philosophical pessimism is an evaluation of the state of animal/human existence — schopenhauer1
How can this be possible without our subjective criteria and preferences? What defines something as inherently negative for example...? — Nickolasgaspar
What defines something as inherently negative for example...? — Nickolasgaspar
What defines something as inherently negative for example...? — Nickolasgaspar
The ‘rules’ of life are unknown. Games are what make up life so it is possibly a little presumptuous to assume life is a ‘game’. — I like sushi
Everyone gets ‘angry’ at life though at some point. Then we usually grow up … albeit slowly and with instances of regression! :D — I like sushi
Do to so would mean you are a walking talking zombie person shuffling through life like you are already dead. This is actually something quite common to many humans but the vast majority get over it. — I like sushi
Carry on and read nothing that challenges the status quo. — schopenhauer1
Pessimism is necessary in life. Suffering is necessary in life. That is not exactly anything anyone did not know is it? Even if it is so what? — I like sushi
However, it isn't a particular war that a pessimist would care about but the seemingly pervasive aspect of conflict and war in human society, governments, and history. It seems like a feature or an irradicable bug. — schopenhauer1
I wrote a previous thread about technology, for example. In that one, I described the pervasive and inescapable nature of the fact that not all humans can truly participate in creating the technology that sustains them. — schopenhauer1
I wrote in another thread about the inability to move to another form of living. This is a pervasive and inescapable feature of being born. We cannot really change the set of choices and harms presented to us. — schopenhauer1
"Philosophical pessimism?"
'To exist sucks' mostly because – even though you ought not to exist – as Cioran points out: it's always too late not to exist. So 'embrace the suck' if you have the courage and the wit to do so; otherwise, you can always 'unfuck yourself' with either a pharmaceutical or surgical lobotomy. :eyes: — 180 Proof
I now know what you really are. You're not a pessimist. You are a cynic. Know the difference. I think you have disdain, not despair, of things humans. Which give me hope -- pessimists annoy me. But cynics bring to life a different flavor of humanity. They're a funny lot, but truthful. Which is what's important. They tell it like it is. — L'éléphant
I would be interested to learn about other schools of ‘pessimism’ if you can give an account of some of them rather than sticking to the one in the OP.
I feel showing the distinctions between different views in this area would help in the understanding of a particular ‘pessimism’. — I like sushi
Working in the metaphysical framework of Schopenhauer, Mainländer sees the "will" as the innermost core of being, the ontological arche. However, he deviates from Schopenhauer in important respects. With Schopenhauer the will is singular, unified and beyond time and space. Schopenhauer's transcendental idealism leads him to conclude that we only have access to a certain aspect of the thing-in-itself by introspective observation of our own bodies. What we observe as will is all there is to observe, nothing more. There are no hidden aspects. Furthermore, via introspection we can only observe our individual will. This also leads Mainländer to the philosophical position of pluralism.[2]: 202 The goals he set for himself and for his system are reminiscent of ancient Greek philosophy: what is the relation between the undivided existence of the "One" and the everchanging world of becoming that we experience.
Additionally, Mainländer accentuates on the idea of salvation for all of creation. This is yet another respect in which he differentiates his philosophy from that of Schopenhauer. With Schopenhauer, the silencing of the will is a rare event. The artistic genius can achieve this state temporarily, while only a few saints have achieved total cessation throughout history. For Mainländer, the entirety of the cosmos is slowly but surely moving towards the silencing of the will to live and to (as he calls it) "redemption".
Mainländer theorized that an initial singularity dispersed and expanded into the known universe. This dispersion from a singular unity to a multitude of things offered a smooth transition between monism and pluralism. Mainländer thought that with the regression of time, all kinds of pluralism and multiplicity would revert to monism and he believed that, with his philosophy, he had managed to explain this transition from oneness to multiplicity and becoming.[16]
Death of God
Main article: God is dead
Despite his scientific means of explanation, Mainländer was not afraid to philosophize in allegorical terms. Formulating his own "myth of creation", Mainländer equated this initial singularity with God.
Mainländer reinterprets Schopenhauer's metaphysics in two important aspects. Primarily, in Mainländer's system there is no "singular will". The basic unity has broken apart into individual wills and each subject in existence possesses an individual will of his own. Because of this, Mainländer can claim that once an "individual will" is silenced and dies, it achieves absolute nothingness and not the relative nothingness we find in Schopenhauer. By recognizing death as salvation and by giving nothingness an absolute quality, Mainländer's system manages to offer "wider" means for redemption. Secondarily, Mainländer reinterprets the Schopenhauerian will-to-live as an underlying will-to-die, i.e. the will-to-live is the means towards the will-to-die.[17]
The essential feature of the morality built upon the basis of Von Hartmann's philosophy is the realization that all is one and that, while every attempt to gain happiness is illusory, yet before deliverance is possible, all forms of the illusion must appear and be tried to the utmost. Even he who recognizes the vanity of life best serves the highest aims by giving himself up to the illusion, and living as eagerly as if he thought life good. It is only through the constant attempt to gain happiness that people can learn the desirability of nothingness; and when this knowledge has become universal, or at least general, deliverance will come and the world will cease. No better proof of the rational nature of the universe is needed than that afforded by the different ways in which men have hoped to find happiness and so have been led unconsciously to work for the final goal. The first of these is the hope of good in the present, the confidence in the pleasures of this world, such as was felt by the Greeks. This is followed by the Christian transference of happiness to another and better life, to which in turn succeeds the illusion that looks for happiness in progress, and dreams of a future made worth while by the achievements of science. All alike are empty promises, and known as such in the final stage, which sees all human desires as equally vain and the only good in the peace of Nirvana.[9]
Weltschmerz is a study of the pessimism that dominated German philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Pessimism was essentially the theory that life is not worth living. This theory was introduced into German philosophy by Schopenhauer, whose philosophy became very fashionable in the 1860s. Frederick C. Beiser examines the intense and long controversy that arose from Schopenhauer's pessimism, which changed the agenda of philosophy in Germany away from the logic of the sciences and toward an examination of the value of life. He examines the major defenders of pessimism (Philipp Mainlander, Eduard von Hartmann and Julius Bahnsen) and its chief critics, especially Eugen Duhring and the neo-Kantians. The pessimism dispute of the second half of the century has been largely ignored in secondary literature and this book is a first attempt since the 1880s to re-examine it and to analyze the important philosophical issues raised by it. The dispute concerned the most
fundamental philosophical issue of them all: whether life is worth living.
Your only usefulness to broader society is your ability to both produce and consume. If we do not value these things (in the modern context at least), the system collapses. — schopenhauer1
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