A calm EVALUAHON Of NSS‘MMSM Thai: for flu Dam of M. A. MICHIGAN STATE COLLEGE Emmi; Miachad Damian; 5- ”I 1948 . C16x- I“1 IHEb'JS -_ -— This is to certify that the thesis entitled A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF PESSIMISM presented by FRANCIS MICHAEL DONAHUE has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for W Mdmm Q. 231, 4.0.... 2.49.45“ / Major professor Date W247]???- f 5 - - 1.4 - o .'l. , A. I ‘ 1,344.“;57 .'_ c . 4 ‘ . 0 . L‘, ‘ I A I. —‘———‘ ——"*— —————— ' ‘ '——‘ ‘~"~—"—'——“—‘ ——‘ ——‘ ‘ ‘1“ A _ _'___ A._‘_- 'v «j —Is-" ‘1? ~1va W’’1‘: F. ‘ ‘- ) ’vTr'T'V—w—__——T'v‘i“ l I. I’LL ll [ [J . 'I‘IIIJL‘.{.{ (l ptilfl . l u (“u II v II. ll‘ Illn: .lll.l A.CRITICAL EVALUASICH OF PESSIHI U By mmcxs mm 1991mm A.THESIS Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of Michige State College of.Agriculture and Applied Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of Philosophy 19% \Lll‘lfl'ltu’ll 11 ‘ Ill‘ \(I l lEllfll:LiIr Jl‘lf‘ll l{[.[ .lLl‘ll‘ll‘l’ll‘l/nltl lll' If) \a/ i. L‘: .V as v- “N “l'."/ w"\ ACICIOITLEDGIERT The writer is deeply indebted to Professor John Martin DeHaan, Head of the Department of Philosophy, who gave generously of his time and was a constant source of guidance and inspiration throughout the preparation of this study. His kindness in grant- ing me permission to study the manuscript of his forthcoming Intro- duction to PhilOSOphy,‘A Call to Reflection, has been most helpful. Grateful acknowledgpent is due to Dr. Lewis Kenneth Zerby, Assistant Professor of Philosophy for carefully reading the manu- script and offering invaluable counsel and assistance in its organ- ization and revision. I am also rrateful to Dr. Raymond M. Gonso, Assistant Professor k) of Philosophy for his helpful suggestions for its revision. Sudh an acknowledgment cannot adequately express my indebtedp ness to them for their unfailing encouragement, critical appraisal an generous aid in this work. COZITEL' A a: I THE HISTORY OF PESSIMISfi l Pessimism Defined 3 Pessimism in Ancient Religions 8 modern philosophies of Pessimisn 20 II ETHICS Ann PESSIxIsn 37 The Meaning; of Good "8 Useful Good '0 True Good 1.11 Apparent Good 1’2 Life per se as a Value '6 Scholastic View of Life 50 Sd‘xoperfiiauer's View of Life 50 Suicide 53 LeOpardi's Pessimistic View 58 Consciousness as Value bl Nirvana, the Denial of the Value _ of Consciousness 61+ Voluntarism as Value 65 Value of Pleasure and Pain 69 Material Goods as Value 8 Moral Good as Value 8 II METAPHYSIGAL PESSIMISH 89 The Hindu Outlook 89 The Buddhist Outlook 91 The Hebrew Outlook 95 Christ, the Pessimi st 8 Roman Catholicism and.Pessimism 10h The Calvinistic Outlook 108 IV TEE PROBLEM OF EVIL 113 rEhe Hedonistic Paradox 118 Joseph de Iiaistre's View 120 Kinds of Evil 122 Value of Sickness and Physical Ills 1214» V COKCEUSION: PESSILIISEJ III THE 3mm}: 131 Argmwnts for Pessimism . 133 rI'he Golden Llean 135 BIBLIOGRAPHY 137 CKAPTER I THE HISTORY OF PESSIXISL Diogenes of old went about the streets of Athens, lantern in hand, searching for an honest man, fully convinced in his own mind that he would never find that for which he searched. If philosophi- cal pessimists had a patron saint, I believe Diogenes would qualify for the honor. Like him, philos0phical pessimists of all ages have gone searching for truth, pleasure, honor, courage, and immortality, fully confident in their own.minds that they would find only suspicion, fear, arrogance, treachery and eventual annihilation. Even the Opti- mist Nietzsche deplored the surplus of defective, sickly, suffering, degraded individuals among men and stated that the successful man is always the exception, the "rare exception." Turning back the pages of history, pessimists have felt that civilization has but provided a.veneer of artificiality for man's basic and incurable evils, which are the result of his essentially corrupt human nature. Rousseau declared that human evils follow the spread of the arts and sciences and grow in proportion as cult- ure advances; yet he is considered an Optimist. He points to the examples of Egypt, Greece and Rome and to their eventual decline and decomposition as civilization advanced within them. It is his belief that science and art corrupt morals since they had their birth in corruption and seek its perpetuation. .Astronomy, he said, was born in superstition; oratory springs from ambition, hatred, flattery and deceit; geometry from avarice; physics, from vain curi- DJ osity. The result of a civilization founded upon such corruption, he reasoned, becomes more dangerous and breeds more serious evils the longer it is perpetuated.until eventually it brings about its own destruction. Philosophical pessimism, like many other things, is both old and new. Before our era the pessimistic spirit deeply colored the Buddhist vision of life; and the Hebrew Prophet, a sad and disillusion- ed man, looked forth upon a world full of weariness, a world where all was vanity and a striving after phantoms. hen are influenced by their moods, and they color with them the wider world around them. Under the influence of sorrow, suffering, and disappointment, the optimist becomes for the time being a pessimist, and finds life unprofitable. Thus it was with Eartin Luther, the protagonist of faith; in the end he confessed that he was utterly weary of life and he prayed that the Lord would come and bear him into eternity. If the judgements we pass on our own ex- perience reflect our mood, the same is also true when we pass judgement on the larger experience of men. .A man struggling with poverty and sickness is inclined to think poorly of life in general. The philosophical pessimist is, of course, well aware that if he is to argue his case convincingly, he must do so on wider grounds than those of his personal feeling or emotion. But is it possible to justify pessimism by drawing up a calculus of pleasures and pains, and by show- ing that on the scales the pains and disappointments and sorrows of life are far in excess of the pleasures, satisfactions and joys? The diffi- culties are innumerable, of course, in such an effort. Pessimism is not KN all of one color nor of one kind. There is a need to distinguish between ontolo3fical pessimism and continpent pessim1s1, while con- tin3ent pew1 1a imay oe sue-divided into three tj'pes, namely: materialistic contin3ent_pessimism, li 1t ea continjent jessimism, and unlimited contin3 ent pessimism. There is also another type of pessimism which I shall call psvcholo3ical pessimism, and it is not to be included, strictly speakin3 , among the philosophical types. In direct opposition to these types of philOSOphical pessi- mism there are related types of Optimism and it is with a philosOp her of ontolO3 ical optimic £1, St. Thomas Aquinas, that we shall deal in some of our treatment of the subject of life, per se, as a value. Briefly defining the types of pessimism, we find tliat ont0103ical pessimism is an outlook which re3ards oein3, per se, as evil. Philo- SOphers, (such as Buddha, SchOpenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann) con— sider existence, re 3ardless of con tinL3 ent factors, as necessarily evil. It would be far better that man should not exist, than to live in even the best of earthly cond Hi0 us, for the ont0103ical pessimist claims that the evils in life far exceed the 300d. It is not merely a contin3ent fact that evil triumphs over 300d, but it is in the very nature of thin3s that this should necessarily be the case. Contingent pessimisz, with its three sub-types, holds that being, per se, does not po sess value, but oecomes ei 1er 300d or bad, depend- ing upon circumstances; it is contin3ent upon external and personal actors. It does not look uoon bein3, per se, as evil but being in a certain state or condition of sufferin3 or evil may be undesirable. .The first sub-type, materialistic contin3ent pessimism is the philosophy of those who do not belie ve in iziuortality and have no hepe for a rectification or compens a tion in an a: ter—li f" 8. Death to the mater- as ialistic contin3ent pessi mist is looked upon C. finality and cessation 1. of being. It to observe LIL let the materialist is seldom concerned with ev1 e. ph ilo scuph i 0° prool em but views it rather as a.practical issue, for a concern with the problem of evil presupposes a belief in a deity, as we shall indie ate later in the chapter on The roblem of Evil. Lucretius, the Epicurean, is one philosopher who held this type of pessimism. The second sub—type is that of limited con- tingent pessimism, which is accepted by -r ‘bose th who while believing in an immortal existence aft er death, Jvet consider the world with all of its works and pomp as evil, transitory and detrimental to man's eter— nal happiness. There are many ex nples of philosophers who have held to this fonn of pessimism, chief y, Christ, Job, Ecclesiastes, Calvin and Tolstoy and it is typical of monastic institutions w1ich strive to help men and women escape the wickedness of the world, overcome its bla ndisl mients and work out their eternal salvation. The third sub—type is that of unlimited contin3ent pessir1ism, which posits a totally 3loomy outlook of Ce lief in immo rtality but believes that both this world and an after-life are evil; man should therefore seek Kirval One example of this sort of pessimism is contained in the passa3e from Shane spere's “Hamlet " , which will be dealt with in Chapter II The last type of C pessimism with which we are concerned s psych0103ical pe u simism which includes scepticism and cynicism, as states of mind, of the man-in-the- street who does not conce rn himself greatly with ‘ the ph ilosophical in- tricacies of the nature of evil, but merely re003nizes ev1l when he finds it and stru“‘les with it or is defeated by it.