Author's Keywords: pessimism, rousseau, schopenhauer, nietzsche, camus, cioran, leopardi, freud, unamuno, continental, modern, political theory, postmodern, tragedy, resignation, optimism, time, history, narrative, self, philosophy, technique, absurd, individuality, happiness, ethic	Convention Need a solution for abstract management? All Academic can help! Contact us today to find out how our system can help your annual meeting. Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! Click here for more information.
Association: Name: American Political Science Association URL: http://www.apsanet.org
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p59082_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Dienstag, Joshua. "The Anatomy of Pessimism: Outline of a Neglected Tradition" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Hilton Chicago and the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, Sep 02, 2004 <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p59082_index.html>

Dienstag, J. , 2004-09-02 "The Anatomy of Pessimism: Outline of a Neglected Tradition" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Hilton Chicago and the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL Online <.PDF>. 2009-05-26 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p59082_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Review Method: Peer Reviewed Abstract: This paper claims that there is a tradition of pessimistic thought, initiated by Rousseau, which shadows post-Enlightenment political philosophy both of the Continental and Anglo-American varieties. In attempting to reframe the history of political theory so that pessimism becomes one of its major strands, I will not be arguing for paying attention to a series of writers who have been, heretofore, wholly unknown. I shall be arguing, instead, that while many of the pessimists are well-known, the nature of their common project (indeed, the very idea that they have a common project) has been obscured. Since pessimism is understood more as a disposition rather than as a theory, pessimists are seen primarily as dissenters from whatever the prevailing consensus of their time happens to be, rather than as constituting an continuous alternative. What they share then is something more than a sensibility, but less than a doctrine. It might be best to say that they share a problematic – their thoughts all emerge from the question posed to them by the modern problem of time – that issues in a certain approach to traditional questions of political theory. This tradition (which could be said to include, among others, Rousseau, Leopardi, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Unamuno, Camus, Adorno, and Cioran) coalesces, I argue, around a series of propostions which are, in their bluntest form, as follows: that time is a burden; that the course of history is in some sense ironic; that freedom and happiness are incompatible; and that human existence is absurd. Finally, there is a divide between those pessimists, like Schopenhauer, who suggest that the only reasonable response to these propositions is a kind of resignation, and those, like Nietzsche, who reject resignation in favor of a more life-affirming ethic of individualism and spontaneity.

Trade and Human Rights: Who Would Form Preferential Trade Agreements with Human Rights Conditionality With Whom?

The Human Face Specificity for Visual Processing of Human and Human-like Animal Cartoons

Does Modern Political Philosophy Require a Secular Political Order, and, If So, What Kind?