Talk:Philosophical pessimism

List of things to add
I'm starting a list of things that would be great to add. Please expand as you see appropriate. It may help us coordinate and see what could still be improved. "[x] Item" means that the item is done. Discussions regarding individual items, if necessary, can be started in individual sections or immediately underneath each point. Whatever suits us best.

TODO list

 * [ ] Expand Olga Plümacher's take on certain pessimistic positions from: Christopher Janaway (2022a). Worse than the best possible pessimism? Olga Plümacher's critique of Schopenhauer. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 30:2, 211-230, DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2021.1881441, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09608788.2021.1881441 (the citation is already in the article)
 * [ ] Add citations from van der Lugt, Mara (2021). Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering. Princeton University Press Fantastiera (talk) 17:14, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * [ ] Add information (and the link) from Arthur Schopenhauer's view on animal rights to the (sub)section on pessimism and animals. Fantastiera (talk) 15:02, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
 * [ ] Add citations from: Segev, Mor (2022). The Value of the World and of Oneself: Philosophical Optimism and Pessimism from Aristotle to Modernity. Fantastiera (talk) 19:32, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
 * [ ] Add Nietzsche's response to Schopenhauer's pessimism // Langsam (2022) Fantastiera (talk) 16:59, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * [ ] Add reference to Tangenes (2004) in appropriate places for Zapffe Fantastiera (talk) 17:02, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * [ ] Add references to Casey (2019) to support claims about Cabrera's points
 * [ ] Humor and laughter as responses to the evils of life // Beiser (2018), Wicks (2018)
 * [ ] See what citations can be added from https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/pessimism
 * [ ] See what citations can be added from the ongoing series on pessimism at https://blog.apaonline.org/tag/series-on-philosophical-pessimism/

Done

 * [x] Add information about Emil Cioran
 * [x] Add something about Dialogue_of_Pessimism
 * [x] Rename Philosophical pessimism into something that will better reflect the fact that the section presents not just the past, but the progression of philosophical thought
 * [x] Add a section on David Benatar
 * [x] Consider splitting off the actual historical, not fully expanded ideas into a separate Philosophical pessimism section (and make it much shorter), from the philosophical positions that are much more in-depth. It may be good to check out the literature on the topic to see how the experts do that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fantastiera (talk • contribs) 17:44, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * [x] Differentiate between Philosophical pessimism and Philosophical pessimism in Philosophical pessimism Fantastiera (talk) 16:30, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * [x] Add a section regarding Philosophical pessimism, briefly mention Antinatalism, while refering to the target article

Low importance items, maybies

 * [ ] Expand the Philosophical pessimism with the information and distictions regarding varieties of pessimism from https://blog.apaonline.org/2022/09/13/philosophical-pessimism-varieties-importance-and-what-to-do%ef%bf%bc/
 * [ ] Move Pessimism controversy as a section in Philosophical pessimism

Comments on the list
I suggest adding Thomas Ligotti to this list! Delukiel (talk) 06:42, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Of course! By all means. Please edit the above list and add an additional points, as you see fit. This is not "my" list. This is our list. Fantastiera (talk) 08:45, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Good day, Fantastiera. I would like to share my opinion regarding two of the suggestions you mentioned above. For the first suggestion, namely, "Add a section regarding Philosophical pessimism#Procreation, briefly mention Antinatalism, while refering to the target article", I believe that philosophical pessimism naturally intersects quite significantly with antinatalism, to the point that the creation of a new section specifically for procreation/antinatalism seems to me redundant/unnecessary, which can be noted in the fact that antinatalism is already mentioned and/or linked in many different parts of this article (more specifically, in the second introductory paragraph of the article, in the recent section on Ecclesiastes, in the Middle Ages section, in Cioran's section, and in Benatar's section). And for the second suggestion, that is, "Add something about Dialogue of Pessimism" (which was previously marked as done), I have decided to remove, as explained in the revision history of the article, the section on the Dialogue of Pessimism and replaced it instead with a section on the Book of Ecclesiastes (also considered to be a piece of wisdom literature), due to finding it more relevant and persuasive regarding philosophical pessimism. Maybe someone could find it pertinent to add the Dialogue of Pessimism for purely historical reasons, but I would still insist on the text of Ecclesiastes being more clear and compelling in its pessimistic perspective towards life. Kind regards. Sirhu (talk) 23:58, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Overdue update: I ultimately decided to add the Dialogue of Pessimism once again, but in connection with the section on the Book of Ecclesiastes Sirhu (talk) 17:24, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * You may be right about that, Sirhu. The reason why I wanted to introduce a dedicated section on antinatalism was that it's usually better to split an article into thematically cohesive sections, rather than having an idea be spread thin across hundreds of words. Similarly to the Philosophical pessimism section. Fantastiera (talk) 18:19, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I see. Now that I thought a bit more about it, it definitely seems like a viable option to create a separate section for antinatalism. I understand philosophical pessimism to be (and I suspect you would agree) an overall diagnosis about human life and, often, the life of other sentient beings as well, while antinatalism (humancentric or sentiocentric) appears as a possible response to this diagnosis.

In this sense, I think we could add a section about antinatalism as a subheading to the "philosophical responses to the human condition" section. If we do so, we may or may not need to alter/remove some mentions of antinatalism in other parts of the article in order to avoid repetition. Sirhu (talk) 20:41, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

A road to make Philosophical pessimism one of the Good_articles
Currently, this is still a relatively new article. So it's no wonder that the quality is mixed, not the greatest. Aiming at making this article be one of the Good_articles will help us improve the content and readability to a great degree.

Wikipedia has a general list of Good article criteria and Good article nominations/Instructions we can follow. It is very helpful to look at some of the pages that already are of very high quality — the list can be checked out at Good articles/Philosophy and religion. Fantastiera (talk) 18:04, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Stage 1: Change the historical account to a topic account

 * [x] Add information about definitions, topics, add common arguments. See Philosophical pessimism
 * [x] Move the historical account to a dedicated page. See Philosophical pessimism Fantastiera (talk) 13:30, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Stage 2: Improve the citations
The very first things, and maybe the easiest to do, are improvements to citations and references.


 * [ ] Provide page numbers to references/citations
 * [ ] Provide more citations to secondary literature (books and articles about philosophical pessimism, not books written by philosophical pessimists per se) Fantastiera (talk) 18:06, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Arguments to add
A list of arguments to add to Philosophical pessimism:

Fantastiera (talk) 15:07, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * [ ] Quality of life argument from Better Never to Have Been
 * [ ] People cannot be both happy and rational // Billon, Alexandre (2016). Irrationality and Happiness: A (Neo-)Shopenhauerian argument for rational pessimism. https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEIAH.pdf
 * [ ] Argument(s) from the meaninglessness of life // Fremstedal (2013), Benatar (2017)
 * [ ] Expand the Buddhist argument to include all Three marks of existence, since they constitute the negative view on life from the Buddhist perspective /Fantastiera (talk) 14:02, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * [ ] Everything decays, everything will be lost // Mainländer, Cabrera (2019), Buddhist Impermanence
 * [ ] Valuelessness of just existing - both Schopenhauer and Cabrera argue that just existing has no value and we realize it when not doing anything (we get profoundly bored, we do not get any pleasure in the experience of merely existing) // Cabrera (2019) Fantastiera (talk) 11:15, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

There is also a thread on pessimistic arguments on Reddit that may be useful: Good arguments for pessimism? Fantastiera (talk) 16:53, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Done: a list of already added arguments
Fantastiera (talk) 17:56, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * [x] Life is structurally negative, by Julio Cabrera
 * [x] Cabrera's moral impediment thesis - the impossibility to live a moral life
 * [x] "a life is worth living only if it does not contain any uncompensated evils; but since all our lives happen to contain such evils, none of them are worth living." // Simmons (2020)
 * [x] Schopenhauer's A Priori Argument for Pessimism // Hassan (2021)
 * [x] Arguments for low (or no) positive value of pleasure/joy // Schopenhauer's WWR, Fox (2022)
 * [x] Negative view on pleasures; pleasures as mere reliefs from pain // Schopenhauer WWR, Plato's Republic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2EwhxjdniY), Knutsson (2022), Knutsson (2023), Sherman (2017), Vinding (2022)

A list of arguments that don't fit the page
This is a list of arguments that are somehow related but do not exactly fit philosophical pessimism. Left here for reference.

Nothing here for the moment. Fantastiera (talk) 19:04, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
Two comments:

1. In my view, Cabrera's moral impediment thesis does fit the page. There are already many hedonic-related arguments about the lack of value of life, but Cabrera's idea of moral impediment adds a novel argument for pessimism: namely, that life has a negative value not only because its very structure causes one to suffer, but because, according to such author, that very same structure is also responsible for one causing others to suffer - regardless of one having "good" or "bad" moral intentions (see pp. 58-59 of Discomfort and Moral Impediment: The Human Situation, Radical Bioethics and Procreation, and also p. 151: "...human life is bad because structurally it is besieged by discomfort in the threefold modality of pain, discouragement and moral impediment").

2. Regarding: "[ ] Arguments for low (or no) positive value of pleasure/joy // Schopenhauer's WWR, Fox (2022)" and "[ ] Negative view on pleas[ure]. Pleasures as mere reliefs from pain // Schopenhauer WWR, Plato's Republic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2EwhxjdniY), Knutsson (2022), Knutsson (2023), Sherman (2017), Vinding (2022)": the Schopenhauerian argument regarding the negative value of pleasures is already addressed in the "Suffering is essential to life because of perpetual striving" section: [happiness] is only a negative experience as it temporarily takes away a striving or need", so adding more text about it would seem superfluous to me. The negative nature of pleasures is also mentioned in the "Life contains uncompensated evils" section: "If the good is merely taking away an evil, then it cannot compensate for the bad since it's not of the appropriate kind — it's not a positive thing that could "repay the debt" of the bad."

Although Schopenhauer is unanimously considered to be the most important figure in the history of philosophical pessimism, it would still be excessive, in my view, to add more than two different segments about him in the "main arguments" section. However, if we do opt for adding three or more arguments from him, it would be more appropriate, in my view, to have only one section dedicated to all of his arguments.

What do you think? Sirhu (talk) 09:52, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Regarding Cabrera's argument: Yes, it makes makes. I updated the page. Thanks for that, User:Sirhu.
 * Regarding the comment about the negative view on pleasure, I added some arguments to the page. Please check them out. Schopenhauer is mentioned only briefly. I believe it's fine if he's repeated since a very particular thesis is being brought up. Additionally, other post-Schopenhauerian philosophers got a mention. This argument is different that the one in the uncompensated evils and the perpetual striving sections. I recognize that a portion is being repeated, but the focus is different. What do you think?
 * I would prefer to keep the argument ordered by topic/point, rather than by who makes them, unless they are very related. For example, there are related means of dealing with suffering by Schopenhauer (Philosophical pessimism), and there it makes sense to bunch them together. I don't see a clean way of doing something similar in Philosophical_pessimism. Fantastiera (talk) 19:04, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Addendum: I think keeping the arguments not ordered by a philosopher, but listed exactly as now - as arguments, is beneficial, since sometimes there will be more than one person who makes a particular argument, or contributes to it. Maybe it's not very clear now (although we already have scholars contributing to understanding of Schopenhauer's a priori argument from striving, for example), but it should be getting clearer as we'll be adding more arguments (e.g. from the meaninglessness of life or from the mundaneness of daily activities or from boredom) and refining the arguments we have already. We'll see that often philosophers are making essentially the same point, but arriving at it from different angles or expressing it differently. Lastly, I think it would make sense to have History of philosophical pessimism to be ordered entirely by philosophers, while Philosophical pessimism to be strictly topic driven. Fantastiera (talk) 23:59, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * "We'll see that often philosophers are making essentially the same point, but arriving at it from different angles or expressing it differently. Lastly, I think it would make sense to have History of philosophical pessimism to be ordered entirely by philosophers, while Philosophical pessimism to be strictly topic driven."
 * Yes - I am in full agreement with you. :) Sirhu (talk) 14:08, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Things to add to Pessimism and other philosophical topics

 * [ ] Ethics
 * [ ] briefly discuss Suffering-focused ethics
 * [ ] mention Metzinger's "Suffering"
 * [ ] Antifrustrationism and tranquilism
 * [ ] Schopenhauer's focus on compassion
 * [ ] Add Sullivan-Bissett (2022), McGregor & Sullivan-Bissett (2012) to Suicide
 * [ ] Stoicism // van der Lugt, Mara (2021), The Power of Pessimism
 * [ ] Pessimism and religions Fantastiera (talk) 15:23, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * [ ] Dao and the critique of human life // Zandbergen (2022)
 * [ ] Buddhist Duḥkha
 * [ ] The Fall of man from Abrahamic religions
 * [ ] Problem of evil
 * [ ] Other: Biomedical enhancement // Moen (2021) Fantastiera (talk) 15:18, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * [ ] Misanthropy // Kidd (2020), Kidd (2021) //Fantastiera (talk) 16:17, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Things to add to Responses to the bad in life
The new section will probably need a better title. The section will be an overview of how pessimists (and adjacent thinkers) suggest we deal with the badness of life.


 * [ ] Friedrich Nietzsche's acceptance of it all
 * [ ] Stoicism's focus on things one has control over, exercises, etc.
 * [ ] Buddhism's Noble Eightfold Path based on Four Noble Truths
 * [ ] Parker, Allison (2019). "A Pragmatic Look at Schopenhauer's Pessimism". https://philpapers.org/archive/PARAPL-2.pdf
 * [ ] Activism: Veganism, Philipp Mainländer's political activism, Effective altruism, Suffering-focused ethics
 * [ ] Terror management theory says that the awareness of our mortality may lead to existential terror which we keep at bay by falling into ideologies. Fantastiera (talk) 15:21, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Done

 * [x] Abstention from procreation, motivated by Antinatalism
 * [x] Schopenhauer's denial of will to life
 * [x] Schopenhauer's focus on compassion towards "fellow sufferers"
 * [x] Peter Wessel Zapffe's 4 types of coping

= Completed - Closed - Done =

A proposal for an overhaul of the article
The purpose of this overhaul is to make the article read like a proper encyclopedic overview of the philosophical movement. The article should not be a mere historical listing. Instead, it should present main points, main philosophers, arguemnts, and relations to other philosophical topics. The proposal is based on looking at other high quality articles on philosophical positions and topics (see below).

Overview
Definitions

// Take definitions from various books and articles to show a variety of ways scholars and commentators define pessimism.

Examples:


 * "Pessimism is, roughly, the view that life is not worth living" // Simmons (2020)
 * "the bad prevails over the good" // Prescott (2012)
 * "pessimism is the thesis that life is not worth living, that nothingness is better than being, or that it is worse to be than not be" // Beiser (2016)
 * "pessimism will cover all doctrines, reasoned or unreasoned, which distinctly deny this value to life, and represent it as something unworthy, unsatisfying, or lamentable" // James (1891)
 * "pessimism is a judgement of value regarding life or reality as a whole, which results from the conflict between man’s supreme value and the supposed facts of life" // Krusé (1932)
 * "(a) the nonexistence of the individual is preferable to their existence (henceforth individual-pessimism), and the claim that (b) the nonexistence of the world is preferable to its existence (henceforth world-pessimism)" // Hassan (2021)
 * "Plümacher specifies philosophical pessimism as comprising two propositions: ‘The sum of displeasure outweighs the sum of pleasure’ and ‘Consequently the non-being of the world would be better than its being’" // Janaway (2022a)

Main points


 * Life is not worth living
 * The bad prevails over the good
 * Absence of the world would be better // It would have been better had the world not existed
 * Coming into existence is a harm // Antinatalism - criticism of procreation
 * Humanking is inherently flawed // Misanthropy - regarding human nature

Arguments


 * Quality of life argument from Better Never to Have Been
 * Life is structurally negative, by Julio Cabrera
 * "a life is worth living only if it does not contain any uncompensated evils; but since all our lives happen to contain such evils, none of them are worth living." // Simmons (2020)
 * Schopenhauer's A Priori Argument for Pessimism // Hassan (2021)

The work for adding arguments to the main page is being tracked in Talk:Philosophical_pessimism.

History

// A much shorter version, mentioning briefly a selection of items from the current Philosophical pessimism. The entirety of Philosophical pessimism should be moved into the dedicated article History of philosophical pessimism. See: Talk:Philosophical pessimism.

Pessimism and other philosophical topics


 * Animal rights // changed from "Regarding non-human animals"
 * Ethics // briefly discuss Suffering-focused ethics, Metzinger's "Suffering", Antifrustrationism and tranquilism, Schopenhauer's focus on compassion
 * Suicide // Hwang (2018), Cabrera (2021), Benatar (2017), Cholbi (2022), Sullivan-Bissett (2022), McGregor & Sullivan-Bissett (2012), Janaway (2022b)
 * Abortion // Benatar (2006), Cabrera (2021)
 * Stoicism // van der Lugt, Mara (2021), The Power of Pessimism
 * Biomedical enhancement // Moen (2021)

Responses to the bad in life

// Probably needs a better title

How do people deal with the bads in life:
 * Schopenhauer's denial of will to life
 * Friedrich Nietzsche's acceptance of it all
 * Stoicism's focus on things one has control over, exercises, etc.
 * Buddhism's Noble Eightfold Path based on Four Noble Truths
 * Peter Wessel Zapffe's 4 types of coping
 * Abstention from procreation, motivated by Antinatalism
 * Activism: Veganism, Philipp Mainländer's political activism, Effective altruism, Suffering-focused ethics — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fantastiera (talk • contribs) 11:21, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Parker, Allison (2019). "A Pragmatic Look at Schopenhauer's Pessimism". https://philpapers.org/archive/PARAPL-2.pdf
 * Schopenhauer's focus on compassion towards "fellow sufferers" Fantastiera (talk) 17:42, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Terror management theory says that the awareness of our mortality may lead to existential terror which we keep at bay by falling into ideologies. Fantastiera (talk) 17:42, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Influence outside philosophy


 * TV and Cinema
 * Literature

See also

References
 * Notes
 * Citations
 * Bibliography

External links

Ideas on the organization of the sections
"Philosophical pessimism" could be merged with "Philosophical pessimism", if the two will be too short.

Some additional sections that can be considered
Types of pessimism
 * Misanthropy // regarding human nature
 * Epistemological // regarding the limits of knowledge, from Pessimism

Pessimism and religions

// This subsection of Points of contact with other philosophical topics could present similarities between certain ideas in religions and in pessimism


 * Dao and the critique of human life // Zandbergen (2022)
 * Buddhist Duḥkha
 * The Fall of man from Abrahamic religions
 * Problem of evil

How to do it?
The best way to perform the overhaul would be to first include some information in the new sections, then extract the long historical part into a separate article, and then continue working on the main article. For example


 * [x] Initiate the discussion for extracting Philosophical pessimism into a new article History of philosophical pessimism according to Wikipedia standards from Splitting. See: Talk:Philosophical pessimism.
 * [x] Create a new section Philosophical pessimism and add a couple of sentences there.
 * [x] Create a new section Philosophical pessimism and add one argument.
 * [x] Extract Philosophical pessimism into a new article History of philosophical pessimism

And already after the first 3 points, t The article is already ready to be improved upon and extended based on the rough sketch outlined above.

Afterword
This proposal is based on the analysis of various other high quality Wikipedia articles about philosophical topics, such as:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Socratic_philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge

Discussion
I'm calling you as I believe you might be interested in this project. Please consider taking a look and voicing your opinion.

Fantastiera (talk) 08:32, 20 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I do like this idea. Great work.
 * With this complete restructure the article, it seems much of the work we've already put into it would be erased—is there a way to preserve some of it (kill your darlings notwithstanding)? I think, most notably, the 20th and 21st century philosophers would be worth including in some shape or form; something like a "modern pessimism" heading could work. I'm just not sure where it would exactly fit in this list. Delukiel (talk) 19:53, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, we would certainly not erase anything. We would simply copy the contents of Philosophical pessimism into a new dedicated article History of philosophical pessimism. And in our section Philosophical pessimism we would have a link to that new article, alongside a very brief account of pre-systematic (pre-Schopenhauer) as well as modern ideas. So, nothing will be lost, it would only be restructured.
 * Another idea would be to have a section Important philosophers where we could very briefly talk about them. I prefer the former, because it would be easier to briefly mention Buddhist and ancient Greek ideas. Fantastiera (talk) 15:01, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a great idea too—I have a preference for the former as well.
 * How exactly should we start when reworking this page? I haven't contributed to a major overhaul before. Delukiel (talk) 22:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I've added Talk:Philosophical pessimism as your question made it clear that it would be beneficial for all of us to see that plan. Fantastiera (talk) 15:32, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

A proposal to split the History into a dedicated page
I propose that the long section Philosophical pessimism be split into a separate dedicated page called History of philosophical pessimism. The section is overly long and presents a chronological development of the philosophical position. It doesn't clearly explain various points and arguments philosophers make. It is much more suitable as dedicated article. No content will be lost, it will only be moved. Instead, we will have a very short section Philosophical pessimism that briefly outlines the most important historical developments. Alongside it, we will have new sections, outlines in Talk:Philosophical pessimism, which will greatly improve readability, usability, and overall quality of the present article.

The split will be done following the official Wikipedia procedure from Splitting.

I'm calling you as I believe you might be interested in this project. Please consider taking a look and voicing your opinion.

Discussion
Please share your thoughts, opinions, suggestions here.


 * Reading over the page, I think it might be possible to split it off after the religion section. For what is already here, I think the various pessimistic commentaries in religion might fit snugly. We could add a "main article" redirect on the new page or some such. Delukiel (talk) 07:21, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I must admit that my opinion on this matter differs from yours, Delukiel: I believe it would be better to include the "In religion" section in the split. James Sully, in Pessimism: A History and a Criticism (1877), for instance, considers Buddhism the "direct progenitor of the modern German systems" (page 38). Also, since we already have a section called "Dukkha as the mark of existence" (which is written in a more argumentative rather than historical style), moving the "Buddhism" section to the new article "History of philosophical pessimism" would reduce some of the redundancy currently present on this topic. Sirhu (talk) 14:55, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
 * That's perfectly fine; I don't feel strongly about it either way. My opinion may change more depending on how the rework of the page pans out. My main thought is that showing pessimistic streaks within major religions could add something to this article.
 * Maybe we can do the reverse—i.e., this page dedicates a small mention to it with a "main article" redirect toward the history page. Delukiel (talk) 18:47, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Sirhu Delukiel, in I suggested adding a section Pessimism and religions , where something like that could be mentioned. We could get back to it after the move of the historical section — have a new section on the talk page and discuss it in detail. Fantastiera (talk) 21:50, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Good work! Delukiel (talk) 22:00, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * (Comment originally made in September 7 under the "poll" section; I moved it to the "discussion" section so that the talk page becomes more organized). Excluding the article's introduction, we presently have 12,282 words in total. The "Development of pessimist thought" section, in contrast, contains 10,199 words (minus the "Regarding non-human animals" section, which I am not sure we should transfer to the new article in case we decide to go through with this split). According to "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Splitting#Size_split": "Large articles may have readability and technical issues. A page of about 30 to 50 kilobytes (kB) of readable prose, which roughly corresponds to 6,000 to 10,000 words, takes between 30 and 40 minutes to read at average speed, which is right on the limit of the average concentration span of 40 to 50 minutes. Also, some users may have technical limitations, such as a low speed service, an unstable connection, or a pay per megabyte service." Considering that the article on "Philosophical pessimism" is bound to become even larger due to the addition of new arguments, counter-arguments, etc., it would seem prudent, in my opinion, to make a split between "Philosophical pessimism" (under which we could perhaps include, at the end of the article, subtypes of philosophical pessimism such as epistemological pessimism, etc.) and "History of philosophical pessimism". Sirhu (talk) 23:17, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Poll
Do you Support or Oppose the suggested split and the article overhaul? Fantastiera (talk) 15:51, 23 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Support. Delukiel (talk) 03:56, 27 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Support. Sirhu (talk) 17:15, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I would like to bring back the The asymmetry between harms and benefits argument
In this change the The asymmetry between harms and benefits has been removed from the Philosophical pessimism. I put it there, because I think it fits the page really well. Here are some of the reasons why:
 * antinatalism is the strongest modern trend in pessimism,
 * both Cabrera and Benatar are both pessimists and antinatalists,
 * I do not think that philosophical pessimism is restricted only to the badness of already existing. There are too many clues already in the page against such a view. We talk about Buddhism, where "birth is dukkha" and (re)coming into existence is the greatest evil. We have this quote: "Non-existence is preferable to existence — since existence is bad, it would have been better had it not have been. This point can be understood in one of the two following ways. Firstly, one can argue that, for any individual being, it would have been better had they never existed." from Philosophical pessimism
 * we even have a subsection Philosophical pessimism
 * Benatar's asymmetry is the most known argument for the badness of coming into existence.

I'm putting forward a motion to reinstate the argument. Do you agree, ? Fantastiera (talk) 14:59, 7 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, Fantastiera; I just wanted to put my opinion out there and see if others agreed or disagreed.
 * Kind regards. Sirhu (talk) 15:55, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the fast response. I brought back the argument. Fantastiera (talk) 17:38, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Suggested sections
It would be nice to have sections on more contemporary thinkers/writes such as Cioran, David Benatar, John Gray, Thomas Ligotti and Eugene Thacker Throughthemind (talk) 20:47, 23 September 2022 (UTC)


 * It would also be good to include Al-Ma'arri somewhere Throughthemind (talk) 20:48, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Agnes Taubert, Olga Plümacher and Amalie J. Hathaway should also be included under the post-Schopenhauerian pessimism section Throughthemind (talk) 21:00, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I think something on Dialogue of Pessimism and other topics from Ancient Near East or other Ancient philosophy might be cool too, if there are reliable sources that synthesize them with modern pessimism :) &#32;- car chasm (talk) 21:57, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Agreed. We could also add Julio Cabrera. We have Philosophical pessimism and Philosophical pessimism, so now we face a choice on how to proceed:
 * A) Add another section, something like Philosophical pessimism, or
 * B) Remake our approach to presenting particular views. Fantastiera (talk) 16:33, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * HEAVILY Support. I was just about to come on here to suggest Cioran, probably the most notable pessimist in recent years before Ligotti and Thacker. User:Fantastiera, I'm in favor of option A. Delukiel (talk) 04:06, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I've added a section on Cioran. Would be grateful if anyone can contribute to expanding it Throughthemind (talk) 10:16, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I've also restructured the article to have sections for different time periods Throughthemind (talk) 10:52, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I can definitely add more on Cioran. Give me some time! Delukiel (talk) 04:54, 1 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've added more Cioran. Unfortunately, I may have contributed to the problem of relying on primary sources—it's only a few, though. Feel free to clean up my caveman language. Delukiel (talk) 16:55, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

= Sources =

A list of sources for various things to add/change referenced from other sections on this page.


 * Benatar, David (2006). Abortion: The ‘Pro‐Death’ View. In: David Benatar (2006). Better Never to Have Been.
 * Benatar, David (2017). ''The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions
 * Beiser, Frederick C. (2018). Humor as Redemption in the Pessimistic Philosophy of Julius Bahnsen.                    In: Moland, L. (eds) All Too Human. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91331-5_7
 * Beiser, Frederick C. (2016). Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900
 * Cabrera, Julio (2021). For a Critique of Suicidal Reason. https://archive.org/details/n.t.-revista-nota-do-tradutor-23_20220715_2338/page/44/mode/1up
 * Cabrera, Julio (2019). Discomfort and Moral Impediment
 * Casey, Myles (2019). Book Review: Discomfort and Moral Impediment by Julio Cabrera (Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 2019). Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College, 91-97. https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/dianoia/article/download/11741/9771
 * Cholbi, Michael (2022). Schopenhauer, Suicide, and Contemporary Pessimism. In: In Patrick Hassan (ed.), Schopenhauer's Moral Philosophy. Routledge (2022)
 * Fox, Joshua I. (2022). Does Schopenhauer accept any positive pleasures? European Journal of Philosophy, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12830
 * Fremstedal, Roe (2013). Meaning of Life: Peter Wessel Zapffe on the Human Condition. In: Beatrix Himmelmann (ed.), On Meaning in Life. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. pp. 113-128 (2013)
 * Gloor, Lukas (2017). Tranquilism. https://longtermrisk.org/tranquilism/
 * Hassan, Patrick (2021). Individual vs World in Schopenhauer's Pessimism. The Southern Journal of Philosophy
 * Hassan, Patrick (2021). Striving as Suffering: Schopenhauer's A Priori Argument for Pessimism
 * Hwang, Jiwoon (2018). Why it is always better to cease to exist (pro-mortalism, promortalism). https://jiwoonhwang.wordpress.com/2018/07/12/promortalism/
 * Janaway, Christopher (2022a). Worse than the best possible pessimism? Olga Plümacher's critique of Schopenhauer. British Journal for the History of Philosophy
 * Janaway, Christopher (2022b). Schopenhauer's Consoling View of Death In: Essays on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: Values and the Will of Life (Oxford, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 17 Nov. 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198865575.003.0007
 * Kidd, Ian James (2020). Philosophical Misanthropy. Philosophy Now. Issue 139. https://philosophynow.org/issues/139/Philosophical_Misanthropy
 * Kidd, Ian James (2021). Varieties of Philosophical Misanthropy. Journal of Philosophical Research 46:27-44. https://philpapers.org/rec/KIDVOP
 * Knutsson, Simon (2022). Undisturbedness as the hedonic ceiling. https://www.simonknutsson.com/undisturbedness-as-the-hedonic-ceiling/
 * Knutsson, Simon (2023). Roger Thisdell on undisturbedness, positive experiences, and the hedonic peak. https://www.simonknutsson.com/roger-thisdell-on-undisturbedness-positive-experiences-and-the-hedonic-peak/
 * Krusé, Cornelius (1932). The Inadequacy of the Hedonistic Interpretation. Journal of Philosophy.
 * Langsam, Harold (2022). The will as joy-bringer: Nietzsche’s response to Schopenhauer. Inquiry. DOI:10.1080/0020174X.2022.2126392
 * McGregor, Rafe & Sullivan-Bissett, Ema (2012). Better No Longer to Be: The Harm of Continued Existence. South African Journal of Philosophy, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 55-68. DOI: 10.1080/02580136.2012.10751767 https://philpapers.org/rec/MCGBNL
 * Mainländer, Philipp. The Philosophy of Redemption
 * Metzinger, Thomas (2016). Suffering. In: Kurt Almqvist & Anders Haag (2016)[eds.], The Return of Consciousness. Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation. https://www.philosophie-e.fb05.uni-mainz.de/files/2013/07/Metzinger_Suffering_2017.pdf
 * Moen, Ole Martin (2021). Pessimism Counts in Favor of Biomedical Enhancement: A Lesson from the Anti-Natalist Philosophy of P. W. Zapffe. Neuroethics 14 (2):315-325. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12152-021-09458-8
 * Prescott, Paul (2012). What Pessimism Is
 * Sherman, Toby (2017). Epicureanism: An Ancient Guide to Modern Wellbeing. https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/32103/ShermanT.pdf
 * Simmons, Byron (2020). A thousand pleasures are not worth a single pain: The compensation argument for Schopenhauer's pessimism
 * Sullivan-Bissett, Ema (2022). Better to Return Whence We Came. Journal of Value Inquiry. 56 (1). Pages 85–100. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-022-09888-4
 * Sully, James (1891). Pessimism: A History and a Criticism
 * Tangenes, Gisle (2004). The view from mount Zapffe. Philosophy Now 45: 33-34. https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Tangenes_on_Zapffe.pdf
 * van der Lugt, Mara (2021). When Stoicism Meets Pessimism: La Mettrie and Maupertuis. In: Mara van der Lugt (2021). Dark Matters.
 * Vinding, Magnus (2022). A phenomenological argument against a positive counterpart to suffering. https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/phenomenological-argument/
 * Wicks, Robert (2018). Arthur Schopenhauer: Humor and the Pitiable Human Condition. In: Moland, L. (eds) All Too Human. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91331-5_6
 * The Power of Pessimism (https://einzelganger.co/the-power-of-pessimism/)