
Victorian pessimism
The pessimism of many of the thinkers of the20th century
Albert Camus
In a 1945 article,Peter Wessel Zapffe
Emil Cioran
21st century
Julio Cabrera
According to Julio Cabrera'sDavid Benatar
Human life would be vastly better if pain were fleeting and pleasure protracted; if the pleasures were much better than the pains were bad; if it were really difficult to be injured or get sick; if recovery were swift when injury or illness did befall us; and if our desires were fulfilled instantly and if they did not give way to new desires. Human life would also be immensely better if we lived for many thousands of years in good health and if we were much wiser, cleverer, and morally better than we are.
Philosophical responses to the human condition
The responses to the predicament of the human condition by pessimists are varied. Some philosophers, such as Schopenhauer and Mainländer, recommend a form of resignation and self-denial (which they saw exemplified inRegarding non-human animals
Aside from the human predicament, many philosophical pessimists also emphasize the negative quality of the life of non-human animals, criticizing the notion of nature as a " wise and benevolent" creator. In his 1973What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types—biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one's own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer-bees attacking with a fury and a demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn out—not to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in "natural" accidents of all types: an earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, automobiles make a pyramid heap of over 50 thousand a year in the U.S. alone, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet for about three billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer. But the sun distracts our attention, always baking the blood dry, making things grow over it, and with its warmth giving the hope that comes with the organism's comfort and expansiveness.The
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so. If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored... In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
In popular culture
The character ofSee also
Notes
References
Further reading
* Thomas Ligotti, ''The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror'' (2011) * Beiser, Frederick C., ''Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860–1900'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, * Ken Coates, ''Anti-Natalism: Rejectionist Philosophy from Buddhism to Benatar'', First Edition Design Publisher, 2014. * Dienstag, Joshua Foa, ''Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit'', Princeton University Press, 2006, * Nietzsche, Friedrich, ''External links
* * {{Cite journal, last=Contestabile , first=Bruno , title = The Denial of the World from an Impartial View, url = http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/w2bQ5j5xVahrmnPUrjqQ/full, journal = Contemporary Buddhism, date = 2016, volume=17 , pages=49–61 , doi=10.1080/14639947.2015.1104003 , s2cid=148168698