Pessimism

PESSIMISM. - It is the conception that contrasts with optimism (v.) insofar as it affirms the predominance of evil (v.) over good (v.): thus neither does optimism wholly deny the existence of evil, nor does pessimism absolutely exclude the presence of good, but their opposition lies in the preference or ontological excess that good obtains over evil or evil over good, and therefore in the meaning of a positive sign or a negative sign attributed to being. Hence, if it has been possible to envisage an absolute optimism of the full positivity of being, one does not see how an "absolute pessimism" could be conceived, since with it the very possibility of the consciousness that thinks it would vanish: pessimism, like every negative situation, presupposes the positive moment that it proposes to limit to the point of overwhelming it, but never of annihilating it. In pessimism the positive represents the stage of appearance, of immediacy, which must be overcome through reflection and ascesis in order to reach, beyond deceptive appearances and illusory pleasures, the secret truth of negation.

The most radical pessimism is attributed to the doctrine of the Vedanta, which, like the other Indian systems, teaches that all individual existence is suffering, and urges man to absolute indifference toward all things through the Nirvana (P. Deussen, Allgemeine Gesch. der Philos., I, III, 3rd ed., Leipzig 1920, p. 609 ff.). The situation in Greek thought seems more complicated. There is no doubt that the gradual discovery of the Xéros; which it continues, affirms the pre-eminence of the positive over the negative, of which the Socratic identity between knowledge and virtue is an entirely explicit sign, though it was energetically contested by Aristotle (Ethic. Nic., VII, 3, 1145 b 22 ff.). More continuous and explicit is pessimism in the Greek lyric and tragic poets: Sophocles is persuaded of the nothingness that human life is; for him men are shadowy images, so that it would be better never to have been born and, once born, to leave this world as soon as possible (cf. Oedipus at Colonus, v. 1225 ff.). Euripides too insists on the insecurity of human life, on the alternation in it of happiness and unhappiness, just like the meteorological mutations of the physical world. All human things are reduced to shadows and no one should be praised before death; and he too repeats the proverb that it is better not to have been born (cf. Orestes, v. 1604; fr. 330; Medea, v. 1224; Andromache, v. 100 ff.). The foundation of this tragic pessimism, in which the exterior or Apollonian harmony that dominated for so many centuries the interpretation of Greek classicism down to Nietzsche (v.), who introduced the Dionysian element, is broken, is the fundamental dogma of fate (v.) or destiny (τύχη, μοῖρα, εἱμαρμένη), immutable even for the gods themselves (M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, in Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, I, Munich 1941, pp. 712 and 732). This doctrine can be traced back as far as Homer with the observation of the continuous decline of humanity (cf. Odyssey, II, 276 ff.) and is widespread in the 6th century B.C., as appears from the fragments of Mimnermus, Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgos, Alcaeus, and especially Theognis, to whom the above-mentioned proverb of the desire "not to have been born" (μὴ γῆναι) is attributed.

A new element of an even deeper pessimism has been identified in the much-discussed fragment of Anaximander (B I): "That from which things have their beginning is also the term into which they sink according to necessity (κατὰ τὸ χρεών); for they must expiate and be condemned for their injustice according to the order of time" (H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, I, 5th ed. edited by W. Kranz, Berlin 1934, p. 89). Indeed, the Orphic derivation has been noted: Anaximander conceives the indeterminate being (ἄπειρον) and therefore posits immortal souls destined to perfect themselves through new reincarnations because they are afflicted, according to Orphic beliefs, by a sin of origin from all eternity, and the body is considered the "tomb of the soul" (σῶμα-σῆμα). From this negative conception of nature it has been concluded that not only the naturalistic philosophy of the Ionian philosophers but all Greek science went astray and failed to create a scientific physics (cf. E. Howald, Ethik des Altertums, in Handbuch der Philos., Munich and Berlin 1926, p. 13). A vision of pessimism pervades the entire work of Eudotus, the historian of the instability of all human things: the pessimistic heritage of the oldest Greek thought was taken up in the Cyrenaic school by Hegesias, who described, against Epicureanism, the ills of life, with such effectiveness as to drive some of his hearers to take their own lives. The pessimism of the Cyrenaics (v.) arose precisely from the materialism they professed, insofar as pleasure is resolved into a series of single fleeting moments, and pessimism is inevitable in every conception that confines man within the finite and time (excellent exposition in W. Ch. Greene, Moir, fate, good and evil, Cambridge Mass. 1944, p. 182; see also E. Schwarz, Ethik der Griechen, Stuttgart 1951, p. 182). The profound cause of Greek pessimism lies in the conviction of the invincibility of evil, insofar as the cosmos is governed by the iron law of fate, whence the indifference that the divinity shows toward individuals and the events of this life, and finally the ontological negativity of matter and its coexistence with the divine being, which can be considered the true metaphysical principle of Greek pessimism.

In revealed religion human history presents a double face: viewed from the angle of human freedom, history seems the sequel of sin, wholly interwoven with crimes and miseries of which the just are the victims and, more than all, the Son of God himself; but, from God's point of view, the positive outcome of history, that is, the fulfillment of the "salvific plan" of divine Providence (v.), is absolutely certain. In Hebrew religiosity pessimism seems to prevail, in this sense, especially in the wisdom books (cf. the disconsolate Ecclesiastes; also Eccl. 40); yet in the end it is God who judges, punishes and rewards (cf. Wis. 15, 1 ff.). Christianity definitively resolves the ambiguity of the relationship between optimism and pessimism. In Greek thought the ontological positivity of universal essences contrasted with the profound misery in which the individual found himself, at the mercy of fate and the blind forces of nature. Christianity resolves the problem in three moments:

1) essences as such are positive, and above all human nature in its spiritual part bears the very image of God (Ps. 4, 7).

2) But man has fallen through sin from his original perfection and finds himself exposed to physical sufferings and to death as regards the body, and to the passions that separate him from God as regards the spirit.

3) Nevertheless the intellect and the will have fundamentally preserved intact the capacity to know the true and to will the good, and God, through the Incarnation of the Word, has offered man the possibility of eternal salvation. From the point of view, therefore, of ontological structure, in the Christian conception optimism prevails over pessimism. Yet, considered in his existential situation, man shows himself more inclined to evil than to good because he is more prone to follow the senses than right reason: "In homine est duplex natura, scilicet rationalis et sensitiva. Et quia per operationem sensus homo pervenit ad actus rationis, ideo plures sequuntur inclinationes naturae sensitivae quam ordinem rationis" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃ, q. 71, a. 2 ad 3). Only in Christianity, therefore, is there the ontological clarification of the relationship between optimism and pessimism, insofar as in it the dialectic of freedom obtains its complete unfolding through its foundation in God and through its position and actualization in individual responsibility.

In modern thought the relationship between optimism and pessimism is reversed in the opposite direction from classical thought: authentic pessimism disappears because truth is identified with absolute universal Reason, so that evil and error (v.) are relegated to the sphere of appearance and of transient empirical individuality and are therefore reduced to negative "moments" of reason itself (cf. Kant's "radical evil" and the Hegelian doctrine of "evil as the negative," which is nevertheless necessary for the development of the dialectic of "universal history"). For Hegel, pessimism represents an inferior stage of consciousness: the "unhappy consciousness" (das unglückliche Bewusstsein) is consciousness still divided within itself, in that it does not attain the perfect unification of the opposite moments of being but remains in the tension of a "here below" (Diesseits) and a "beyond" (Jenseits), which can never be reached, of being itself (cf. Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. J. Hoffmeister, Leipzig 1937, p. 163 ff.).

According to Schopenhauer (v.), who raised pessimism to a system, the fundamental difference among all religions does not consist, as is usually believed, in the fact of whether they are monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic or atheistic: but only in this, whether they are optimistic or pessimistic, that is, whether they represent the existence of this world as justified in itself and therefore praise and exalt it, or whether instead they regard it as something that can be understood only as a consequence of our guilt and therefore properly ought not to be (Die Welt etc., ed. Reclam, II, Leipzig n.d., p. 196 f.; Italian trans., II, Bari 1930, p. 206). In his opinion the victory of Christianity over Judaism and over Greco-Roman paganism lies entirely and solely in its pessimism: but Schopenhauer errs both because he forgets the whole positive and constructive aspect of Christianity also for earthly existence, inasmuch as it must prepare eternal life, and because the self-denial that Christianity demands presupposes that immediate existence and the life of the senses effectively give joy and satisfaction for a sphere of consciousness (cf. Kierkegaard's critique of Schopenhauer, in Diario 1854; Italian trans., III, Brescia 1951, p. 121 ff., 132, 135 ff.).

Enlightenment pessimism had its highest lyrical expression in the poetry of G. Leopardi (v.). In left-wing existentialism (v.), since being is traced back to the "nothing" as to its phenomenological-dialectical foundation (Heidegger) or else is projected toward an unreachable Whole (the Kantian Umgreifende of Jaspers), truth remains without issue. Absolute pessimism is then inevitable in the rigid ontic-phenomenological dualism (v.) of Pour-soi (subject) and En-soi (object) of Sartre, who therefore declares man and his aspiration to rise to be a "useless passion" (L'être et le néant, Paris 1943, p. 708).

The definitive victory over pessimism lies in the metaphysical cornerstones of individual freedom, personal immortality and divine Providence, which guides the development of history and will ultimately make it a judgment both for the individual and for all humanity.

Cornelio Fabro