Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The term pessimism derives from the Latin word pessimus, meaning 'the worst'.It was first used by Jesuit critics of Voltaire's 1759 novel Candide, ou l'Optimisme.Voltaire was satirizing the philosophy of Leibniz who maintained that this was the 'best (optimum) of all possible worlds'.
A sociological theory is a supposition that intends to consider, analyze, and/or explain objects of social reality from a sociological perspective, [1]: 14 drawing connections between individual concepts in order to organize and substantiate sociological knowledge.
Explanatory style is distinct from dispositional theories of optimism. While related to life-orientation measures of optimism, attributional style [clarification needed] theory suggests that dispositional optimism and pessimism are reflections of the ways people explain events, i.e., that attributions cause these dispositions. [19]
Philosophical pessimism is a philosophical tradition which argues that life is not worth living and that non-existence is preferable to existence. Thinkers in this tradition emphasize that suffering outweighs pleasure, happiness is fleeting or unattainable, and existence itself does not hold inherent value or an intrinsic purpose.
Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena. [1] A tool used by social scientists, social theories relate to historical debates over the validity and reliability of different methodologies (e.g. positivism and antipositivism), the primacy of either structure or agency, as well as the relationship between contingency and necessity.
For James, [2] meliorism stands in the middle between optimism and pessimism, and treats the salvation of the world as a probability rather than a certainty or impossibility. In the case of a meliorist praxis , the activist contemporary of the Pragmatists Jane Addams stripped progressive ideals of any elitist privilege calling for a "lateral ...
Bahnsen's pessimism gives a central place to his theory of tragedy – a corollary of the contradictory character of his Realdialektik. [1]: 263 According to him, there can never be a clear or consistent answer as to what moral duties or values an individual should adopt. Whatever we do in our lives, particularly in the more intricate moral ...
Cultural pessimism arises with the conviction that the culture of a nation, a civilization, or humanity itself is in a process of irreversible decline. It is a variety of pessimism formulated by a cultural critic .