No one likes a pessimist. But pessimism is unfairly maligned and misunderstood. Far from being about making gloomy predictions about the future, pessimism is a philosophical outlook that acknowledges the darker side to life. Instead of seeing pain and suffering as unlucky, accidental phenomena, pessimism recognizes them as intrinsic parts of existence. That need not lead to resignation and hopelessness. Indeed pessimism can ultimately be more motivating than optimism, argues Mara van der Lugt.

In an age marked by such overwhelming cause for concern for the state of the planet and the future of mankind as ours, the word pessimism has received a surprising amount of bad press.

Noam Chomsky, in the tellingly titled collection Optimism over Despair, puts the question of optimism and pessimism as something of a forking path: we can either be optimistic about the possibilities for the future, or we can be pessimistic, i.e. desperate, i.e. just “give up”. Similarly, and almost simultaneously, Steven Pinker in his book Enlightenment Now makes his plea for the belief in progress against what he sees as a widespread current of “pessimism”, or a belief in cultural decline.

It is generally a good idea to be at least mildly sceptical when encountering such sweeping statements, such denunciations of what is obviously or evidently a widespread fad­ – and we should be all the more suspicious when no convincing examples are given of a phenomenon of which we are all supposed to be so acutely aware. After all: who, these days, calls themselves a pessimist with any conviction? When was pessimism ever a thing that was “in vogue”? And who says that pessimism is the same thing as believing in decline or resigning in despair?

It is in fact much more difficult to find a self-proclaimed pessimist than a self-proclaimed optimist, whether in politics, philosophy, science or everyday life, and the few examples we can find are hardly ever straightforward cases. Thus John Gray, perhaps the philosopher most notorious for his pessimism, will not take on the term without qualification: “I am hopefully pessimistic”, he says on the BBC-programme Desert Island Discs. This caution, this tentative nature of his self-description, and the very adjective he chooses to moderate it, are each telling: they reveal what pessimism is often accused of and has to defend against. But the things we most often associate with pessimism are far removed from what it really is; they are based on a mixture of misgivings, prejudices, and concerns that fail to do it justice. For the truth is that pessimism represents a much richer, deeper, and more interesting view on life than the dulled-down version lets us see.

The ethics of optimism and pessimism