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The word pessimism comes from Latin pessimus, meaning "the worst".The term "optimism" was first used to name Lebnitz's thesis that we live in "the best of all possible worlds"; and "pessimism" was coined to name the opposing view.
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 ...
In his works after Riddles, Schiller's attack takes the form of reminding the abstract metaphysician that abstractions are meant as tools for dealing with the "lower" world of particulars and physicality, and that after constructing abstractions we cannot simply drop the un-abstracted world out of our account. The un-abstracted world is the ...
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.
Climate scientist Michael E. Mann described Bendell's paper as "pseudo-scientific nonsense", saying Bendell's "doomist framing" was a "dangerous new strain of crypto-denialism" that would "lead us down the very same path of inaction as outright climate change denial". [10] An essay published on OpenDemocracy argues that the paper is an example ...
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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.