(Page 29 of 30) - The Anatomy of Pessimism: Outline of a Neglected Tradition authored by Dienstag, Joshua.

Dienstag 28 8/26/04

In Nietzsche’s approach, we come to value existence, not because it constitutes

progress, nor because it constitutes an appropriate punishment for our failings. Indeed,
the very idea of a metaphysical ‘justification’ for existence – Nietzsche calls it a
‘comfort’ – is rejected. But just on account of the constant transformation, the continual
reappearance of novelty, that is the consequence, along with constant decay and death, of
a linear temporal existence – just on this basis we can find a way to embrace life. We can
find a ‘this-worldly comfort’. Hannah Arendt used the term ‘natality’ (the property of
being born, as opposed to ‘mortality’) to mark out this special attribute of the human
condition. If human beings, among all the animals, are the only ones capable of
appreciating the significance of death, above all their own death, it is equally true that
they are the only animals capable of appreciating the significance of birth, above all their
own birth. Each human being represents a new beginning, a new set of possibilities. As
mortality marks our whole lives and not just the moment of our death, so to does natality
continue to inspirit us apart from the moment of birth. While nothing that humans do
will endure forever, the very fact of their newness is, in Arendt’s term, a ‘miracle’ that
can be appreciated by itself, apart from any consequences it may bring; we may even be
moved by it, as Nietzsche suggests, to the point of laughter. But laughing at our
existence is not, here, an overcoming of pessimism, it is in fact the embrace of it.

A pessimist might initially seem like someone who bears the burden of

expectations too thoroughly. But in reality the opposite is the case. The pessimist
expects nothing – thus he or she is more truly open to every possibility as it presents
itself. We recognize and delight in the fact that we live in a world of surprises – surprises
that can only strike the optimist as accidents and mishaps, disturbing as they do his
ordered image of the world. This openness to the music of chance lends to the pessimist
an equanimity that might strike an outsider as callous. The optimist, on the other hand,
must suffer through a life of disappointment where a chaotic world constantly disturbs
the upward path s/he feels entitled to tread.

These then are the two poles of response available to a pessimistic diagnosis:

resignation on the one hand and what we can call spontaneity or futurity on the other.
The latter, I should be clear, is not a last-minute rejection of pessimism – not a back-door
optimism that a dishonest theory leaves open for itself. It is simply a form of self-
conduct which manages to value the life we are given in spite of the pessimistic diagnosis
of its condition. It is also, for that reason, the final proof that pessimism is not, by itself,
to be equated with resignation or depression or cynicism or nihilism. In the face of great
suffering, this kind of pessimist, what Nietzsche called a Dionysian pessimist, does not
retreat, but rather advances willingly into a field of fire, not to die gloriously but instead
to ‘live dangerously’ and to die necessarily. Or, as Leopardi put it, with perhaps a tad too
much self-importance, “I have the courage … to gaze intrepidly on the desert of life …
and to accept all the consequences of the philosophy that is grievous, but true” (OM 219).
This pessimistic spirit is a restless one, unlikely to be enamored of the status quo. It is
from this perspective that one can understand Camus’s refusal to link pessimism and
“discouragement” and his contrary view that pessimism even authorized his own political
engagements.

Optimism is to time what metaphysics is to space. It projects perfection

elsewhere, (or, more properly) elsewhen. It teaches one to despise the here and now,