Philosophical pessimism

Philosophical pessimism is the view that life or existence has negative value. It is often stated as the claim that life is not worth living, or that non-existence would be preferable to coming into or remaining in existence. Other accounts define it by the claim that suffering and other harms outweigh pleasure and other goods, that happiness is unstable or unattainable, or that existence has no inherent meaning or purpose. Pessimistic themes appear in several religious and philosophical traditions, including parts of Buddhism, the book of Ecclesiastes, some forms of Gnosticism, and the work of Hegesias of Cyrene. In the 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer gave pessimism a systematic form in The World as Will and Representation. Later German philosophers, including Eduard von Hartmann and Philipp Mainländer, developed related systems. In the 20th and 21st centuries, writers including Peter Wessel Zapffe, Emil Cioran, Thomas Ligotti, David Benatar, Julio Cabrera, and Drew Dalton have argued for pessimistic positions using claims from ethics, psychology, metaphysics, and the natural sciences. Arguments for pessimism often concern the relation between pleasure and suffering; whether later goods can compensate for earlier or simultaneous harms; life as striving, frustration, boredom, and decay; asymmetries between the harms and benefits of coming into existence; the absence of cosmic meaning; and the suffering of non-human animals, including wild animal suffering. Pessimists have proposed different responses to these claims, including renunciation, compassion, political or social reform, antinatalism, voluntary extinction, and positions on suicide and abortion. Critics, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Bertrand Russell, Bryan Magee, and James Sully, have disputed both the arguments for pessimism and its psychological basis.