Different forms and characteristics of pessimistic philosophy

It seems that the world of ideas is subject, in all orders of problems, to the alternating play of two extreme and contrary doctrines.
Throughout the last centuries, optimism undoubtedly prevailed in the world, in various forms and through various schools. Today there is little doubt that it is pessimism that tends to triumph, at least for the time being. The poor human spirit will always resemble Luther’s drunken peasant, who falls sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, unable to keep his balance on his horse. Eighteenth-century Germany, in the great majority of the intelligences which represent its moral life, remains faithfully attached to the doctrine which Leibniz had taught it, which Wolf had maintained, and which, moreover, was easily in agreement either with the dogmas of official theology, or with the sentimental deism of Pope, Rousseau, and Paley, which was very much in favor among this population of pastors and university philosophers during the long philosophical interregnum which went from Leibniz to Kant. Hardly if in this quietude of spirit and doctrine penetrate some echoes of the sarcasms of Voltaire, repeated by his royal disciple, the great Frederick, and the free spirits who live in the ray of the small court of Potsdam. The sad gaiety of Candide was drowned by crossing the Rhine; this religious and literate people continues to repeat that everything here below is arranged, by a benevolent Providence, for the final happiness of man, and that this world itself is the best of possible worlds.

Later, when the scene of ideas changes, when Kant and all those illustrious conquerors of the philosophical world who came out of the Critique of Pure Bonding, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, appear, the particular optimism of Leibniz disappears; but the optimism itself, although modified, remains. There is however from then on some vague tendency to decry life and to estimate it below its price. We have carefully noted some passages in Kant marked by a pessimistic tinge; we are reminded that Fichte said “that the real world is the worst possible world.” We are put before our eyes these propositions of Schelling: “Pain is something necessary in all life… All pain has its exclusive source in the only fact of existing. The anxiety of will and desire, which tires each creature with its incessant solicitations, is in itself unhappiness. We can already feel the proximity of Schopenhauer. Hegelian philosophy itself is not hostile to pessimism; it sees it as one of the phases of universal evolution. According to Hegel, as we know, all finite existence is condemned to the painful law of destroying itself by its contradictions. This law of suffering, resulting from the division and limitation of the idea, contains a principle of pessimism that Volkelt has brought to light perfectly.

One can understand the interest that Schopenhauer and Hartmann may have in looking for precedents, and so to speak an honorable kinship for their theory. But, if we look closely, we see only superficial analogies and more than painful alliances of ideas. There is an empirical pessimism which is very well reconciled with metaphysical optimism: this is the point of view from which one must judge the question in the principal representatives of German philosophy since Kant. They are unanimous in the severe appreciation of life considered by its inferior sides and in the sensible reality, and nevertheless, in the whole of these doctrines, what dominates, it is the optimistic solution of the problem of the existence. Kant undoubtedly shows us how little nature is favorable to human happiness; but the true explanation of life, the ultimate reason for things, must be sought outside the sensible order, in the moral order, which is after all the only interest of the sovereign legislator and the only explanation of nature itself. It is the same for Fichte, for whom the sensible phenomena, the appearance of matter, are only a transitory stage prepared for a unique end, the accomplishment of duty, the free action of the self which pursues, in its reaction against the external world and in its conflict with sensation, the highest character it can reach. As for Schelling, in his second manner, marked by his famous work Philosophy and Religion, it is from the Christian doctrine of the fall and the redemption that he borrows the symbol of his metaphysics. He finds in it the transcendent history of the tearing apart of the primitive unity, the certainty of the final return to unity, and he associates with it nature itself, redeemed and spiritualized with man, after having fallen with him into sin and into matter. Thus, after putting before our eyes the saddest paintings of darkened nature and life desolated by evil, Schelling brings us to a final solution, which is unquestionably a kind of theological optimism. This is also, in other forms, Hegel’s final conclusion about the value of the world and of life. The idea, at first divided, wandering out of itself, tends to come back to itself through the consciousness of the world. This becoming of the spirit, this process of the world which continues unceasingly through the changing drama of the facts, here is the true theodicy, the justification of God in history.

Surely this was still optimism, that of universal evolution and necessary progress; in all these doctrines, there is a certain goal assigned to the movement of the universe; A divine reason wraps all phenomena, even the most insignificant or strange ones of nature and history, as if in a marvelous fabric, and, drawing them into determined series, prevents them from extravagantly occurring at random or from getting lost in the useless; it is an order, providential in its own way, which is accomplished at every moment and of which the thinker, having reached the true point of view, becomes the intelligent witness. These ideas dominated the German mind in the first part of this century; Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, had been successively its masters, but all of them led it and maintained it in parallel ways at the end of which reason sees a goal worthy of it, worthy of overcoming in order to reach it the obstacles and the perils of the road, worthy of man bearing without complaint the weight of long days, of heavy burdens, of miseries and afflictions without number. — It is now in a very opposite direction that a large part of philosophical world seems to be led. Is this only a passing fashion, a whim of the imagination, a revolt against the abuses of transcendental dialectics, a violent reaction against the speculative tyranny of the idea, against the despotism of universal evolution, in the face of which “individual miseries” are nothing? What is certain is that individual miseries have one day risen, as if tired of serving ends they did not know; it is that “human destinies” have finally overturned “the chariot that crushed them under its wheels of brass. Unable to free themselves from suffering, they protested against the dialectical reasons which wanted to impose it to them as a salutary necessity, and pessimism was born. At the 19 Century, there was a whole pessimistic literature, flourishing in Germany, and which had even attempted on several occasions, not without success, excursions and conquests on the neighboring countries. And it is not only in the two names of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, one already famous, the other invested with a growing notoriety, that this literature or, if one likes better, this philosophy is summarized. Schopenhauer remains the undisputed leader of the choir, and after him, on the second level, stands, without any affectation of modesty, the young successor already designated, all ready, when age comes, to fill the first role and to take in hand the baton of command, the scepter of the choir. But the choir itself is numerous and composed of voices that do not always sing in unison, that claim to be independent to a certain extent, while remaining linked together in fundamental agreement.

Among Schopenhauer’s disciples, next to or below M. de Hartmann, we must mention especially Frauenstädt, Taubert and Julius Bahnsen. Devoted to the memory of the master, whose correspondence and conversations he published, Frauenstädt nevertheless tried to soften some of the harsh features of the theory, even denying that the term pessimism was suitable, in the strict sense of the word, for a system that admitted the possibility of destroying the Will and thus removing the being from the torments it imposed on him. — This tendency to admit the fact of the misery of the world as inseparable from the being, and however to look for in the limits of pessimism sources of unexpected consolation, shows itself even more distinctly in Taubert. In his book Pessimism and its Opponents, he recognizes with Schopenhauer that progress brings about a deeper and deeper awareness of the suffering attached to being and of the illusion of happiness, but he expresses the hope that this misery can be partly overcome by the combined efforts of the human race, which, by subduing more and more egoistic desires, will give man the blessing of absolute peace and thus reduce to a great extent the unhappiness of the will-to-live. “The very melancholy of pessimism,” says Taubert, “is transformed, if we examine it more closely, into one of the greatest consolations that can be offered to us: Not only does it carry our imagination far beyond the real sufferings to which each of us is destined, and thus we find ourselves disappointed to our advantage, but in a certain way it increases the pleasures granted to us by life and doubles our enjoyment. How so? The reason given to us is not lacking in originality: “Pessimism shows us that all joy is illusory, but it does not touch the pleasure itself, it lets it remain in spite of its demonstrated vanity, only it encloses it in a black frame which makes the picture stand out better.” Finally Taubert insists on the high value of intellectual pleasures which he believes pessimism can perfectly recognize, and which he places in a higher sphere “like the images of the gods, free from all cares and spreading their brightnesses over the tenebrous backgrounds of life, filled either by sufferings or by joys which end in sorrows.” — Mr. James Sully finely remarks that Taubert gives him the effect of an optimist who has inadvertently or by some false step fallen into pessimism and who makes useless efforts to extricate himself from this backwater.

While Taubert represents the right side of pessimism, Julius Bahnsen represents the extreme left side of the doctrine. Such was his appearance in his work entitled The Philosophy of History, such is his appearance, with even greater exaggeration, in his most recent book, armed with this terrible title: The Tragedy as the law of the world! In everything that touches pessimism and the irrational principle from which it derives, he exceeds Schopenhauer’s thought: for him, as for his master, the world is a torment without ceasing that the absolute imposes on itself. But he goes further than his master in denying that there is any finality, even immanent, in nature, and that the order of phenomena manifests no logical link. Not only does he support the school’s principle that all existence is necessarily illogical as a manifestation of the will, but for him existence is illogical “in its content as well as in its form. Apart from the unreasonableness of existence taken in itself, there is a fundamental unreasonableness in the order of existing things. It is understandable that Bahnsen, denying any cooperation of reason in the world, rejects the only form of pure pleasure preserved by Schopenhauer, the pleasure of intellectual contemplation and creation through art, the aesthetic and scientific enjoyment. Where could such enjoyment be taken in a world where there is neither logical order nor harmony of any kind, a pure chaos of phenomena and forms? Therefore the observation of the universe and the representation of its forms in art, far from being a source of calm joy, can only bring new torments to a philosophical mind. The very hope of a final annihilation which is the sovereign remedy proposed by Schopenhauer to the unhappy world is for Bahnsen a pure illusion. “His pessimistic disposition is such,” says Hartmann, “it makes him so passionate about what is hopeless in his view, that he feels disturbed in his absolute sadness when any prospect of consolation is presented to him.” We can be sure this time that we are touching the last term, the last evolution of pessimism. This time the wager, if it is a wager, has been kept to the end, or if it is not a wager, let us say that the madness of the system is complete. Bahnsen can proudly say to pessimism, “This is as far as you will go.”

And indeed pessimism has recoiled, even in Hartmann, before the consequences of the principle pushed to this excess. The philosophy of the Unconscious makes a very reasonable figure, of an exemplary moderation, next to such an eccentricity of doctrine. Germany, which does not lack speculative intrepidity nor taste for adventures of ideas, seems not to have followed Julius Bahnsen up to this point; it seems to me that this fiery dialectician of absolute illogic is sinking more and more into solitude and emptiness. Certainly it is not in this form that pessimism is destined to conquer the world; but, with more skill and in more moderate forms, it is taking hold of some people’s mind, which it attracts as if by a kind of magical fascination and which it deeply troubles. No doubt it still lacks a powerful vehicle, university education.

It is Schelling who reigns at certain times and who regains his empire through worries and discouragements when we are told: “The universe has an ideal goal and serves a divine end; it is not only a vain agitation, whose final balance is zero. The purpose of the world is that reason should reign;[7] or again: “The philosophy of final causes is erroneous only in form. It is only a question of placing in the category of fieri, of slow evolution, what it placed in the category of being and creation.” But these serene clearings do not last and gradually fade into the shadows of pessimism. Even in the part of the book devoted to Certainties, what dominates is the gloomy idea of a gigantic cunning that hovers over human nature, entangles it in its inevitable laces and pushes it by persuasion or by force to unknown ends through obstacle and suffering. “Somewhere there is a great egoist who deceives us,” whether it be nature or God: this is the fixed idea that keeps coming back, that obsesses the author’s mind and fills his book with the darkest poetry. The instinctive Machiavellianism of nature, the tricks she uses to achieve her ends through us, in spite of us, against us, this is the great drama that is played out in the world and of which we are the actors and the victims. Everywhere it is the nature which dupes the individuals for an interest which is foreign to them, in all that squints at the instincts, at the generation, at the love even: “All desire is an illusion, but the things are so arranged that one sees the inanity of the desire only after it is satisfied… No desired object of which we have not recognized, after the embrace, the supreme vanity. This has not failed once since the beginning of the world. Anyway, those who know it perfectly well in advance desire all the same, and no matter how much Ecclesiastes may eternally preach his philosophy of a disillusioned bachelor, everyone will agree that he is right, and nevertheless will desire.” — “We are being exploited,” is the last word in the book. “Something is being organized at our expense; we are the plaything of a higher egotism…. The hook is obvious, and yet we have bitten it, we will always bite it.” Sometimes it is pleasure, for which we must then pay the exact equivalent in pain; sometimes it is the vision of chimerical paradises “to which, when we rest our heads, we no longer find a shadow of verisimilitude; sometimes it is that supreme disappointment of virtue which leads us to sacrifice our dearest interests to an end outside ourselves.”