OPTIMISM. — In the narrower philosophical sense, at the beginning of the eighteenth century the term Leibniz (v.), which holds that the existing world, and therefore the present order of reality, is the best of all possible worlds (cf. Essais de théodicée, part 1ᵃ, § 8; part 2ᵃ, § 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, although not the best, is nevertheless substantially good, and that being and life possess an intrinsic dignity and value by which they are preferable to non-being and death. Optimism has a particular meaning (although the usage is not frequent) ethics (v.), where it denotes the theory that identifies the “good” with the “better” and prescribes as the necessary motive and intention of action the love of the good as such or the love of God: it is therefore “deontological” (cf. J. Balmes, Filosofia fundamental, III, chap. 20; N. Malebranche, Traité de morale, chap. 3): in this sense Kantian and Stoic morality are optimistic (v. AUTONOMIA; 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 ordinary language, “healthy optimism”); and a pejorative sense: a tendency to ignore the negative aspects of things, and consequently not to confront the problem of evil in its various manifestations (in ordinary language, “blind optimism”). In the psychological sense, optimism refers not only to individuals, but also to groups and peoples. It generally predominates among peoples with less complex cultures, inclined toward a purely naturalistic view of life and favored by conditions of environment, history, and socio-economic well-being: these conditions in turn help to fix 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 place λόγος, the idea, or God as the principle of rationality and finality at the foundation of reality must logically conclude that being has a positive meaning and therefore affirm 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 in classical religion and poetry must be kept in mind), and of medieval thought (scholasticism in general), and especially of modern thought (properly rationalist systems: Descartes, Spinoza; Malebranche, who from the necessary perfection of the world deduced a priori the Incarnation itself: Entret. métaph., IX, § 6; and especially Leibniz). On the other hand, the presence of evil in the world prevented even rational systems from achieving an absolutely positive resolution of reality and imposed the necessity of incorporating the negative moment into the exigency of being, or of its finite manifestations. The various historical forms of optimism, both in philosophy and in religious thought itself, are defined precisely according to the attempts proper to the various systems to reabsorb evil, as a negative moment, into the fundamentally positive meaning of reality and history.
In Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, good (v.) is, as a transcendental relation, intrinsic to being itself insofar as being is the universal object of appetibility (“bonum est quod omnia appetunt”: Aristotle; Eth. Nic., I, 1, 1904 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 a 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, chap. 7. Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic., I, chap. 4: “bonum totidem dicitur quod ens, λαγῶς λέγεται τῷ ὄντι”). Consequently, evil is nothing other than the privation of good and therefore, essentially, finitude in being: “omne igitur malum in bono aliquo est” (C. Gent., III, chap. 11; cf. Aristotle, Met., IX, 9, 1051 a 17). Since limitation is inseparable from finite being, defectibility, both physical and moral, belongs to the very structure of the creature. Metaphysical optimism could thus justify a certain theological optimism, insofar as evil, the intrinsic limitation of created being, cannot be directly referred to God, the author of being. Nevertheless, in St. Thomas this theological optimism does not attain 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 infinitely many possible worlds. This follows, by virtue reason (v.), both on the part of the possibles themselves, which, being in themselves beginnings of existence, have a greater impulse toward their own realization in proportion to their degree of perfection; and especially on the part of God, whose wisdom and goodness are contradicted by not choosing what is best: “to suppose that He knows what is best, that He can do it, and that He does not do it, is equivalent to admitting that it depended solely on His will to make the world better than it is: and this is precisely what is meant by lacking goodness” (Essais de théod., part 2ª, § 194; cf. part 1ᵃ, § 8. The reason given by Leibniz is already substantially present in Abelard: Introductio ad theologiam, I, III, chap. 5: PL 178, 1093 D ff.). Leibniz does not intend to deny evil, which is inseparable from every possible world; but in the present world, he maintains, there is a minimum of evil together with a maximum of goods. Evil itself also contributes to the existence of good, even though the human intellect is incapable of understanding the total order and purpose of the universe, infinite in its existences and in time. For Leibniz, therefore, evil cannot be referred to the will of God, but at most to His eternal reason, in which all possible worlds are present with their internal necessity and imperfection.
Optimism also has a metaphysical meaning in Spinozian monism. Everything that is must be, insofar as it is an expression of God, who exists and acts by one and the same necessity: “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 4ª, pref.; ed. G. Gentile, Bari 1933, pp. 178–79). As a tendency rather than as a systematic conception, optimism Enlightenment (v.) and Romanticism ([v.] cf. Rousseau, Shaftesbury, Lessing, etc.). It again idealism (v.), particularly in Hegelian idealism. Evil is understood there, in fact, as a necessary dialectical moment in the historical development of absolute Reason. Good, by contrast, is “the in-itself of the course of the world” and as such is “indissolubly intertwined in all the appearances of the course of the world” (Fenomenologia dello spirito, Italian 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” (Scienza della logica, III, sect. 3ª, chap. 2, B.; Italian trans. by A. Moni, Bari 1925, p. 328). Hence the absolute divinity of being and history. It should be observed here that not all pantheistic conceptions historically present themselves as forms of optimism, for which the affirmation not only of the necessity of the world but also of its positive perfection is essential: the later Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Stirner affirm the essentiality of evil to absolute Being. The Nietzschean “will to power,” Spencerian “evolution,” and Marx’s materialist-historical “dialectic” (v. MATERIALISMO DIALETTICO), on the other hand, are optimistic in tone, though on a purely naturalistic plane.
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 combating a non-Leibnizian doctrine: the denial of the existence of evil) there stands the fundamental argument that, given the infinity of divine being, no order of created reality can constitute its highest and fullest expression; 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 the omnipotence and freedom of God. With regard to the optimism of pantheistic systems, it should be observed that, while physical evil can readily be reduced to a purely negative moment insofar as it is a possible condition and cause of higher values, moral evil, present in the world, possesses its own positivity 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 ethics into materialistic determinism: but then one is, in reality, outside the very category of optimism (and 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 (the perfection, dignity, beauty, and happiness of the world and of life), cannot nevertheless accept an absolute optimism. The world is indeed a manifestation, revelation, and, in a certain sense, expression of God, but physical-moral contingency, the principle of evil within it, is its immanent limit. In spiritual being, freedom, which stands 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 that human freedom may definitively reject Grace itself (the final and universal return to the good [V. ORIGENE] is not accepted by Christian doctrine) removes from that optimism its absolute dimension. The positive meaning of being, life, happiness, and the good must therefore be joined to the uncertainty of their possession and preservation by nature and, above all, by human responsibility. Herein lies, 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 entailed by such commitment helps, in part, to explain the presence of evil in the world. But the ultimate reason for the limit that follows the affirmation of being in time nevertheless remains obscure to the human mind (even theoretical optimism can only be relative; and the history of thought confirms this): that reason is ultimately suspended upon the very mystery of God and of the possibility of finite being.