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Melancholy by Domenico Fetti (1612). Death, suffering and meaninglessness are the main themes of philosophical pessimism. Philosophical pessimism is a philosophical tradition which argues that life is not worth living and that non-existence is preferable to existence.
The pessimistic outlook of the German philosopher Julius Bahnsen is often described as the most extreme form of philosophical pessimism, perhaps even more so than Mainländer's since it excludes any possibility of redemption or salvation, with Bahnsen being skeptical that art, asceticism or even culture can remove us from this world of ...
This does not mean however, that the pessimist cannot be politically involved, as Camus argued in The Rebel (1951). Pessimism about the human condition was also expressed by Hobbes (1588–1679). [24] [25] There is another strain of thought generally associated with a pessimistic worldview, this is the pessimism of cultural criticism and social ...
Benatar posits that there are multiple types of meaning, ranging from the cosmic to the terrestrial perspectives. Terrestrial meaning is obtainable (by having importance to family or community, for example), but there is no cosmic meaning to human existence. He argues that the world is more bad than good, but most people don't recognize it as such.
It is pessimistic about the capacity of human beings to make correct ethical choices; in this aspect, naiveté is an antonym. [3] Modern cynicism is sometimes regarded as a product of mass society , especially in those circumstances where the individual believes there is a conflict between society's stated motives and goals and actual motives ...
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The pessimistic element was available in Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy and Matthew Arnold's cultural criticism. The tide of Whiggish optimism (exemplified by Macaulay ) receded somewhat in the middle of the reign of Queen Victoria.
It is the underlying life principle inaugurating all aspects of life and behavior, a self-preserving force. A sense of entropy and the eternal return, which are related, is always indissociable from the will to power. The eternal return of all memory initiated by the will to power is an entropic force again inherent to all life.