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Concept
Philosophical pessimism
Summary
Philosophical pessimism is a family of philosophical views that assign a negative value to life or existence. Philosophical pessimists commonly argue that the world contains an empirical prevalence of pains over pleasures, that existence is ontologically or metaphysically adverse to living beings, and that life is fundamentally meaningless or without purpose. Their responses to this condition, however, are widely varied and can be life-affirming.
Philosophical pessimism is not a single coherent movement, but rather a loosely associated group of thinkers with similar ideas and a resemblance to each other. In Pessimism: A History and a Criticism, James Sully describes the essence of philosophical pessimism as "the denial of happiness or the affirmation of life's inherent misery". Although adherents of philosophical pessimism rarely advocate for suicide as a solution to the human predicament, many of its proponents do favour the adoption of antinatalism, that is, non-procreation.
Historically, philosophical pessimism seems to have first presented itself in the East, under the partly religious aspect of Buddhism. In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, Gautama Buddha establishes the first noble truth of duḥkha, or suffering, as the fundamental mark of existence:
Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.
This would have exerted a certain influence on Greco-Roman philosophy from the Ptolemaic period onwards, in particular on the pessimistic doctrine of Hegesias of Cyrene.
Official source
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