Pessimism and politics

Pollice Verso, by Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Since I had my first bouts of lucidity just over a decade ago, bouts that made me understand that life is painful, meaningless and that non being is better than being, from time to time people question me about the turn to the “left” that accompanied that lucidity. Some of them, closer to me, asked politely. Others, anonymous on social media, took the liberty of insulting me. They point out that pessimism is supposedly always conservative and incompatible with political sympathies considered progressive. This supposed truism comes from both conservatives and progressives, although the former are the majority and it is from them that the insults have come so far.

Although the answer sort of appeared from time to time in my writings, I decided it would be a good idea to summarize once and for all what happened and the main reason why the change in political stance accompanied the lucidity.

It's easier to start describing this posture by showing what it is not. It is not the same posture of those who believe that human history has a correct side, in a scientific sense. That is, that history has a law, discernible by man, that engenders increasingly rational and egalitarian societies over time, which dispenses with morality and treats it as bourgeois sentimentalism. By dissociating moral philosophy from politics, by completely embracing Machiavellianism not only as a tactic, but as a worldview, progressive political movements in the first half of the 20th century were successful in taking power, but built societies that, although less unequal, were flawed, oppressive and paranoid.

Although Mainländer¹ — a pessimist and a socialist — correctly criticized Schopenhauer for his lack of interest and knowledge regarding political and social issues, it is a simple observation by Schopenhauer² himself that encapsulates not only the conception of ethics, but also of politics that I began to have: the conviction that the world and man are things that should not exist — that not being is better than being — should fill us with tolerance, patience, love and compassion, things that we all need and that, therefore, we all owe to each other. We are all metaphysical exiles in the world of becoming, condemned not to death, but to life, with all its tribulations.

This understanding is perfectly extendable to the field of politics, the art of living in the polis. So, there is nothing Utopian about it. There's no fighting for a perfect world, nor is there a belief in historical rightness or wrongness. There's only damage control, nothing more.

For Mainländer, the purpose of all existence is to annihilate itself. Beings that possess self-awareness and intelligence can understand this, but having these attributes is not enough to reach the conclusion of annihilation. Before voluntarily extinguishing ourselves, he postulated that it was necessary for us to reach a level of general prosperity where everyone would have their material needs more than met. Only then, as a species, would we realize the emptiness of existence. It's hard for anyone to ponder about how not being is better than being when they're struggling not to starve and when they don't have the time or affordable education in the first place.

The idea that pessimism is necessarily conservative has been used by some conservative thinkers in recent decades. Roger Scruton, in England, and Luís Pondé, in Brazil, are two of them. Even the non-thinker, Olavo de Carvalho, helped propagate this. But, although pessimism brings with it political apathy, in addition to the rejection of Utopia as a pernicious illusion, treating it as intrinsically conservative is more of a marketing strategy than a serious thing: some conservatives put on a type of deep thought to justify their apology of the most grotesque modern oppressions.

It's one thing to claim that the idea of a perfect world is nonsense. It is foolish. The most we can do is breathe a sigh of relief. The idea that man is capable of building a wonderful golden age on Earth will always be a recipe for disaster. However, to conclude from this that we cannot make things much less worse than they are is shameless. But it is not only from this side of the political spectrum that the supposed truism comes. More recently, someone commented about how “pessimism is reactionary and optimism is revolutionary.” If by this they mean that pessimism does not believe in utopias, nor that there is something that makes being more desirable than non being, yes. But still, this is a very broad interpretation of what it means to be a reactionary.

This characterization finds its greatest expression in Lukács'³ criticism of Schopenhauer's philosophy, a criticism that, for some reason, is still treated today as a major refutation of Schopenhauerian pessimism by a few. When we read what Lukács writes about Schopenhauer, we see how ad hominem was elevated to the form of serious analysis by thinkers sanctioned by the former Marxist regimes of Eastern Europe. His message can be summarized as: forget what Schopenhauer actually says about existence, what matters is that he preaches social passivity and is from the bourgeois class, therefore all of his analysis are nothing more than a justification for the oppression of the proletarian class.

According to Lukács:

“[...] Schopenhauer's system, well laid out and architecturally ingenious in form, rises up like a modern luxury hotel on the brink of the abyss, nothingness and futility. And the daily sight of the abyss, between the leisurely enjoyment of meals or works of art, can only enhance one's pleasure in this elegant comfort.

“This, then, fulfils the task of Schopenhauer's irrationalism: the task of preventing an otherwise dissatisfied sector of the intelligentsia from concretely turning its discontent with the ‘established order’, i.e., the existing social order, against the capitalist system in force at any given time. This irrationalism thereby reaches its central objective — no matter how far Schopenhauer himself was aware of it: that of providing an indirect apologetic of the capitalist social order.”⁴

He also claims that Nietzsche later helped to direct this same pessimism to its active, imperialist expression. Not surprisingly, Lukács is silent about Mainländer, for obvious reasons: Mainländer contradicts the idea that the pessimistic and nihilistic rejection of being is necessarily an indirect justification of the capitalist status quo. Even if it is pointed out that there is only one example, that of Mainländer, one is enough to collapse the accusation of pessimism as an indirect apology for class oppression.

Contrary to what Lukács states, it is perfectly possible for us to be dissatisfied with the current social order, with the dominant system, and still be dissatisfied with existence itself. By stating that this is impossible or that it is wrong, by even wanting to prohibited anyone from reaching this conclusion, they force us to remain in the world of becoming, even if we have every reason to leave it. In addition, they force us to create new copies of ourselves, through reproduction, so these copies can suffer the same fate. Those who think this way, whether they like it or not, are in the same group as Nietzsche, Scruton, Pondé and Carvalho: they are forgers of justifications for becoming.

For the justifiers of becoming, man owes thanks to God, country, family, society, the State or the species for the simple fact of having been born, that is, for the simple fact of having been thrown into a world without his consent, a consent that could not be obtained, since he did not exist. As for those who argue that non being is better than being, the only thing that we perhaps owe to each other is compassion, because we are all in this unavoidable, painful and deadly situation.

by Fernando Olszewski

1. Beiser, Frederick C. Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900. 2016. p. 223.
2. Schopenhauer, Arthur. Parerga and Paralipomena. v. 2. 1974. p. 304.
3. Lukács, Georg. The Destruction of Reason. 1981. p. 192-243.
4. Ibid. p. 243.