Optimism

OPTIMISM. — In the narrower philosophical sense the term refers, at the beginning of the 18th century, to the doctrine of Leibniz (v.) which holds the existing world, and therefore the present order of reality, to be the best among all possible ones (cf. Essais de théodicée, part 1, § 8; part 2, § 195 ff.; Monadol., § 90): this is optimism in the absolute sense. Relative optimism, on the other hand (opposed to pessimism [v.]), is the affirmation that the world, though not the best, is nevertheless substantially a good, and that being and life have an intrinsic dignity and value for which they are preferable to non-being and to death. A particular meaning (though the usage is not frequent) attaches to optimism in ethics (v.), where it indicates the theory that identifies the "good" with the "better" and prescribes as the motive and intention necessary to action the love of the good as such or the love of God: a "deontological" optimism, therefore (cf. J. Balmes, Filosofia fundamental, III, ch. 20; N. Malebranche, Traité de morale, ch. 3): in this sense Kantian and Stoic morality is optimistic (v. AUTONOMY; KANT). As a psychological tendency, optimism has a positive sense: an inclination and habit of seeing and valuing predominantly the better aspect of reality (in current language, "healthy optimism"); and a pejorative sense: a tendency to ignore the negative aspects of things, and therefore not to engage with the problem of evil in its various manifestations (in current language, "blind optimism"). In the psychological sense optimism is referred not only to individuals but also to groups and peoples. It prevails for the most part among peoples of less complex cultures, inclined to a purely naturalistic sense of life and favored by conditions of environment, history, and socio-economic well-being: such conditions in turn contribute to fixing in individuals and groups the psychic elements characteristic of the optimistic temperament.

Optimism in the relative sense may be said to be inherent in every rational conception of being. All systems that posit at the foundation of reality the λόγος, the idea, God as the principle of rationality and finality, must logically conclude to the positive sense of being and therefore to an essential optimism. In fact optimism in this sense is found, more or less explicitly formulated, in the rationalistic systems both of Greek thought (Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Plotinus; with regard to Greek optimism, however, certain pessimistic tendencies of classical religion and poetry must be kept in mind) and of medieval thought (Scholasticism in general), and especially of modern thought (rationalist systems properly so called: Descartes, Spinoza; Malebranche, who from the necessary perfection of the world deduced a priori the Incarnation itself: Entret. métaph., IX, § 6; in particular Leibniz). On the other hand, the presence of evil in the world prevented even these rational systems from an absolute positive resolution of reality and imposed the necessity of inserting into the exigency of being, or of its finite manifestations, the negative moment. The various historical forms of optimism, in philosophy as in religious thought itself, are defined precisely according to the attempts proper to the different systems to reabsorb into the fundamentally positive meaning of reality and history evil as their negative moment.

In Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics the good (v.) is, as a transcendental relation, intrinsic to being itself as the universal object of appetibility ("bonum est quod omnia appetunt": Aristotle; Eth. Nic., I, 1, 1094 a 2; cf. St. Thomas, in hunc locum), and a means of perfection ("ratio boni in hoc consistit quod aliquid est perfectivum alterius per rationem finis": St. Thomas, De verit., q. 21, a. 2). Since every being is perfection and as such desirable, every being is also good: "necesse est quod omne ens sit bonum ex hoc ipso quod esse habet" (ibid.; and C. Gent., III, ch. 7. Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic., I, ch. 4: "bonum totidem dicitur quod ens, ἀγαθὸν λέγεται τῷ ὄντι"). Consequently evil is nothing but the privation of good and therefore, essentially, finitude in being: "omne igitur malum in bono aliquo est" (C. Gent., III, ch. 11; cf. Aristotle, Met., IX, 9, 1051 a 17). Since the limit is inseparable from finite being, defectibility, whether physical or moral, belongs to the very structure of the creature. Metaphysical optimism could therefore justify a certain theological optimism, inasmuch as evil, an intrinsic limit of the created entity, is not directly referable to God as the author of being. Nevertheless this theological optimism does not, in St. Thomas, reach an absolute meaning, since the order of existing reality is neither necessary nor the most perfect.

For Leibniz, on the other hand, the existing world is necessarily the best among the infinite possible worlds. This follows, by virtue of the principle of sufficient reason (v.), both on the part of the possibles themselves, which, being in themselves a beginning of existence, have so much the greater impulse toward their own realization the greater their degree of perfection; and, especially, on the part of God, whose wisdom and goodness are contradicted by not choosing what is better: "to suppose that He knows what is better, that He can do it and does not do it, is equivalent to admitting that it depended only on His will to make the world better than it is: and this is precisely what is said to be a lack of goodness" (Essais de théod., part 2, § 194; cf. part 1, § 8. The reason adduced by Leibniz is already substantially in Abelard: Introductio ad theologiam, I, III, ch. 5: PL 178, 1093 D ff.). Leibniz does not intend to deny evil, inseparable from every possible world; but in the present world there is, he affirms, the minimum of evil together with the maximum of goods. And evil itself moreover contributes to the existence of good; even if the human intellect is incapable of comprehending the order and total end of the universe, infinite in its existences and in time. For Leibniz, therefore, evil is not referable to the will of God, but at most to His eternal reason, in which all possible worlds are present in their inner necessity and imperfection.

Optimism also has a metaphysical meaning in Spinozistic monism. Everything that is must be, as an expression of God, who by one and the same necessity exists and acts: "Good and evil are therefore nothing positive in the absolute order of reality," but only "modes of human understanding derived from the relations that we establish among things" (Ethica, part 4, preface; ed. G. Gentile, Bari 1933, pp. 178-79). As a tendency rather than as a systematic conception, optimism informed the movements of the Enlightenment (v.) and of Romanticism ([v.] cf. Rousseau, Shaftesbury, Lessing, etc.). It has, on the other hand, once again a metaphysical meaning in idealism (v.), particularly Hegelian idealism. Evil is indeed understood there as a necessary dialectical moment in the historical becoming of absolute Reason. While the good is, on the contrary, "the in-itself of the course of the world" and as such "indissolubly interwoven in all the appearances of the course of the world" (Phenomenology of Spirit, Ital. trans. by A. De Negri, Florence 1933, p. 347); and "advances with the dignity of being, because it is the totality of the concept in itself" (Science of Logic, III, sect. 3, ch. 2, B.; Ital. trans. by A. Moni, Bari 1925, p. 328). Absolute divinity, therefore, of being and of history. It should be observed here that not all pantheistic conceptions present themselves historically as optimism, to which is essential the affirmation not only of the necessity of the world but also of its positive perfection: the late Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Stirner affirm the essentiality of evil to absolute Being. Of optimistic tone, though on a purely naturalistic plane, are instead Nietzsche's "will to power," Spencerian "evolution," and Marx's materialist-historical "dialectic" (v. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM).

Against Leibniz's optimism (already rejected by St. Thomas: cf. Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 25, a. 6: « qualibet re a se facta potest Deus facere aliam meliorem »; and satirized by Voltaire in the novel Candide ou l'optimisme, 1758; in reality Voltaire was attacking a non-Leibnizian doctrine: the denial of the existence of evil) there holds the fundamental reason that, given the infinity of the divine being, no order of created reality can constitute its highest and most complete expression; and it is therefore always possible to conceive of a better one. The « most perfect » seems excluded by the very meaning of creation, as well as by God's omnipotence and freedom. With regard to the optimism of pantheistic systems, it must be observed that while it is easy to reduce physical evil to a purely negative moment as a possible condition and cause of higher values, moral evil, present in the world, has instead a positivity of its own as an absolute disvalue, and is therefore, as such, irreducible to the good. Unless one wishes to dissolve the very meaning of an absolute good and of an absolute ethics into materialistic determinism: but then one is, in reality, outside the very category of optimism (and of pessimism).

Christian thought, while affirming the intrinsic goodness of every being (cf. Gen. 1, 31) and the immense positive values of creation in the cosmic-natural order and in the human-spiritual one (perfection, dignity, beauty and happiness of the world and of life), cannot nevertheless accept an absolute optimism. The world is indeed a manifestation, a revelation, and in a certain sense an expression of God, but physical-moral contingency, the principle of evil within it, is its immanent limit. In the spiritual being, freedom, which is at the summit of personal perfection, is dialectically limited by the possibility of defection (sin). If the redemption of sin through Grace is, in Christianity, a certain affirmation of optimism, the possibility of a definitive rejection of Grace itself on the part of human freedom (the final and universal return to the good [v. ORIGENE] is not accepted by Christian doctrine) deprives that optimism of its absolute dimension. To the positive sense of being, of life, of happiness and of the good there must therefore be joined the uncertainty of their possession and preservation on the part of nature and, above all, of human responsibility. In this there is founded, it is true, another optimistic aspect of Christianity, which recognizes the possibility and the duty of an effective commitment of action to the improvement of the world and of history. The value that such a commitment entails helps to explain, in part, the presence of evil in the world. But the ultimate reason for the limit that follows in time upon the affirmation of being nevertheless remains obscure to the human mind (even theoretical optimism can only be relative; and the history of thought confirms this): such a reason is ultimately suspended upon the very mystery of God and of the possibility of finite being.

Ugo Viglino