Talk:History of philosophical pessimism

TODO list of things to add or change

• [ ] Expand section on Victorian pessimism, including Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, Thomas Hardy's works and James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night

• [ ] Expand on the views of Amalie J. Hathaway

• [ ] Add a section on Eugene Thacker

• [ ] Add a section on Thomas Ligotti Delukiel (talk) 17:54, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

• [ ] Add info about Four Noble Truths and Duḥkha to Philosophical pessimism#Buddhism Fantastiera (talk) 15:03, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Suggested sections

Section moved from https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Talk:Philosophical_pessimism&oldid=1184312693, since after restructuring the articles into a historical and topical ones, the sections fit historical account, not the topical one. Fantastiera (talk) 17:15, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

It would be nice to have sections on more contemporary thinkers/writes such as Cioran, David Benatar, John Gray, Thomas Ligotti and Eugene Thacker Throughthemind (talk) 20:47, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

It would also be good to include Al-Ma'arri somewhere Throughthemind (talk) 20:48, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Agnes Taubert, Olga Plümacher and Amalie J. Hathaway should also be included under the post-Schopenhauerian pessimism section Throughthemind (talk) 21:00, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

I think something on Dialogue of Pessimism and other topics from Ancient Near East or other Ancient philosophy might be cool too, if there are reliable sources that synthesize them with modern pessimism :) - car chasm (talk) 21:57, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. We could also add Julio Cabrera. We have Philosophical pessimism#Notable proponents and Philosophical pessimism#Ancient philosophy, so now we face a choice on how to proceed:

A) Add another section, something like Philosophical pessimism#Modern philosophers, or

B) Remake our approach to presenting particular views. Fantastiera (talk) 16:33, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

HEAVILY Support. I was just about to come on here to suggest Cioran, probably the most notable pessimist in recent years before Ligotti and Thacker. User:Fantastiera, I'm in favor of option A. Delukiel (talk) 04:06, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

I've added a section on Cioran. Would be grateful if anyone can contribute to expanding it Throughthemind (talk) 10:16, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I've also restructured the article to have sections for different time periods Throughthemind (talk) 10:52, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I can definitely add more on Cioran. Give me some time! Delukiel (talk) 04:54, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I've added more Cioran. Unfortunately, I may have contributed to the problem of relying on primary sources—it's only a few, though. Feel free to clean up my caveman language. Delukiel (talk) 16:55, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Fantastiera Regarding the topic of which authors should or should not be considered pessimists (and thus added to this page on the history of philosophical pessimism), I would like to quote something you wrote on this edit: "Camus and Nietzsche (...) are not generally recognized as philosophical pessimists". This got me thinking: should they thus be removed from this page? And we could ask the same question about other authors as well, such as Baltasar Gracián, Pascal, and Voltaire.

In my view, Voltaire and Nietzsche could be worth keeping due to purely historical reasons. Voltaire was "the first European to be labeled as a pessimist", and his novel Candide (1759) is a direct attack against Leibniz's optimism. Nietzsche, on the other hand, tackled directly against Schopenhauer's philosophy, besides living in the midst of the pessimism controversy, and being a contemporary of many post-Schopenhauerian pessimists.

What do you think? Among Baltasar Gracián, Pascal, Voltaire, Camus and Nietzsche, do you believe that any of them should be removed from this list? I would personally vote for removing all of them save for Voltaire and Nietzsche (again, for historical reasons - but we could disagree even of this).

(By the way, my apologies for not responding to our conversation from last October yet; I just am not able to process too much information right now).

Kind regards. Sirhu (talk) 23:35, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I have the same reservations, now that you mention it. I think the best way to establish who should be counted as a philosophical pessimist is looking at books that cover pessimism/pessimists (Weltschmerz, Dark Matters, Pessimism: A History and a Criticism, 'Pessimism Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit', and others), or in academic papers on pessimism, or if it's clear that someone is a pessimist (e.g. Cabrera). If we won't be able to find a good support to include someone as a pessimist, maybe they should be delegated into a new section (that could be a basis for a new dedicated page) Pessimism in literature or something like that. Alternatively, this page will not be a historical listing of pessimist philosophers only, but also of those who directly responded to them (as in the case of Nietzsche). It's a difficult problem. I think we may need a dedicated section with a proposal, arguments, discussion, and a poll. Fantastiera (talk) 08:43, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I now think that this page is fine as it currently stands - no need to remove any authors or make major changes.

1. Even writers such as Camus and Nietzsche clearly saw something bothersome or distressing about human beings' existential situation - which prompted them to devise means of dealing with the troublesome aspects of life (i.e. "one must imagine Sisyphus happy", "amor fati", etc.). The fact that their conclusions regarding human life are seen as optimistic does not preclude the reasons why they felt compelled to reach conclusions of such a nature.

In other words: why would these authors insist that one should "imagine Sisyphus happy" or "love one's fate" if not because Sisyphus's punishment clearly seems appalling, and that "loving one's fate" (that is, accepting one's lot in life despite all the suffering occurs in it) is an attitude that would not need to be adopted or insisted upon if life itself were already recognized as something good?

2. Even sources such as Dark Matters (2021) and Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (2009) can be problematic to use as a reference for which authors should or not be considered pessimists.

For example: in Dark Matters, the author mentions Pierre Bayle as the author that is at "the heart and origins of [the] pessimist tradition", thus "replacing Dienstag’s Rousseau as the patriarch of pessimism" (p. 21). Besides the fact that Mara van der Lugt's book is the only source (to my knowledge, at least) which addresses philosophical pessimism and considers Pierre Bayle as the originator of the pessimist tradition, putting Jean-Jacques Rousseau (as Joshua Foa Dienstag does) in such a position is also, at minimum, controversial (as I already mentioned in a previous edit of mine). Sirhu (talk) 14:02, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This review is transcluded from Talk:History of philosophical pessimism/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Alice793 (talk · contribs) 21:34, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Patrick Welsh (talk · contribs) 20:10, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Notes for improvement

This article is a long way from GA status. I've added maintenance templates to the multiple sections relying excessively on primary sources and blockquotes, which should be used only sparingly.

The WP:LEAD does not properly summarize the body of the article. This is the only thing many visitors read, and it should be crafted with care.

Also, to read as an encyclopedia article, rather than just a chronology of philosophers, there needs to be some kind of section devoted to a general overview that defines the scope and subject-matter of the article. This would directly follow the lead and would establish with secondary overview sources (preferably), or else with tertiary sources, what is to be covered and with (roughly) what proportionality.

The History of philosophy article provides a good model.

Addressing these issues will require additional research and will probably take a fair amount of time. For this reason, I am failing the nomination rather than placing it on hold. I do hope, however, that it is renominated once they have been addressed.

Regards, Patrick (talk) 20:27, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Overhaul of the article.

Addressing the points that Patrick made:

1.Increased the lead to a substantial amount. Please do feel free to make any suggestions or alterations as long as they are done in good faith.

Buddhism:

"This section relies excessively on references to primary sources."

With all due respect, this is blatantly false. To start with:

Not primary sources (Buddhism):

1. "Sully, James (1877). Pessimism: A History and a Criticism. London: Henry S. King & Co. p. 38."

2. "Ligotti, Thomas (2011). The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror. New York: hippocampus Press, p 130. ISBN 978-0-9844802-7-2. OCLC 805656473."

3. "Preus, Anthony (2015). Historical Dictionary of Ancient Greek Philosophy. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 184. ISBN 978-1-4422-4639-3."

4. "Clayman, Dee L. (2014). Berenice II and the Golden Age of Ptolemaic Egypt. Oxford University Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-19-537089-8."

5. Guyau, Jean-Marie (1878). Le Morale D'Épicure Et Ses Rapports Avec Les Doctrines Cntemporaines (in French). Librairie Germer Bailliere. p. 117.

In conclusion, we have 5 secondary sources, with the only primary source being this one:

"Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, translated from the Pali version by Bhikkhu Bodhi."

Besides, it is reasonable to use primary sources for a multitude of reasons, such as there being little to no chance of competing interpretations of what an author originally said -- besides the text oftentimes orifinaring itself from B.C.E and being already well established as a tradition and/or philosophy over the course of millenia.

"This section contains too many or overly lengthy quotations."

What constitutes too "little" or "too many quotations" is arbitrary and depends above all on the overall length of the article (a very short article with an extensive amounts of quotations would worsen the redader's exeperience and likely not teach them of anything -- if at all--, whereas the opposite is not true).

Thus, I would argue that the addition of quotations is very didactic from the point of view of someone who is trying to learn what philosophical pessimism is (mind you, the majority of our readers).

What do I mean by this? instead of simply writing a barrage of texts by Wikipedians in an attempt to explain what a concept, idea or philosophy is, (often with jargon and technical terms), it is much more conducive for a pedagogically effective learning that the reader is introduced to a topic with (as far as possible,) simple-to-understand explanations coupled with the help of quotations from the original work (such that there is little to no risk of distorting the original author's ideas).

It should also be mentioned that the amount of quotations (whose purpose is to help and not hinder understanding) is far less than the amount of the entire text already contained in the article. So, do take that in mind when thinking that "the article has too many quotations and they should all be deleted and thus worsen our reader's understanding on a technical topic such as philosophy because we must follow Wikipedia's arbitrary number of 'how many quotations is too much' when clearly they help both laypeople and professionals to understand, for example, Schopenhauer, philosophy, and a plethora of other authors not aimed at laypeople".

The same points can be said about Judaism and Christianity; except that I will also cite examples that do not rely on primary sources:

1. Sneed, Mark R. (2012). The Politics of Pessimism in Ecclesiastes: A Social-Science Perspective. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. pp. 7–11. ISBN 978-1-58983-635-8.

2. Sexton, Jared (2019). "Affirmation in the Dark: Racial Slavery and Philosophical Pessimism". The Comparatist. 43 (1): 90–111. doi:10.1353/com.2019.0005. ISSN 1559-0887. S2CID 211657311.

3. Dell, Katharine J.; Kynes, Will; Mein, Andrew; Camp, Claudia V. (2016). Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 169–170. ISBN 978-0-567-66790-8.

4. Bottéro, Jean (1995). Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods. University of Chicago Press. pp. 260–261. ISBN 978-0-226-06727-8.

Now on Leopardi: "This section relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this section by adding secondary or tertiary sources."

I am sorry, but did you even bother to read this section properly? Right below Leopardi's image, there are two secondary sources that talk about his cosmic pessimism, namely:

1. Rennie, Nicholas (2005). Speculating on the Moment: The Poetics of Time and Recurrence in Goethe, Leopardi, and Nietzsche. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag. p. 141. ISBN 978-3-89244-968-3. OCLC 61430097.

2. Michael J. Subialka (2021). Modernist Idealism: Ambivalent Legacies of German Philosophy in Italian Literature. University of Toronto Press. p. 264. ISBN 978-1-4875-2865-2. OCLC 1337856720

And there is also a Journal that compares Socrate's views on Wisdom and Leopardi's view on wisdom: Klosko, George (1987). "Socrates on Goods and Happiness". History of Philosophy Quarterly. 4 (3): 251–264. ISSN 0740-0675. JSTOR 27743814.

One again on Schopenhuaer: There is no excessive dependence on primary sources. Just on the first paragraph, we have 4 secondary sources, and the rest of the section was written with the purpose to explain as clearly and didactly as possible what makes Schopenhauer a pessimist (with original quotes from WWR V.1 and WWR V.2 — in addition to original explanations from editors).

Albert Camus:

He is already one of the most well-established authors in the history of philosophy (besides his main ideas being one of the easiest to understand - even for laypeople in philosophy). Of course, secondary sources were also added. Namely:

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/camus/

2. Foley, John (2008). Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Revolt. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0-7735-3467-4.

Julio Cabrera:

Since both philosophical pessimim and Julio Cabrera and relatively unknown authors (and his 700 pages long work has not been translateed into English yet), I could only manage to find one review of his books in English, which I shall be adding as a secondary source. Casey, M. (2019) “Book Review: Discomfort and Moral Impediment by Julio Cabrera (Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 2019)”, Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College, (VI), pp. 91–97. doi: 10.6017/dupjbc.v6i1.11741.

David Benatar:

Although he is the most popular philosophical pesimism and antinatalist contemporarily, I do not believe that there are secondary sources which explain with as much pungency, clarity and detail why he thinks the human condition is a deplorable one. As such, I will leave his section as it is bbesides removing the need for secondary sources (as his works speak for himself). This is at least because, considering his personal life, he deliberately insists on guarding his privacy.

As a final point that I wish to add, Patrick mentioned in 20:28, 2 March 2025 (UTC) on his GA review, among other things, that the the History of philosophy article "provides a good role model" (for how the History of philosophical pessimism article should structured).

It honestly baffles me, that he had the idea of comparing a 2,000+ years old field of study with philosophical pessimism, which, though also belonging to philosophy, is a much less common and niche area of study — such that there obviously isn't as much topics of discussion (which doesn't mean that in the theory it couldn't achieve GA status just due to being a less popular topic within philosophy).

He also said the following in his latest GA review:

"[The article on philosophical pessimism needs to read similar to the History of philosophy article) [to] read as an encyclopedia article, rather than just a chronology of philosophers

Two responses to Patrick:

[Point 1 ].

1. Bro, first off the title of the article is literally written as History of philosophical pessimism -- and this is precisely why it addresses the history of this school of though with a chronology of pessimistic philosophers (and with a brief presentation of their ideas when possible).

Unfortunately due to lack of space we couldn't both write a chronology and an article presenting arguments, counter-arguments, criticisms, view related to philosophical pessimism, etc. — and this is exactly what the philosophical pessimism. article is for.

[Point 2].

"There needs to be some kind of section devoted to a general overview that defines the scope and subject-matter of the article."

Again, the lead section on the historical version and the topical version already cover the general overview that you requested above; it has been expanded to give a more holistic outline of what both articles are about, and further secondary sources have been added as well as mentioned before.

Bur if you still want a typical encyclopedia article that explores what is the essence of philosophical pessimism and not its story or chronology *per se*, I suggest you go to our main article: philosophical pessimism.

Cheers.

Answers: @Patrick @,Fantastiera @Throughthemind, Cinnamon342 (talk) 06:00, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your continued attention to this article. With respect to the GA review, criteria 3b and 3c are non-negotiable. For more information, see WP:NOR, which directly discusses the use of primary sources. I'm not going to argue about the removal of still-valid maintenance tags, but please be sure to address the issues before renominating.

If you disagree with the underlying policies, there is no harm in just letting the article develop at B-class. Few readers are even aware of these distinctions. I do believe, though, that bringing it into compliance with GA guidelines would improve the article. Just replacing the blockquotes to primary sources with encyclopedic prose cited to secondary sources would significantly enhance the readability and overall quality of the article.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 18:23, 8 March 2025 (UTC)