OPTIMISM. — In the strictest philosophical sense, the term is applied, at the beginning of the 18th century, to the doctrine of Leibniz (q.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 1, § 8; part 2, § 195 ff.; *Monadology*, § 90): this is optimism in the absolute sense. On the other hand, relative optimism (opposed to pessimism [q.v.]) is the affirmation that the world, although not the best, is nonetheless substantially good, and that being and life possess an intrinsic dignity and value by which they are preferable to non-being and death.
A particular meaning (though not frequently used) is found in ethics (q.v.), where optimism 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: thus, it is an "deontological" optimism (cf. J. Balmes, *Filosofia fundamental*, III, ch. 20; N. Malebranche, *Traité de morale*, ch. 3). In this sense, Kantian and Stoic ethics (q.V. AUTONOMY; KANT) are optimistic.
As a psychological tendency, optimism has a positive sense: an inclination and habit to see and value primarily the better aspect of reality (in common parlance, "healthy optimism"); and a pejorative sense: a tendency to ignore the negative aspects of things, and thus to avoid engagement with the problem of evil in its various manifestations (in common parlance, "blind optimism"). In a psychological sense, optimism is applied not only to individuals but also to groups and peoples. It generally prevails among peoples with less complex cultures, inclined toward a purely naturalistic sense of life and favored by environmental, historical, and socio-economic conditions; these conditions, in turn, help to establish in individuals and groups the psychological characteristics of an optimistic temperament.
Optimism in the relative sense may be said to be inherent in every rational conception of being. All systems that posit as the foundation of reality the *logos*, the Idea, or God as the principle of rationality and finality, logically must conclude in a positive sense of being and therefore in an essential optimism. In fact, this optimism is found, more or less explicitly formulated, in rationalistic systems of both Greek thought (Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Plotinus; though regarding Greek optimism, certain pessimistic tendencies in classical religion and poetry must be noted) and medieval thought (scholasticism in general), and especially modern thought (properly rationalistic systems: Descartes, Spinoza; Malebranche, who deduced from the necessary perfection of the world a priori the very incarnation: *Entretiens métaphysiques*, IX, § 6; in particular Leibniz). On the other hand, the presence of evil in the world forces these same rational systems to resolve absolutely the positive meaning of reality and imposes the necessity of incorporating into the exigency of being, or its finite manifestations, the negative moment. The various historical forms of optimism, both in philosophy and in religious thought, are defined precisely according to the attempts made by different systems to absorb evil, as their negative moment, into the fundamentally positive meaning of reality and history.
In Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, good (q.v.) is, as a transcendental relation, intrinsic to being itself as the universal object of appetibility ("*bonum est quod omnia appetunt*": Aristotle, *Nicomachean Ethics*, I, 1, 1094 a 2; cf. St. Thomas, *In hunc locum*), and as a means of perfection ("*et ratio boni in hoc consistit quod aliquod est perfectivum alterius per rationem finis*": St. Thomas, *De veritate*, q. 21, a. 2). Since every being is a perfection and as such desirable, every being is also good: "*non esse est quod omne ens sit bonum ex hoc ipso quod esse habet*" (ibid.; and *Contra Gentiles*, III, ch. 7; cf. Aristotle, *Nicomachean Ethics*, I, ch. 4: "*bonum totidem dicitur quod ens, laqueo λέγεται τῷ ὄντι*"). Consequently, evil is nothing other than the privation of good and thus, essentially, finitude in being: "*omne igitur malum in bono aliquo est*" (*Contra Gentiles*, III, ch. 11; cf. Aristotle, *Metaphysics*, IX, 9, 1051 a 17). Since limitation 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, as an intrinsic limit of created being, is not directly attributable to God, the author of being. However, this theological optimism does not attain in St. Thomas 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 all possible worlds. This follows, by virtue of the principle of sufficient reason (q.v.), both from the possibles themselves, which, as they are by themselves the principle of existence, have a greater impulse toward their own realization the greater their degree of perfection; and, especially, from God, whose wisdom and goodness would be contradicted if He did not choose what is best: "*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 solely on His will to make the world better than it is: and this is precisely what is said to lack goodness*" (*Essais de théodicée*, part 2, § 194; cf. part 1, § 8. The reason adduced by Leibniz is already substantially found in Abelard: *Introductio ad theologiam*, I, III, ch. 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 affirms, there is the minimum of evil with the maximum of good. Moreover, evil itself contributes to the existence of good; even if human intelligence is incapable of comprehending the total order and end of the universe, which is infinite in existence and time. For Leibniz, therefore, evil is not attributable to the will of God, but at most to His eternal reason, in which all possible worlds are present in their internal necessity and imperfection.
Metaphysical significance is also found in Spinoza’s monism. Everything that is must be, as an expression of God, who by the same identical necessity exists and operates: "*Good and evil are therefore nothing positive in the absolute order of reality*," but only "*modes of human understanding derived from the relations we establish among things*" (*Ethics*, part 4, preface; ed. G. Gentile, Bari 1933, pp. 178-79). As a tendency rather than a systematic conception, optimism informed the movements of the Enlightenment (q.v.) and Romanticism (q.v.; cf. Rousseau, Shaftesbury, Lessing, etc.). It regained metaphysical significance, however, in idealism (q.v.), particularly Hegelian. In this system, evil is understood as a necessary dialectical moment in the historical becoming of Absolute Reason. On the contrary, good is "*the end of the course of the world*" and as such "*inextricably intertwined in all the appearances of the course of the world*" (*Phenomenology of Spirit*, 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*" (*Science of Logic*, III, sect. 3, ch. 2, B; Italian trans. by A. Moni, Bari 1925, p. 328). Thus, absolute divinity of being and history. It should be noted here that not all pantheistic conceptions have historically presented themselves as optimistic, for which essential is the affirmation not only of the necessity of the world but also of its positive perfection: the later Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Stirner affirm the essentiality of evil to the Absolute Being. On the other hand, Nietzsche’s "will to power," experimental evolutionary optimism, and the "dialectical" historical materialism of Marx (q.V. MATERIALISM, DIALECTICAL) are of an optimistic 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 satirised 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) the fundamental argument holds that, granted the infinity of the divine being, no order of created reality can constitute its highest and most perfect 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 physical evil may easily be reduced to a merely negative moment, as a possible condition and cause of higher values, moral evil, present in the world, has instead its own positive reality as an absolute disvalue, and is therefore, as such, irreducible to good. Unless one wishes to dissolve in materialistic determinism the very sense of an absolute good and of an absolute ethic: 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 order (perfection, dignity, beauty and happiness of the world and of life), cannot however accept an absolute optimism. The world is indeed a manifestation, revelation, and in a certain sense an expression of God, but the physical-moral contingency, which is the principle of evil within it, is its immanent limit. In 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 by human freedom (the final and universal return to 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 good there must therefore be joined the uncertainty of their possession and preservation by nature and above all by human responsibility. In this there is founded, it is true, another optimistic aspect of Christianity which recognises the possibility and the duty of effective commitment to the improvement of the world and of history. The value which such commitment entails helps to explain, in part, the presence of evil in the world. But the ultimate reason for the limit which follows in time the affirmation of being remains obscure to the human mind (even theoretical optimism cannot be other than relative; and the history of thought confirms this) this reason is finally suspended in the very mystery of God and of the possibility of finite being.