How do you find happiness in pessimistic philosophy? Is there an argument against pessimism?

Great Debates
1

So particularly on nights like these I get a little down. Sorry guys but that’s the way it is…and it’s hard for me to be up without the help of a good burger or ice cream because I can’t find a way to really argue against pessimistic philosophy. Personally, it’s a weird feeling to listen to Rust Cohle from True Detective and kinda understand where he’s coming from. Life has no point. Life has tons of suffering (as the buddhists know too well). The world is totally fucked up and it ain’t gonna change any time soon.

The hardest part for me about dealing with depression and whatnot is realizing that you really don’t matter in the end. You could die and that’d be the end of, you wouldn’t even have to deal with you family’s grief personally because, well, you’re dead.

However, there is a silver lining in all this mopey crap. I’ve heard (from a RadioLab podcast) about Nietzsche’s idea of the Reevaluation of All Values. They barely mentioned it, but apparently it’s an idea of following pessimism all the way through to it’s logical extreme and coming out the other side with a somewhat enlightened - perhaps - and overall happier way of looking at stuff.

Does anyone know more about this and willing to explain more? Is it total bullcrap? Is there a logical, cogent argument AGAINST pessimism?

2

It’s sad, for one thing. Realism is probably healthier all around: try to assess things on the basis of real evidence.

Pessimists have the advantage of not being surprised when things go wrong. They have the joy of being surprised when things go right. They invest conservatively, and so lose less of their money…but they invest too conservatively, and thus don’t earn as much as they should.

They’re very dull company. They aren’t any fun to be around. People tend to avoid them. If you like having friends, pessimism is probably not the optimal world-view. At very least, you’d best keep mum over it.

3

This is coming from the mists of time, but wasn’t Nietzsche nihilism? The conclusion you’re looking for is, IIRC, along the lines of

  1. Does life suck?
    1a. Yes - go to 2. (<— Nietzsche’s response, but of course he wrote it with more words)
    1b. No - go to 5.
  2. Can you do anything about it?
    2a. Yes - go to 3.
    2b. No - go to 5. (<— he was German. They were very long words)
  3. Do you want to do what you can about it?
    3a. Yes - go to 4.
    3b. No - go to 5.
  4. Do it.
  5. Stop complaining.
4

Funny thing is that I’m actually a super bright and happy guy usually. But it’s just when you get into barebones philosophy that I can’t find an argument against pessimism (which just happens to be it’s unfortunate name. More like realism) nor have I been able to do what Nietzche was able to do and take it all the way it’s logical extreme and turn it into a formula for happiness and RadioLab didn’t do a great job explaining how he reached there. Any help would be appreciated

5

To begin with, I see a rhetorical disconnect here.

As I would define it, pessimism is immoderate by definition. Thus, it cannot be a kind of “realism,” as realism is moderate by definition.

The pessimist sells short when the market is rising. The realist does not, although he diversifies, to balance out the risks.

The realist says, “My glass is half-full…or half-empty…because these are much the same.” The pessimist says, “I didn’t bother to bring a glass, for surely the wine would be sour, at too high a price, and, besides, I don’t like wine anyway.”

The pessimist is an Eeyore by nature.

Caution is reasonable; it is realistic. But pessimism is an extravagance of caution. The pessimist carries an umbrella…even on a summer day in Forth Worth. The pessimist hides in the basement of his house all day, because Trotskyite anarchists might throw a dynamite bomb down his street.

Thus, the best argument against it is: it isn’t any fun! Jeez, live a little, would’ja?

6

Nietzsche does not advocate nihilism. On the contrary, one of his principal claims is that modernity leads to nihilism, and that only by adopting new life-affirming values can we avoid nihilism. The life-denying values of Christianity have been swept aside by science and the drive to rationalize all of life (thus God is “dead”), but no life-affirming values have yet taken their place. Nietzsche looks to culture–a natural expression of the human animal–as the expression of values hard-won through suffering. Zarathustra thus announces that a “new” kind of person is needed: a person capable of creating a culture expressing new, life-affirming values.

7

I take note of the fact that the amazing progression of mankind has been fueled by optimism toward the future, rather than pessimism regarding inevitable collapse/breakdown/nothingness.

In other words, if we all indulged our pessimistic realism we’d still be living in caves using rocks to write “God is dead” on the walls.

But, at the bare-bones, life is meaningless; death inevitable and utter nothingness.

8

The thing about deciding that life contains more misery than it does joy, is that this requires one to determine a cut point above which is joy and below which is misery, and usually that cut point is set rather high. For the most part what people define as misery is actually things being not as joyful as they would want them to be. Take as an extreme example a death of a beloved spouse. Most people would consider that as proof that life is full of misery, but in reality, the only misery that this entails is the lack of joy that you previously had with your spouse. So it isn’t so much that life is bad, just that you are unsatisfied with the fact that it isn’t as good as you want it to be.

Accept things as they are, enjoy what you can, and keep living your life until you don’t. Even if there is no point to life, that just takes off the pressure. Without a point, there is no danger of failing to reach it.

9

I haven’t read much Nietzsche and I didn’t hear that RadioLab either, full disclosure. But what I see going on is you looking at life from the outside and noting that it is meaningless. In that view, yes, it is meaningless. The only meaning life is going to have is what you give to it. You have to put yourself inside it, own it, and give it a meaning.

Sure, you could let other people give it meaning for you. Join a religion- they’ve got it all prepackaged and waiting for you. If you can stick to the script and stay with the program, they’ll probably take you in and at the least you will get some casserole out of it. Doesn’t a casserole with some religious fundamentalists sound nice?

But that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea. So you have to go the give-it-meaning route. You will have to affirm yourself as the giver of this meaning, you have to see yourself as somebody even if you are not influential, because at the very least you have this power to assign a meaning to your life. It is actually pretty cool, so use it.

But what? Maybe start small. Think of a jungle wildcat- it doesn’t ask these questions. When it gets hungry, it hunts down something and eats it. That is the meaning for that time. When it gets tired, it sleeps and that is the meaning. When it gets horny, it goes and screws another wildcat, and that is the meaning. Things aren’t very complicated for an animal. We are pretty much animals ourselves, so maybe give a go at enjoying being an animal. 4 billion years of evolution isn’t all wrong, it is actually pretty cool if maybe a little gross sometimes. This way of looking at things may not cheer you up if you are especially sick or weak or something, but even then, c’mon, it is still pretty cool, admit it.

But apparently being just an animal isn’t good enough for evolution. No, we have to be self-aware and capable of language, abstraction, imagination and so on. We can use those things, or we can neglect them. But why neglect them? The jungle cat is free from philosophical questions at the price of having only a few modes of existence. We are able to torture ourselves with questions, but we have far more modes of existence relative to animals (Btw, one of them is ethics. We can assign the value ‘bad’ to some things, then focus exclusively on those things, then get really sad. If you can assign the value ‘bad’ to things and get sad, you can assign meaning to your life, too.). Use your uniquely human attributes rather than neglecting them. Use them to create a meaning for your life.

And don’t give up. That’s the main thing. Die with your boots on if it comes down to that. Then people will say, “Well, at least he died with his boots on, an example to us all.” In that case, you wouldn’t know that meaning of your life until it was over.

10

Maybe you could try the Martin Gardner route and admit that the arguments against God/“real” meaning/an afterlife are stronger than those in favor, but just hope and believe anyway simply because it makes you feel better.

Check out The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener for his essays on the topics.

11

1.) Accepting the truth of a claim simply because doing so makes one feel better is a terrible reason to accept the truth of a claim, especially if one suspects the truth lies with a contradictory claim. One word for this phenomenon is denial.

2.) William James argued that religious belief is justified on essentially emotional grounds long before, and much better than, this fellow did.

3.) Hoping that there is a deity that created this world does not make me feel better, as it amounts to hoping that this mess of a world is the product of some Super Sadist.

12

But this is not the whole truth. A clear and realistic look at the world reveals that, yes, it is full of misery and suffering and pointlessness and is horribly fucked up. But it is also full of wonder and beauty and love and excitement and things that actually work pretty damn well. The pessimist errs in only seeing, or only dwelling on, the bad stuff—the part of the glass that’s empty.

And, to pessimists’ claims like “Life has no point” or “it ain’t gonna change any time soon,” one can truthfully reply, “You don’t know that.” There are plenty of situations in which we have imperfect information. Always expecting the worst or accepting the bleakest possible interpretation is simply incorrect (though it may at times be a self-fulfilling prophecy). World history, and most people’s own personal history, provides examples of where things turned out better than the pessimists expected.

13

Gardner acknowledges James as one of his influences/reference points. And both James and Gardner are smart enough and have thought deeply enough that they’ve addressed objections like these.

14

Might be a case of mistaken tone over the internet, but “this fellow” was well aware of William James’, Unamuno’s, and Kierkegaard’s thoughts on the subject. Gardner was a founding member of The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, wrote regularly for Scientific American and Skeptical Inquirer for over 40 years, and published over 100 books. He wasn’t some faith healer that argued for Creationism and proselytization of the masses.

On point #3 - cool. The aforementioned philosophical theism’s not for you.

15

When I teach Intro to Phil and we’re discussing philosophy of religion–specifically, alternative approaches to traditional theistic thinking–we read, among others, William James, and not this Gardner fellow. James’ argument is silly enough without diluting it further.

16

I really recommend you read the book Trom linked to. It may not convince you, but I think you’d find it interesting.

17

The OP finds the idea of there not being an afterlife pessimistic?

I dispute that. It is far preferable to the predominant Western views of what an afterlife might be – eternal burning lakes of fire, and even if that turns out not to be your outcome, judgement by some being who never clearly told you the rules to achieve either a better or a worse outcome.

I’m much happier with my life being a known quantity and my death being a finality rather than a game I have to play with really bad possible consequences.

18

James died before World War I. Gardner died 5 years ago. If you don’t like the topic, I suppose it makes sense to stick with the guys younger people are less likely to empathize with and avoid the risk of extending discussion. Mold minds as you see fit, I guess.

19

You have to be a little careful here. Gardner didn’t accept the claim as true. He accepted belief in the claim. He said, specifically, credo consolans: I believe because it makes me feel better.

This is far from a terrible reason to believe something. In working practice, it’s a damn good reason – so long as one carries the thinking all the way through.

If I’ve got a cancer that’s going to kill me…what harm is there in denial? If I’m crossing the street and a bus is approaching, then denial could be fatal. But when it comes to religious thinking…where’s the bus?

If it had driven Gardner to tithe more than he could afford to some church, or to follow some demagogue on public protests and clashes with the police, or to practice income tax deceit (“I’m a religion, so I don’t have to pay!”) then the consequences would be negative, and the faith wouldn’t make him feel better.

If he simply believed that there was a loving God out there…and if that made him feel better…can you demonstrate the harm?

To quote Garry Trudeau (from “Rap Master Ronnie”) “The unexamined life is fine with us.”

(Hasty disclaimer: I don’t agree with Gardner’s reasoning.)

20

Sometimes, the sole purpose of a person’s life is to stand as a warning to others.