Pessimism

Pessimism (Latin: pessimum - Worst, superlative of malus = bad ) is a view of life with a positive attitude without expectations and hopes. They also referred to a certain by negative expectations in the face of a thing about the future as well as a philosophical conception, according to which the existing world is bad and to initiate some improvements to be expected. The pessimism opposite view is the optimism.

Philosophy

With his major work, The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer in 1819 founded a radical metaphysical pessimism. In his principle of " All life is suffering," he looked through Eastern wisdom teachings, especially in Buddhism, confirmed.

Ferdinand Tönnies ' 1887er foresight in community and society that the Western modern times mentally to "Company" transforming, of which no more way to " Community" and individualism leads back, will therefore be limited as a culture in the foreseeable centuries, early earned him the accusation of " pessimism " (see above Harald Höffding ) - which the reformist -minded always Tönnies often (in vain ) disagreed.

In the philosophical thought of the 20th century was the historical and cultural pessimism a great weight.

Shortly after the end of World War I saw Oswald Spengler with the writing " The Decline of the West" for attention. Spengler saw in world history comparable fates of major cultures: How a living through each of these cultures a phase of development, a stage of maturity and a phase of decline. After about a millennium each culture is sinking back into obscurity from which they once emerged. The thousand years of European- Western culture saw Spengler approach in his century to an end - mainly because the prognosis of this work was especially at the time of the Weimar Republic perceived as pessimistic (other than himself saw himself ) and controversial.

Other historical pessimists were Theodor Lessing, Walter Benjamin, and the "critical theorists " of the Frankfurt School. Significant documents this pessimism of the left intellectual side are the " Dialectic of Enlightenment " by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno and " The antiquity of the people " by Günther Anders.

Representatives of pessimism

• To be born from the disadvantage: Émile Michel Cioran. Thoughts and aphorisms / De l' inconvénient d' être né. 1973, ISBN 3-518-37049-9
• Ulrich Horstmann: The monster. Outlines of a philosophy of human flight. 1983, ISBN 3-936345-47-3
• Ludwig Marcuse: pessimism: a stage of maturity. 1953 DNB 453,216,331th Philosophy of Un - happiness. Pessimism - a stage of maturity. 1981, ISBN 3-257-20219-9