Philosophical pessimism

Philosophical pessimism is the view that life and existence are of negative value. It is often expressed as the claim that life is not worth living and that non-existence would, at least in many cases, be preferable to coming into or remaining in existence. Other formulations focus on claims that suffering and other harms have more impact or severity than pleasure and other goods; that the amount of bad in the world exceeds the quantity of good; that happiness is fleeting or unattainable; or that existence lacks inherent meaning or purpose.

Themes associated with pessimism appear in a range of religious and philosophical traditions, including parts of Buddhism, the book of Ecclesiastes, certain forms of Gnosticism, and the work of Hegesias of Cyrene. In the 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer gave pessimism a systematic form in his The World as Will and Representation, and later German thinkers such as Eduard von Hartmann and Philipp Mainländer developed their own versions. In the 20th and 21st centuries, authors including Peter Wessel Zapffe, Emil Cioran, Thomas Ligotti, David Benatar, Julio Cabrera and Drew Dalton have revisited pessimistic ideas using arguments from ethics, psychology and the natural sciences.

Pessimist arguments cover several recurring topics: the claim that pleasure is largely or wholly a matter of relief from pain or frustration; the view that certain evils cannot be cancelled or outweighed by later goods; accounts of life as built around ceaseless striving, boredom and decay; appeals to asymmetries between harms and benefits in coming into existence; the idea that existence is without cosmic meaning; and attention to the suffering of non-human animals, especially in the context of wild animal suffering and evolutionary history. Philosophers in this tradition propose different responses, including religious or quasi-religious paths of renunciation, ethical and political projects aimed at reducing suffering or bringing about a collective end to life, and positions on abortion, antinatalism, suicide and extinction. Critics such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Bertrand Russell, Bryan Magee and James Sully question both the arguments and the psychological basis of pessimism, and its themes continue to appear in literature and popular culture.