Talk:History of philosophical pessimism

TODO list of things to add or change

• [ ] Expand section on Victorian pessimism, including Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, Thomas Hardy's works and James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night

• [ ] Expand on the views of Amalie J. Hathaway

• [ ] Add a section on Eugene Thacker

• [ ] Add a section on Thomas Ligotti Delukiel (talk) 17:54, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

• [ ] Add info about Four Noble Truths and Duḥkha to Philosophical pessimism#Buddhism Fantastiera (talk) 15:03, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Suggested sections

Section moved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Philosophical_pessimism&oldid=1184312693, since after restructuring the articles into a historical and topical ones, the sections fit historical account, not the topical one. Fantastiera (talk) 17:15, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

It would be nice to have sections on more contemporary thinkers/writes such as Cioran, David Benatar, John Gray, Thomas Ligotti and Eugene Thacker Throughthemind (talk) 20:47, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

It would also be good to include Al-Ma'arri somewhere Throughthemind (talk) 20:48, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Agnes Taubert, Olga Plümacher and Amalie J. Hathaway should also be included under the post-Schopenhauerian pessimism section Throughthemind (talk) 21:00, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

I think something on Dialogue of Pessimism and other topics from Ancient Near East or other Ancient philosophy might be cool too, if there are reliable sources that synthesize them with modern pessimism :) - car chasm (talk) 21:57, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. We could also add Julio Cabrera. We have Philosophical pessimism#Notable proponents and Philosophical pessimism#Ancient philosophy, so now we face a choice on how to proceed:

A) Add another section, something like Philosophical pessimism#Modern philosophers, or

B) Remake our approach to presenting particular views. Fantastiera (talk) 16:33, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

HEAVILY Support. I was just about to come on here to suggest Cioran, probably the most notable pessimist in recent years before Ligotti and Thacker. User:Fantastiera, I'm in favor of option A. Delukiel (talk) 04:06, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

I've added a section on Cioran. Would be grateful if anyone can contribute to expanding it Throughthemind (talk) 10:16, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I've also restructured the article to have sections for different time periods Throughthemind (talk) 10:52, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I can definitely add more on Cioran. Give me some time! Delukiel (talk) 04:54, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I've added more Cioran. Unfortunately, I may have contributed to the problem of relying on primary sources—it's only a few, though. Feel free to clean up my caveman language. Delukiel (talk) 16:55, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Fantastiera Regarding the topic of which authors should or should not be considered pessimists (and thus added to this page on the history of philosophical pessimism), I would like to quote something you wrote on this edit: "Camus and Nietzsche (...) are not generally recognized as philosophical pessimists". This got me thinking: should they thus be removed from this page? And we could ask the same question about other authors as well, such as Baltasar Gracián, Pascal, and Voltaire.

In my view, Voltaire and Nietzsche could be worth keeping due to purely historical reasons. Voltaire was "the first European to be labeled as a pessimist", and his novel Candide (1759) is a direct attack against Leibniz's optimism. Nietzsche, on the other hand, tackled directly against Schopenhauer's philosophy, besides living in the midst of the pessimism controversy, and being a contemporary of many post-Schopenhauerian pessimists.

What do you think? Among Baltasar Gracián, Pascal, Voltaire, Camus and Nietzsche, do you believe that any of them should be removed from this list? I would personally vote for removing all of them save for Voltaire and Nietzsche (again, for historical reasons - but we could disagree even of this).

(By the way, my apologies for not responding to our conversation from last October yet; I just am not able to process too much information right now).

Kind regards. Sirhu (talk) 23:35, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I have the same reservations, now that you mention it. I think the best way to establish who should be counted as a philosophical pessimist is looking at books that cover pessimism/pessimists (Weltschmerz, Dark Matters, Pessimism: A History and a Criticism, 'Pessimism Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit', and others), or in academic papers on pessimism, or if it's clear that someone is a pessimist (e.g. Cabrera). If we won't be able to find a good support to include someone as a pessimist, maybe they should be delegated into a new section (that could be a basis for a new dedicated page) Pessimism in literature or something like that. Alternatively, this page will not be a historical listing of pessimist philosophers only, but also of those who directly responded to them (as in the case of Nietzsche). It's a difficult problem. I think we may need a dedicated section with a proposal, arguments, discussion, and a poll. Fantastiera (talk) 08:43, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I now think that this page is fine as it currently stands - no need to remove any authors or make major changes.

1. Even writers such as Camus and Nietzsche clearly saw something bothersome or distressing about human beings' existential situation - which prompted them to devise means of dealing with the troublesome aspects of life (i.e. "one must imagine Sisyphus happy", "amor fati", etc.). The fact that their conclusions regarding human life are seen as optimistic does not preclude the reasons why they felt compelled to reach conclusions of such a nature.

In other words: why would these authors insist that one should "imagine Sisyphus happy" or "love one's fate" if not because Sisyphus's punishment clearly seems appalling, and that "loving one's fate" (that is, accepting one's lot in life despite all the suffering occurs in it) is an attitude that would not need to be adopted or insisted upon if life itself were already recognized as something good?

2. Even sources such as Dark Matters (2021) and Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (2009) can be problematic to use as a reference for which authors should or not be considered pessimists.

For example: in Dark Matters, the author mentions Pierre Bayle as the author that is at "the heart and origins of [the] pessimist tradition", thus "replacing Dienstag’s Rousseau as the patriarch of pessimism" (p. 21). Besides the fact that Mara van der Lugt's book is the only source (to my knowledge, at least) which addresses philosophical pessimism and considers Pierre Bayle as the originator of the pessimist tradition, putting Jean-Jacques Rousseau (as Joshua Foa Dienstag does) in such a position is also, at minimum, controversial (as I already mentioned in a previous edit of mine). Sirhu (talk) 14:02, 3 January 2024 (UTC)