u/lacrimisisfinti

I get the impression that philosophical pessimism can lead to two different attitudes: a greater aversion toward humanity, or greater compassion for human beings and other sentient beings capable of suffering (sometimes both overlapping).

Although misanthropy can mean withdrawal, disillusionment, or aversion toward humanity without necessarily implying cruelty, I see many people (especially online) who identify as pessimists but use pessimism to justify hatred or violence toward others. If existence is marked by suffering, frustration, and dissatisfaction, that seems like a reason to reduce the suffering of others, rather than to wish for or celebrate their suffering. After all, aren't we all fellow sufferers, trapped under the same burden?

After discovering philosophical pessimism, did you become more misanthropic, more compassionate, or some combination of the two?

>"Today’s psychiatry operates under the assumption that this health and adjustment is the highest goal one can aspire to. Depression, angst, a refusal to eat, and so forth, are taken without exception to be marks of a pathological condition, and are treated accordingly. In many cases, however, these phenomena are indications of a deeper, more immediate experience of what life is all about, bitter fruits of the genius of the mind or emotion, which is at the root of every antibiological tendency. It is not the soul that is ill, but its defense mechanism that either fails or is abjured because it is considered—correctly—as a betrayal of man’s most potent gift"
— Peter Wessel Zapffe, The Last Messiah

Whenever someone dismantles an illusion to which we have become attached, our immediate reaction is often to feel offended, almost as though something had been stolen from us. Pessimistic thought, being perhaps the most uncompromising destroyer of illusions, therefore requires the pessimist to be conscious of the destructive force of his words and of the reaction they will, to a greater or lesser extent, naturally provoke. An ordinary person cannot confront such ideas without some degree of revolt, without feeling personally attacked, and therefore tends to regard the pessimist not merely as unpleasant, but as pathological—as someone who needs treatment. If the argument cannot be refuted, then discredit the person through pathology instead. And this reaction can be found even in intellectual environments that ought to be committed to rigorous debate.

Yet this dismissal does not withstand even a simple examination of the historical record. Many of the major figures associated with philosophical pessimism and antinatalism lived psychologically robust, sociable, and even physically vigorous lives: enduring marriages, lasting friendships, strenuous or dangerous physical pursuits, and, in some cases, a remarkable zest for life well into old age. If personal sadness were the source of pessimism, such examples should be difficult to account for. Schopenhauer, despite regarding asceticism and the denial of the will as the highest expression of his ethics, enjoyed life as far as he could. According to accounts from those who knew him closely, Zapffe often went through life with a smile on his face. There are countless other examples. And even those who ended their own lives, such as Mainländer, did so consciously and in accordance with convictions they regarded as the logical conclusions of their own philosophies—not necessarily because they were clinically depressed, overwhelmed by despair, or suffering from some supposed “chemical disorder” of the brain.

Nietzsche himself contributed to the tendency to interpret philosophy through physiology by arguing that our philosophical outlook is conditioned, at least in part, by our bodily constitution. For Nietzsche, the pessimist is indeed sick—but not because he recognizes the suffering inherent in the world. In that respect, Nietzsche often regarded the pessimist as fundamentally correct. The sickness, in his view, lies in the pessimist’s attitude toward life, which diminishes his power and capacity for affirmation. Yet the diagnosis of the world as something fundamentally dreadful is already present in Nietzsche himself. In The Gay Science, he writes: “If we had not welcomed the arts and invented this kind of cult of the untrue, the insight into general untruth and mendaciousness [...] would be unbearable for us. Honesty would lead to nausea and su1c1d3. [...] As an aesthetic phenomenon, existence is still bearable.”

Perhaps, then, it is not the rejection of life that produces most of the suffering in the world, but rather an unqualified and unreflective attachment to it. Some of the most destructive forms of human existence arise precisely from those who love life without reservation, without critical distance, and without any willingness to question it. A pessimist could therefore turn the accusation on its head and say: “The truly sick are those who affirm life at any cost. They are euphoric patients laughing while wallowing in misery, delusionals who need to invent a spirit behind the world, believe that art will redeem them, or imagine that there is a God who listens to them. They need treatment.” Yet this reversal is rarely taken seriously. And when even those few who refuse to reduce pessimism to a pathology still treat it with such superficiality and condescension, it becomes difficult to expect the broader public to stop regarding pessimism as nothing more than a mental disorder.

[Based on essays by Luciano Duarte and Fernando Olszewski]

"No one has yet written candidly of the mental state of one who is to commit suicide. This may be due to the self-respect of the suicide victim, or perhaps a lack of psychological interest in his own state of mind. In this, my final letter to you, I will endeavour to make clear my mental state. But even if I should fail to convey my motives to you accurately, I will still be satisfied in the attempt. In one of his short stories, Régnier depicts a man who commits suicide, but does not himself understand for what reason. You can find many motivations for suicide in the police section of the newspaper, from fiscal hardship or ill health to mental anguish. In my experience these do not represent the totality of motives, but only speak of the journey towards the true reason. Those who commit suicide are for the most part as Régnier depicted, unaware of their real motivation. Suicide, as with all our actions, involves a complexity of motives. In my case, I am driven by, at the very least, a vague sense of unease: some indistinct sense of unease towards my future. It is possible that you will not be able to take me at my word. Ten years of experience have taught me that for those who are not my close and constant acquaintances, my words dissipate like a song in the wind. So I would not blame you...

For the past two years I have thought incessantly of death. It was also during this period that I read Mainländer, whose work has become deeply ingrained in my consciousness. Iam certain that Mainländer quite ingeniously depicts the journey towards death, couched in abstract words. I want to depict the same in a more concrete form. I have no greater desire than this, not even sympathy to my family. This might seem to you nothing less than 'inhuman,' but if you deem me inhuman, know that I am only superficially so.

I am duty bound to write all this honestly (I feel that I have already made every effort to examine my vague sense of unease towards my future in 'A Fool’s Life.' In it, I deliberately chose not to write about a certain social factor whose shadow still hangs over me –the feudal era. This is because we humans are even today living in its shadow to some extent. I tried to write only of the scenery, lighting, and actors –for the most part my own acting –that appeared on other stages than that one. Besides, I could not but entertain doubts as to whether I myself could clearly understand this social condition while living in the midst of it). My primary concern was howto die in such a way as to minimize suffering. Hanging is, of course, the most appropriate method for this purpose. But when I lingered on the image of my own dangling form, I was overcome by a lavish feeling of aesthetic disgust (I remember a time when Iloved a certain woman, but lost my feelings towards her when I found her to be a poor writer). Drowning, too, could in no way achieve my goal, as I am an able swimmer. Even in the unlikely even that I succeeded, it would prove more painful than hanging. The thought of throwing myself beneath a train evoked in me more than anything that sense of aesthetic revulsion. Death by a pistol or a knife held the potential for failure due to the trembling of my hands. Leaping from a building would no doubt be unsightly. Based on these considerations, I settled upon death brought on by a drug. It is possible that death by a drug may be more painful than hanging. However, aside from the fact that I find it less abhorrent than hanging, it also holds the benefit that there is no danger of resuscitation. There only remained the issue that procuring such a drug would be, needless to say, no simple task for me. I set myself upon suicide, and resolved to use every means at my disposal to acquire the drug. At the same time, I tried to gain what knowledge I could of toxicology.

My thoughts then turned to where I would take my life. My family would have to rely on my inheritance after my death: a meagre property that would amount to only one hundred tsubo of land, my house, the rights to my work, and my savings of two thousand yen. I was anxious about my house becoming unmarketable because of my suicide, and accordingly felt a sense of envy towards the bourgeois who had even a single country house. You might find my saying such a thing quite ridiculous. But when thinking of these matters, one in reality feels a deep sense of awkwardness. It is an unavoidable awkwardness. I wanted make every effort to kill myself in such a way that no one outside my family would see my corpse.

Even after I had settled on the means, however, I found I still clung to life in some limited way. Accordingly, I needed a springboard to propel me into death (I do not believe as the westerners do that suicide is a sin. In the Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha affirms the suicide of one of his disciples. Some who distort the truth to cater to public sentiment might say that this applies only in circumstances where such assent is 'unavoidable.' But seen from another perspective, these 'unavoidable' circumstances are not just the extreme cases where one would inevitably die a more miserable death. Anyone who chooses to take their own life does so as a result of circumstances which are, to them, 'unavoidable.' If anything, those who do it before that point must have an abundance of courage). When all is said and done, it is typically a woman who fills the role of this springboard. Kleist, prior to taking his own life, solicited his friends to become his companions. Racine also tried to cast himself into the river Seinetogether with Molière and Boileau. Unfortunately I have no such friends as these, so I merely tried to convince a woman with whom I was acquainted to die by my side. This, however, turned out to be a proposal she could not undertake for my sake, and I soon became confident that I could take my life without a springboard. This did not come about from despair that no one wished to die with me; rather, I was becoming increasingly sentimental, and even if my wife would be bereaved of me in death, I wanted to be considerate towards her. At the same time, I knew that killing myself would be simpler without an accomplice. What’s more, there was doubtlessly a convenience in being able to take my life at the time of my choosing.

My final device was to end my life insuch a way that my family would not notice before the deed was done. After several months of preparation, I attained a certain confidence that I would be able to do so (I cannot write these details here for the sake of those people who care about me. But even if I did write it here, it is certain that no charge as ludicrous as 'aiding and abetting suicide' would ever be created under our law. If this law were applied, how the number of criminals would increase! Even if the pharmacies, gun shops, and razor sellers claimed that they did not know, as long as our words and expressions betray our true intentions they would receive some measure of suspicion. Besides, society and the law and such have themselves necessitated this aiding and abetting of suicide. Inthe end what kind hearts most of these criminals would have!). I carried out these preparations calmly, and now merely entertain myself with the thought of death. My mood before it is for the most part as Mainländer wrote.

We are human animals and thus fear death as animals do. The so-called 'will to live' is nothing more than a different name for animal instinct. I am but one of these human animals, and when I observe my loss of interest in food and women, I realize I have gradually lost this animal instinct. Now I reside in a world of diseased nerves, as translucent as ice. Last night I spoke with a prostitute about her wages (!) and felt deeply the pathos of we humans who 'live for the sake of living' If we can submit ourselves to that eternal slumber, we can doubtlessly win ourselves peace, if perhaps not happiness, but I had doubts as to when I would be brave enough to take my life. In this state, nature has only become more beautiful than ever to me. You love the beauty of nature, and would no doubt scoff at my contradictions. But nature is beautiful precisely because it falls upon eyes that will not appreciate it for much longer. I have seen, loved, and understood more than others. This alone grants me some measure of solace in the midst of insurmountable sorrows. Please keep this letter from being made public for several years after my death. It is possible that I may take my life in a way that appears to be a natural death.

PS. Reading the life of Empedocles, I realized what an ancient desire it is to make oneself a god. As far as I can tell, this letter does not attempt that. No, I exist only as a mundane human being. Perhaps you recall twenty years ago when we discussed 'Empedocles on Etna' under the linden trees. At that time, I was one who fanciedhimself a god"

— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, A Note to a Certain Old Friend (1927)

"Pessimistic philosophy will be to the coming period of history what the pessimistic religion of Christianity was to the period that has passed.

The sign upon our banner is not the crucified Savior, but the Angel of Death with great, calm, gentle eyes, borne by the dove of the thought of redemption: fundamentally, it is the same sign.

The most beautiful blossom, or rather, the noblest fruit of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is the denial of the Will to Life. It will increasingly be recognized that only on the basis of this doctrine can there seriously be any question of philosophy taking the place of religion, of allowing it to penetrate even into the lowest strata of the people.

What did philosophy, before Schopenhauer, offer to the human heart crying aloud for redemption? Either miserable fantasies concerning God, the immortality of the soul, substance, accidents—in short, a stone; or careful, exceedingly acute, and entirely necessary investigations into the faculty of cognition. But what does a human being ask for in moments of astonishment at himself, when reflection gains the upper hand and a quiet, sorrowful voice speaks within him:

I live—and know not how long;
I die—and know not when;
I depart—and know not where.

does he ask about the subjective forms, space and time, the law of causality, and the synthesis of a manifold of intuition? The heart wants something to which it can cling, an unshakable foundation amid the storm of life, bread, and bread again, for its hunger.

Because Christianity satisfied this hunger, Greek philosophy, in its struggle against it, had to succumb; and because Christianity provided an unshakable foundation when everything was wavering and trembling, while philosophy was the scene of barren quarrels and furious conflict, the most distinguished spirits often threw themselves, crippled in wing and exhausted, into the arms of the Church. But now one can no longer believe, and because one can no longer believe, one casts away, together with the miracles and mysteries of religion, its indestructible core: the truth of salvation.

Complete indifferentism takes possession of men's minds, which Kant very aptly called 'the mother of chaos and night.' This indestructible core of the Christian religion Schopenhauer has now seized with a strong hand and carried into the temple of science as a sacred fire, which will burst forth as a new light for humanity and spread throughout all lands; for it is of such a nature that it can inspire individuals and masses alike and set their hearts ablaze.

>'Then religion will have fulfilled its vocation and completed its course: it will be able to release the generation that has been guided to maturity, while itself peacefully passing away. This will be the euthanasia of religion.' (Parerga II, 361)

A philosophy that wishes to take the place of religion must above all be capable of providing the consolation of religion: the uplifting, heart-strengthening assurance that everyone may have his sins forgiven, and that a benevolent Providence guides humanity toward its own good.

Does Schopenhauer’s philosophy provide this? No!

Like Mephistopheles, Schopenhauer sits upon the bank of the stream of humanity and cries mockingly to those writhing in pain and crying out for redemption: 'Your reason is of no help to you. Only intellectual intuition can save you—but it can be bestowed only upon one who has been predestined for it by a mysterious power. Many are called, but few are chosen.'

All the others are condemned to languish 'eternally' in the hell of existence. And woe to the poor man who imagines that he can be redeemed together with the totality; it cannot die, for its Idea lies outside time, without which nothing can change.

>'Indeed, everyone wishes to be redeemed from the state of suffering and death: they would like, as the saying goes, to attain eternal blessedness, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven—but not on their own feet; they wish instead to be carried into it by the course of Nature. But that is impossible.' (World as Will and Representation, II, 692)

I, on the other hand, say, following Nature: whoever wishes to redeem himself can do so at any time 'through reason and science, humanity’s highest power.'

The infallible means of escaping from the totality of the world is, for the real individual, whose development in no way depends upon time, virginity. But those who are already living on in children, for whom the possibility of redemption in this generation has therefore been forfeited, and those who could still employ the means but lack the strength to do so—all of them should take heart and continue the struggle honestly: sooner or later they will be redeemed, whether before the totality or within the totality, for the universe has a movement from Being into Non-Being.

To say, 'The world exists through an original accident,' amounts to giving up the attempt to explain it. The question of why desire seized the Will and drove it from Over-Being into Being—that is, why it created the world—remains unanswered. But to assume a course of the world without purpose, goal, or end (the resting points in the process that repeats itself 'an arbitrary number of times' being left aside, since between the end of one world-process and the beginning of the next there is no time; the world-process as such therefore never truly ends absolutely) is to intensify into perfect cruelty the profoundly serious character that the entire course of this process possesses in itself.

What consolation does a philosophy founded upon such premises have to offer the individual who cries out for redemption from the torment of existence?

It chains with iron hands the warrior exhausted unto death, who longs forever to escape from the totality of the world, to the eternally revolving wheel of 'endless becoming,' and drips into the burning wound of his painful insight—that life and suffering are one and the same—not balm, but only the corrosive poison of the hopeless thought that he can never, neither through himself nor in and with the totality, attain the complete and utter annihilation of his being. The harrowing lament that tears itself from him: 'Why, then, this torment in infinitum, without meaning or result, without consolation and without rest?' — dies away unheard.

The atheism established by my doctrine—the first to be established scientifically—gives the great problem of the origin and meaning of the world, together with its solution, its reconciliation. It knows no world before this world and no world after it. To it, the world is one single magnificent process, which neither is a repetition nor will have a repetition; for before it lies transcendent Over-Being, and after it lies nihil negativum.And this is no empty assertion. The deduction is thoroughly logical, and everything in Nature confirms the result—a result before which a weak spirit may well tremble and collapse, but at which the wise man trembles joyfully to the innermost depths of his soul.

Nothing more will be. Nothing, Nothing, Nothing!

Oh, this vision into absolute emptiness!

It must be a correct principle from which the solution of the greatest philosophical problems follows so effortlessly, naturally, and clearly—problems before which the greatest geniuses of all ages sank hopelessly after exhausting their intellectual powers upon them.

When Kant believed that he had grasped the coexistence of freedom and necessity through the distinction between an intelligible and an empirical character, he could not refrain from observing:

>'The resolution of the difficulties presented here has, however, one will say, much that is difficult in it and is scarcely susceptible to a clear presentation. But is every other solution that has been attempted, or may be attempted, really easier and more comprehensible?'

All had to err because they did not know how to establish a purely immanent realm and a purely transcendent realm. The Pantheists had to err because they reduced the actually existing unified movement of the world to a unity within the world; Buddha had to err because, from the feeling of complete responsibility for all his actions actually present in the individual, he falsely concluded the complete sovereignty of the individual within the world; Kant had to err because, on purely immanent ground, he wished to embrace freedom and necessity with one hand.

We, on the other hand, placed the simple unity of the Pantheists in a past transcendent realm and explained the unified movement of the world through the act of this pre-worldly simple unity. We united the half-autonomy of the individual and the power of chance, which is entirely independent of him within the world, on transcendent ground: in the unified resolution of God to pass over into Non-Being, and in the unified choice of the means by which to carry out this resolution. Finally, we united freedom and necessity not within the world, where there is no room for freedom, but in the midst of the chasm separating the vanished transcendent realm, restored by our reason, from the immanent realm.

We did not smuggle the vanished transcendent realm into our philosophy by sophistry. That it existed and no longer exists—we have demonstrated this with logical rigor in the Analytic.

And now consider the consolation, the unshakable confidence, the blessed trust that must flow from the metaphysically grounded complete autonomy of the individual. Everything that befalls a human being—distress, misery, sorrow, cares, illness, disgrace, contempt, despair—in short, everything harsh in life—is not inflicted upon him by an inscrutable Providence that mysteriously intends his highest good. Rather, he suffers all these things because, before the world existed, he himself chose them all as the best means toward the end. All the blows of fate that strike him, he himself has chosen, because only through them can he be redeemed. His essence (Demon and Spirit) and Chance lead him through pain and pleasure, through joy and sorrow, through fortune and misfortune, through life and death, faithfully toward the redemption that he wills.

Human beings possess a natural inclination to personify fate and to mystically apprehend the absolute Nothing that stares back at them from every grave as a place of eternal peace, as a city of peace, Nirvana—as the New Jerusalem.

>'And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.' (Revelation 21:4)

It cannot be denied that the conception of a personal, loving God the Father grips the human heart—'that stubborn and despairing thing'—more deeply than abstract fate, and that the conception of a Kingdom of Heaven, where individuals, transfigured and free from all needs, rest blessedly in eternal contemplation, awakens a more powerful longing than absolute Nothingness.

Immanent philosophy is gentle and kind here as well.

The main thing remains that humanity has overcome the world through knowledge.

Whether he leaves the fate he has recognized as it is, or once again gives it the features of a faithful father; whether he leaves the recognized goal of the world standing as absolute Nothingness, or transforms it into a garden of eternal peace filled with light—that is entirely beside the point.

Who would wish to interrupt the innocent, harmless play of the imagination?

>'A delusion that makes me happy
Is worth a truth that crushes me to the ground.' (Wieland)

But the wise man gazes firmly and joyfully into the face of absolute Nothingness."

— Philipp Mainländer, Philosophie der Erlösung, selected by Ulrich Horstmann, Insel Taschenbuch, “VIII. Ausblick ins Leere,” pp. 138–154.

There is a certain injustice in history reserved for thinkers who seem to have arrived at their conclusions too early, and who express themselves in a language that their own time does not yet know how to decipher. I think Baltasar Gracián, a seventeenth-century Spanish Jesuit priest (who, incidentally, is featured in the subreddit banner), is an exemplary case of this injustice: he is immensely celebrated by giants of philosophy, yet at the same time almost completely unknown to the general public, even among those sympathetic to pessimism.

Schopenhauer considered Gracián his favorite author, devoting to him a passionate enthusiasm that he reserved for very few thinkers and personally translating his works into German. Nietzsche likewise showed great admiration for him, writing of El Discreto: “Europe has never produced anything finer or more intricate in matters of moral subtlety.” While in his homeland his work remained associated with a stylistic baroque manner regarded as excessive or outdated, nineteenth-century Germans, immersed in a post-Kantian intellectual climate and already touched by a certain Romantic disillusionment, recognized in him someone who had glimpsed, two centuries in advance, the abyss that philosophical pessimism itself would later make its subject. This geographical and temporal disjunction may perhaps be precisely the key to understanding why he remains, to this day, so largely forgotten.

His masterpiece, El Criticón, is an allegorical narrative that follows Andrenio’s shipwreck and his tutelage under the disillusioned Critilo. It is essentially a treatise on desengaño, the disillusionment that runs throughout the literature of Spain’s Golden Age. For Gracián, life is a succession of masks: men are not what they seem, institutions do not fulfill what they promise, friendship is rare, and betrayal abundant. His work contains none of the providential optimism that still sustained much of the moral literature of his time.

Gracián’s negative anthropology brings him structurally, rather than merely aesthetically, close to Schopenhauer. Where Schopenhauer would metaphysically ground pessimism in the blind and insatiable will that governs the universe, Gracián had already intuited, centuries earlier, something analogous on the moral and social plane: namely, that human existence is a constant struggle against forces—envy, hypocrisy, the stupidity of others—that cannot be eliminated. El Oráculo Manual, with its three hundred aphorisms, is a breviary of self-defense against a world that Gracián regarded as fundamentally indifferent, if not hostile, to the virtuous individual. His concepts of “prudence,” “dissimulation,” and “reserve” are not merely techniques for social advancement, as a superficial reading might suggest, but existential strategies for survival.

Gracián expresses his pessimism in the social dimension in a fascinating way, describing human relationships with an almost cynical lucidity concerning the mechanisms of power and reputation, anticipating in many respects both the moral psychology of La Rochefoucauld and the critique Nietzsche would develop centuries later. Avant la lettre, he constructs a kind of genealogy of the social mask, recognizing that civilization does not eliminate man’s darkest impulses; it merely disguises them beneath socially acceptable forms.

"As soon as the child is born, the mother who has just brought him into the world must console him, quiet his crying, and lighten the burden of the existence she has given him. And one of the principal duties of good parents in the childhood and early youth of their children is to comfort them, to encourage them to live, because sorrows and ills and passions are at that age much heavier than they are to those who through long experience, or simply because they have lived longer, are used to suffering. And in truth it is only fitting that the good father and the good mother, in trying to console their children, correct as best they can, and ease, the damage they have done by procreating them. Good God! Why then is man born? And why does he procreate? To console those he has given birth to for having been born?"

— Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone

"I was alone in that cemetery overlooking the village when a pregnant woman came in. I left at once, in order not to look at this corpse-bearer at close range, nor to ruminate upon the contrast between an aggressive womb and the timeworn tombs—between a false promise and the end of all promises."

— Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born