The Culture of Pessimism: How the Decline of Civilization Became Part of Western Thought (1997)

• published: 11 Dec 2014
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Philosophical pessimism is often a state of mind or a psychological disposition, although sometimes it can be seen as a worldview or ethic that seeks to face up to the distasteful realities of the world and eliminate irrational hopes and expectations (such as the Idea of Progress and religious faith) which may lead to undesirable outcomes. Ideas which prefigure philosophical pessimism can be seen in ancient texts such as the Dialogue of Pessimism and Ecclesiastes (which maintains that everything is hebel, literally 'vapor' or 'breath', but could also mean 'senseless' and 'absurd'.) In Western philosophy, philosophical pessimism is not a single coherent movement, but rather a loosely associated group of thinkers with similar ideas and a family resemblance to each other.[3] Philosophers who can be said to express pessimistic views include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Giacomo Leopardi, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, E.M. Cioran, Albert Caraco, Michel Foucault, Miguel de Unamuno,[4] Baltasar Gracián, Philipp Mainländer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Eduard von Hartmann, Carlo Michelstaedter, Peter Wessel Zapffe, Ulrich Horstmann and John N. Gray. Philosophical pessimists have often been associated with related ideas such as anti-theism, romanticism, counter-enlightenment, misanthropy, antinatalism and existentialism. Philosophical pessimism has often been tied to the arts and literature. Schopenhauer's philosophy was very popular with composers (Wagner, Brahms and Mahler).[11] Several philosophical pessimists also wrote novels or poetry (Camus and Leopardi respectively). A distinctive literary form which has been associated with pessimism is aphoristic writing, and this can be seen in Leopardi, Nietzsche and Cioran. Writers which could be said to express pessimistic views in their works or to be influenced by pessimistic philosophers include Miguel de Cervantes, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad, Charles Bukowski, Thomas Mann, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Mihai Eminescu, Samuel Beckett, Dino Buzzati, Jorge Luis Borges, HP Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, Thomas Bernhard and Camilo Pessanha. Philosophical Pessimism stands opposed to the optimism or even utopianism of Hegelian philosophies such as Marxism. Emil Cioran claimed "Hegel is chiefly responsible for modern optimism. How could he have failed to see that consciousness changes only its forms and modalities, but never progresses?"[33] Philosophical pessimism is differentiated from other political philosophies by having no ideal governmental structure or political project, rather pessimism generally tends to be an anti-systematic philosophy of individual action.[2] This is because philosophical pessimists tend to be skeptical that any politics of social progress can actually improve the human condition. As Cioran states, "every step forward is followed by a step back: this is the unfruitful oscillation of history".[34] Cioran also attacks political optimism because it creates an "idolatry of tomorrow" which can be used to authorize anything in its name. This does not mean however, that the pessimist cannot be politically involved, as Camus argued in The Rebel. There is another strain of thought generally associated with a pessimistic worldview, this is the pessimism of cultural criticism and social decline which is seen in Oswald Spengler's 'The Decline of the West'. Spengler promoted a cyclic model of history similar to the theories of Giambattista Vico. Spengler believed modern western civilization was in the 'winter' age of decline (untergang). Spenglerian theory was immensely influential in interwar Europe, especially in Weimar Germany. Similarly, traditionalist Julius Evola thought that the world was in the Kali Yuga, a dark age of moral decline. Intellectuals like Oliver James correlate economic progress with economic inequality, the stimulation of artificial needs, and affluenza. Anti-consumerists identify rising trends of conspicuous consumption and self-interested, image-conscious behavior in culture. Post-modernists like Jean Baudrillard have even argued that culture (and therefore our lives) now has no basis in reality whatsoever.[1] Conservative thinkers, especially social conservatives, often perceive politics in a generally pessimistic way. William F. Buckley famously remarked that he was "standing athwart history yelling 'stop!'" and Whittaker Chambers was convinced that capitalism was bound to fall to communism, though he was himself violently anti-communist. Social conservatives often see the West as a decadent and nihilistic civilization which has abandoned its roots in Christianity and/or Greek philosophy, leaving it doomed to fall into moral and political decay. Robert Bork's Slouching Toward Gomorrah and Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind are famous expressions of this point of view. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessimism