Some Aspects of Pessimism

Some Aspects of Pessimism by Agnes Repplier

"Some Aspects of Pessimism" by Agnes Repplier is a wide-ranging critical essay that examines the intellectual tradition of pessimism in Western thought, testing it against the claims of optimism and finding neither philosophy entirely adequate to the facts of human experience. Repplier opens by recounting Matthew Arnold's lecture on Emerson in America, noting how the audience, disappointed by the absence of flattering oratory, finally warmed when Arnold praised Emerson's unconquerable optimism. This anecdote serves as a launching point for her skepticism toward easy optimism. She challenges the popular doctrine of compensation, advanced by Arnold and others, which holds that joy and sorrow balance themselves justly across human lives. Repplier finds this consolation philosophically weak, pointing out that the existence of suffering darkens the horizon for thoughtful souls regardless of any theoretical equilibrium, and that the sight of another's misery does not genuinely increase one's own happiness. She then turns to the self-styled pessimists, observing with dry wit that they are not quite as miserable as their rhetoric suggests. Writers such as Edgar Saltus and W. H. Mallock claim that systematic pessimism is a modern scientific achievement, distinct from the older melancholy of earlier ages. Repplier dismisses this pretension, noting that Hegesias of Cyrene was every bit as systematic as Schopenhauer three centuries before Christ, with more concrete results, since several of his disciples actually hanged themselves in deference to his teachings. She argues that the fundamental positions of pessimism and optimism have always coexisted in roughly the same relation, with optimism dominant in popular culture and pessimism speaking persistently to those with the leisure and intelligence to attend. Her survey of ancient thought is particularly rich. She demonstrates that the Greeks, so often praised for their joyful embrace of life, were in fact deeply acquainted with melancholy. Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, Menander, and Euripides each offer pronouncements on the wretchedness of existence that would not embarrass a modern German philosopher. The analysis of Antigone is notably careful: Repplier defends the heroine's reluctance to die as entirely natural, contrasting it with the radiant martyrdom available to Christian women, who possessed a hope the Greeks entirely lacked. Repplier then addresses the theory that Christianity is responsible for diminishing earthly happiness by systematically disparaging worldly pleasures. She resists this charge, drawing on Walter Pater's portrait of early Christian cheerfulness in Marius the Epicurean and arguing that the medieval church took life as it found it, offering the doctrine of eternal hope to people for whom earthly life was genuinely and severely difficult. On the question of whether pessimism is tied to any particular creed or political alignment, Repplier is equally skeptical of neat categories. She notes that pessimists have been deeply religious like Pascal and Chateaubriand, or thoroughly skeptical like Schopenhauer and Hartmann, or philosophically detached like Amiel. Optimism and pessimism cut across religious and political lines, appearing in saints and libertines alike. Her treatment of Schopenhauer is memorable. She points out the paradox that the great apostle of pessimism lived with considerable snug comfort, shielding himself from want by prudent management of money and from ennui by unremitting intellectual labor. He expected nothing, desired as little as possible, and learned all he could. Far from being miserable, he was essentially a cold, witty, self-sufficient man. Repplier contrasts him sharply with Leopardi, whose despair was total and whose pages radiate genuine midnight suffering. Leopardi's particular contribution to pessimistic philosophy is his devastating argument that neither hope nor memory offers real consolation, since the future can only bring increasing sorrow and few people would willingly relive their past even for the pleasures it contained. Repplier closes with a survey of contemporary literature, finding it pervasively and rather fashionably gloomy. Scientists are reportedly cheerful, but the literary intelligentsia offer Heine's discordant laughter, Baudelaire's flowers of evil, Carlyle's thunderous denunciations, and Ruskin's prophetic woes. Even fiction has adopted a new kind of sadness, no longer content with tragic deaths or happy marriages but instead marrying its characters and then coolly informing the reader that happiness was never really forthcoming. She cites Henry James's The Bostonians and Thomas Hardy as examples of this tendency to deny the reader even the modest satisfaction of a concluded joy. The essay ends on a note of sardonic humor, quoting Hamlet's bleak remark that a man should simply be merry, and suggesting that with such relentless literary gloom pervading even the novel, readers may in time achieve the jocundity of the Danish prince himself.

By Agnes Repplier · First published 1899 · Genre: Philosophy, Essay, Literary Criticism · 7,550 words

First lines

When Mr. Matthew Arnold delivered his lecture on Emerson in this country, several years ago, it was delightful to see how the settled melancholy of his audience, who had come for a panegyric and did not get it, melted into genial applause when the lecturer touched at last upon the one responsive chord which bound his subject, his hearers, and himself in a sympathetic harmony, -- I mean Emerson's lifelong, persistent, and unconquerable optimism. This was perhaps the more apparent because Mr. Arnold's addresses were not precisely the kind with which we Americans are best acquainted; they were singularly deficient in the oratorical flights that are wont to arouse our enthusiasm, and in the sudden descents to colloquial anecdote by which we expect to be amused. For real enjoyment it was advisable to read them over carefully after they were printed, and the oftener they were so read the better they repaid perusal; but this not being the point of view from which ordinary humanity is apt to regard a lecture, it was with prompt and genuine relief that the audience hailed a personal appeal to that cheerful, healthy hopefulness of disposition which we like to be told we possess in common with greater men. It is always pleasant to hear that happiness is "the due and eternal result of labor, righteousness, and veracity," and to have it hinted to us that we have sane and wholesome minds because we think so; it is pleasanter still to be assured that the disparaging tone which religion assumes in relation to this earthly happiness arises from a well-intentioned desire to wean us from it, and not at all from a clear-sighted conviction of its feeble worth. When Mr. Arnold recited for our benefit a cheerless little scrap of would-be pious verse which he had heard read in a London schoolroom, all about the advantages of dying, --

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pessimism · philosophy · literary essay · social criticism · Victorian literature · moral philosophy · human nature · optimism · intellectual history · cultural commentary · skepticism · religion

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