Pessimism, Quietism, and Impotence

The monk by the sea, by Caspar David Friedrich

There is, within academia—a milieu I am not a part of, though I aspired to be—a pessimistic, anti-quietist philosophical current. The core of its thesis is the reinterpretation of Schopenhauer's philosophy through the lens of the Frankfurt School. I confess that I haven't spent days analyzing what this current says, partly because I would have absolutely nothing to gain from such work since I am not in academia as of now, but it seems to me is that this current is even more optimistic than Adorno and Horkheimer themselves. In an intellectual sense, I don't think there's a problem with being optimistic, although I disagree with optimism and criticize it. But wanting to torture Schopenhauer's thought and transform it into something that affirms life and existence goes beyond optimism.

Linked to anti-quietist pessimism is the notion that a pessimism that gives up on the world is, essentially, “quietist.” What is meant by this term “quietist” is that traditional Schopenhauerian pessimism, and by extension the pessimism of Cioran, Zapffe, Cabrera, and Benatar, ignores social and political issues, and that this would be a kind of implicit affirmation of the injustices of the capitalist world. I discuss the idea that Schopenhauer's true pessimism would supposedly be a kind of affirmation of capitalism in my essay “Pessimism and Politics,” which can also be found on the Metaphysical Exile channel and on Spotify. In it, I comment on Lukács's weak Marxist critique of Schopenhauer, which is nothing more than an ad hominem attack elevated to serious philosophical analysis, something that was—and still is—only possible thanks to the popularity of his political ideology. Lukács, incidentally, also criticized the Frankfurt School, in part for considering it quietist, although he did not use that exact term.

In that essay, I note that during his critique of Schopenhauer, Lukács conveniently leaves out the pessimist Mainländer. Mainländer, who was a socialist and saw the overcoming of social injustices as an important step in rejecting existence to the point of criticizing Schopenhauer for ignoring the political problem, would be horrified by the idea of ​​a pessimism that is ashamed to say that existence is malignantly useless, as the writer Thomas Ligotti summarizes. I don't think that the proponents of anti-quietist pessimism are lying to others, I don't think they are dishonest, but I think they are deceiving themselves. What Nietzsche calls “Dionysian pessimism” is much more honest with itself, although I also disagree with it. Moreover, if I were to affirm existence as a good thing, I would undoubtedly see far more value in Nietzschean Dionysian pessimism than in a truly impotent pessimism, devoid of its life-rejecting power.

There is a cry of despair and anger, and also a clamor for cosmic justice, when one perceives and affirms, without the slightest shame or ceremony, that existence is malignantly useless. It is not only useless, but useless in a malignant way, which means that it has no cosmic purpose and deeply hurts everyone. This does not mean that whoever affirms this loves the injustices of the world, nor that this person is indifferent to its suffering; quite the contrary. I certainly do not love social injustices, nor am I indifferent to the world's suffering. I think that the injustices produced by man are grotesque, even, and exacerbate the misfortune of having come into the world as a sentient being. The world's sufferings, however, do not exist solely because of the injustices caused by a socio-political-economic system made by man.

Physical pain doesn't even depend on humans to exist. The human race is nothing more than a fart when we account for the biosphere's natural history. Dinosaurs appeared between 243 and 233 million years ago and became extinct 66 million years ago. This means that the countless species of dinosaurs lived on Earth for approximately 167 to 177 million years. Being complex animals, they possessed the capacity to feel physical pain and, most likely, rudimentary forms of fear and despair. In comparison, our species, Homo sapiens, emerged about 200 or 300 thousand years ago. And capitalism is not even 500 years old. Pain, suffering, and despair are hallmarks of sentient existence without the need for a profoundly conscious animal capable of exploiting its environment and itself, as is the case with human beings.

While we may criticize Schopenhauer for his political apathy, to treat his rejection of existence—which elevated ascetics who renounce the world to the highest category of human being—as quietism is a terrible mistake. One should not confuse the two. One is not a necessary consequence of the other; quietism is not a necessary consequence of cosmic pessimism. For Mainländer, for example, if all people were capable of recognizing that non-being is better than being without the need for a social transformation that would satisfy everyone's basic material needs, such a social transformation would not be necessary. A pessimistic philosophy worthy of the name does not conceal or shamefully hide this basic existential conclusion: non-being is better than being. It does not deny that life, especially sentience, does not find the universe to be a comfortable nursery; on the contrary. As Zapffe writes in section 4 of chapter 2 of his thesis, titled On the Tragic:

The ac­tu­ally ex­ist­ing con­di­tions of life are not thought of as in­ter­est con­tact. The courtship of the in­di­vid­u­als in their adap­ta­tion ef­forts has been dis­turbingly one-sided and is with­out ex­cep­tion met with the cold shoul­der. There can be no talk of in­ter­est con­tact be­cause the en­vi­ron­ment lacks the abil­ity or will­ing­ness to un­dergo vari­a­tions in har­mony with the liv­ing be­ing’s needs in a given emer­gency sit­u­a­tion. In this sense, the uni­verse is alien to ev­ery­thing liv­ing. Fire and drought, storm and cold strike with­out re­gard; it is up to life to save it­self as best it can. The terms of this re­la­tion­ship can be seen in the im­age of a res­i­dence per­mit that can be with­drawn at any point in a ter­ri­fy­ing bar­baric coun­try where the lan­guage is strange, and that op­er­ates ac­cord­ing to or­ders from un­known and in­ac­ces­si­ble en­ti­ties, and where one can be tor­tured and killed at any time. Of­ten re­ward and dis­grace can be con­nected to our own be­hav­ior; at other times things go badly when we ex­pect a lit­tle suc­cess.

The idea that we must perpetuate ourselves through generations to fight the supposed “good fight” and achieve a perfect society before we can openly affirm that non-being is better than being is true quietism, in the original sense of the word quiet: it is wanting to remain silent, without revealing the even more brutal truth than the truth that, yes, humans exploit humans. As much as humanity exploits itself and that is bad, there is an even more brutal truth: all sentient beings, including humans who, in addition to being sentient, possess deep self consciousness, are extremely unfortunate to have come into existence, since there is no purpose whatsoever, and friction is a fundamental and inescapable part of being. Moreover, when we understand that to be is to be subjected to friction, it becomes easier to understand how it is possible for a species of animal to act so grotesquely against itself.

And we are not even the only animal species that harms itself. Just think of certain species of insects and arachnids that practice cannibalism after mating. Before it is argued that such behaviors evolved to benefit these species, while the exploitation of man by man has no benefit whatsoever and is carried out by evil people, I bring Marx into the discussion: capitalism, according to him, does have an essential historical function, bringing material and technical advances to man, although it is not the final stage of history. So, my friends, no. Not even Hegel or Marx treat human history as a battle between the goodies and the baddies, the latter supposedly arising from nowhere and attacking the peace and serenity of the goodies. In fact, an unwary reader of some of Hegel's texts might even think they are reading a pessimistic author, such is his emphasis that the history of man is a bloodbath—and rightly so. The same occurs in Marx.

The difference between them and the pessimists is that these two authors see some kind of greater purpose in reality or in man, a purpose that would justify all this bloodshed. Some of those who see a purpose in bringing new generations into the world to participate in pain and death, justifying it by saying that God or humanity needs new soldiers to lubricate the gears of becoming with their blood, accuse the pessimists of quietism. However, the accusation can easily be reversed in this case, just as we can easily reverse the accusation of selfishness against those who choose not to have children and say that, in fact, selfishness is precisely choosing to create new consciousnesses.

Quietism, I believe, is the desire to justify the perpetuation of the species in a troubled and purposeless existence as something that transcends the individual and collective egoism of the species. It would be a quietism that doesn't remain quiet, but develops arguments here and there to diminish the core of the issue brought about by pessimism: the grim perspective that nature made a mistake in producing a being capable of looking at this entire process and perceiving its futility. This is the harsh and inescapable reality. Future generations can censure and send all pessimists to the stake to be burned, destroy all their books and writings, and yet there will still be people who reach the same grim conclusion, just as there will also be people who reach the same conclusion that man exploits man and that this could and should change. Both things are true, but one is more fundamental than the other and, apparently, more difficult to accept.

by Fernando Olszewski