IX 



THE PLACE OF PESSIMISM IN PHILOSOPHY. 1 



ARGUMENT 



To prove that Pessimism is an ultimate attitude of will. 



(i) It is not merely disappointed hedonism. (2) It may result from the 

 breakdown of any ideal of value. Now any system of values may be 

 judged (a) adequate, (b) inadequate, (c) inapplicable, to Life. Similarly in 

 judgments of Fact, reality is judged (a) knowable (b) unknowable, 

 (c) inexhaustible. But the critical solutions (c) reduce themselves to (b). 

 All our modes of Valuation stand and fall together, and Truth is 

 among them. Hence Optimism and Pessimism become ultimate alterna 

 tives. Still Pessimism is secondary. Practical value of this issue. 



THE aim of this essay is to show that logically 

 Pessimism should be taken in a far wider and more 

 fundamental sense than is commonly assigned to it, and 

 that when this is done, it forms an attitude towards the 

 ultimate questions of philosophy which is not susceptible 

 of being resolved into any other, and cannot be refuted, 

 but only accepted or rejected. It forms one of those 

 ultimate alternatives the choice between which rests 

 essentially upon an act of will. 



In attempting to establish this view, it will be 

 convenient to start by determining what we are to under 

 stand by the term Pessimism. It has been customary 

 to subordinate the treatment of the subject too much to 

 the particular views of representative pessimist writers, 

 and to pay too little regard to the logical connection of 

 the pessimist positions. Hence, a belief has become 

 current that Pessimism might be summed up in the 

 assertion that life was not worth living, because in it the 



1 Reprinted (with a few additions) from the International Journal of Ethics, 

 for Oct. 1897, 



157 



