Pessimism - Joshua Foa Dienstag
Pessimism claims an impressive following — from Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, to Freud, Camus, and Foucault. Yet “pessimist” remains a term of abuse — an accusation of a bad attitude — or the diagnosis of an unhappy psychological state. Pessimism is thought of as an exclusively negative stance that inevitably leads to resignation or despair. Even when pessimism looks like utter truth, we are told that it makes the worst of a bad situation. Bad for the individual, worse for the species — who would actually counsel pessimism?
Joshua Foa Dienstag does. In Pessimism, he challenges the received wisdom about pessimism, arguing that there is an unrecognized yet coherent and vibrant pessimistic philosophical tradition. More than that, he argues that pessimistic thought may provide a critically needed alternative to the increasingly untenable progressivist ideas that have dominated thinking about politics throughout the modern period. Laying out powerful grounds for pessimism’s claim that progress is not an enduring feature of human history, Dienstag argues that political theory must begin from this predicament. He persuasively shows that pessimism has been — and can again be — an energizing and even liberating philosophy, an ethic of radical possibility and not just a criticism of faith. The goal — of both the pessimistic spirit and of this fascinating account of pessimism — is not to depress us, but to edify us about our condition and to fortify us for life in a disordered and disenchanted universe.
Awards and Recognition
Winner of the 2006 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Philosophy, Association of American Publishers.
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Joshua Foa Dienstag’s work focuses on the intersection of politics with time, history, memory and narrative. Professor Dienstag teaches classes on the political theory of the Founders and other topics at the intersection of law, politics and philosophy.
Originally from New York City, he received his doctorate from Princeton University and taught at the University of Virginia for 13 years before moving to UCLA. His research focuses largely on European political theory between the 17th and 19th centuries but he has also written about the American Founding, film and Wittgenstein. His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Polity, Political Theory, Journal of Politics, History & Memory and New Literary History among other places. He has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. His second book Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton U.P., 2006) won the Award for Excellence in Philosophy from the American Association of Publishers. His most recent book Cinema Pessimism: A Political Theory of Representation and Reciprocity (Oxford U.P.) appears in the fall of 2019.
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An appropriate book to read in this 'pessimistic' and confused times. It gives hope to overcome the passage of time.
'All the tragedies which we can imagine return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time. (Simone Weil)'
'The burdens of temporality' (p. 132)
'The palliative effect of illusion' (p. 234).
'Optimism makes us perpetual enemies of those future moments that do not meet our expectations, which means all future moments'. (...) ' Expectations are an endless deferral of freedom.' (p. 247)
'All that is necessary is an illusion to carry us through seventy or so years of life' (p. 252).
I particularly like the part of the 'first thought' and the value of thinking (p. 260/262).
Perhaps the first thought was that 'things could be otherwise'. An evolutionary journey along animal 'suffering' to a state of 'a brute desire to be anywhere but at that one particular place where it is at that moment' leads (on animal level), in Dienstag's view, to a death-wish. 'The discovery (or the creation) of time is thus linked to the wish to depart from existence, from life'. (...) And so we say that humanity only began to live when it wanted to die'.
Unfortunately 'a pessimist believes that time is linear' (p. 264). Maybe that is the reason that pessimistic thoughts - just like optimistic thoughts - are bound to reach short of their goal: their frame of mind is simply too simple. 'Time' in a dialectic (two-fold, oppositional) setting is for losers, but 'time' in a cyclic (four-fold, quadralectic) setting is for winners - although this statement bites, like the ouroboros - in its own tail, like it is bound to do. Hmmm (MK).
Pessimism - Joshua Foa Dienstag
Pessimism claims an impressive following — from Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, to Freud, Camus, and Foucault. Yet “pessimist” remains a term of abuse — an accusation of a bad attitude — or the diagnosis of an unhappy psychological state. Pessimism is thought of as an exclusively negative stance that inevitably leads to resignation or despair. Even when pessimism looks like utter truth, we are told that it makes the worst of a bad situation. Bad for the individual, worse for the species — who would actually counsel pessimism?
Joshua Foa Dienstag does. In Pessimism, he challenges the received wisdom about pessimism, arguing that there is an unrecognized yet coherent and vibrant pessimistic philosophical tradition. More than that, he argues that pessimistic thought may provide a critically needed alternative to the increasingly untenable progressivist ideas that have dominated thinking about politics throughout the modern period. Laying out powerful grounds for pessimism’s claim that progress is not an enduring feature of human history, Dienstag argues that political theory must begin from this predicament. He persuasively shows that pessimism has been — and can again be — an energizing and even liberating philosophy, an ethic of radical possibility and not just a criticism of faith. The goal — of both the pessimistic spirit and of this fascinating account of pessimism — is not to depress us, but to edify us about our condition and to fortify us for life in a disordered and disenchanted universe.
Awards and Recognition
Winner of the 2006 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Philosophy, Association of American Publishers.
---
Joshua Foa Dienstag’s work focuses on the intersection of politics with time, history, memory and narrative. Professor Dienstag teaches classes on the political theory of the Founders and other topics at the intersection of law, politics and philosophy.
Originally from New York City, he received his doctorate from Princeton University and taught at the University of Virginia for 13 years before moving to UCLA. His research focuses largely on European political theory between the 17th and 19th centuries but he has also written about the American Founding, film and Wittgenstein. His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Polity, Political Theory, Journal of Politics, History & Memory and New Literary History among other places. He has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. His second book Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton U.P., 2006) won the Award for Excellence in Philosophy from the American Association of Publishers. His most recent book Cinema Pessimism: A Political Theory of Representation and Reciprocity (Oxford U.P.) appears in the fall of 2019.
---
An appropriate book to read in this 'pessimistic' and confused times. It gives hope to overcome the passage of time.
'All the tragedies which we can imagine return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time. (Simone Weil)'
'The burdens of temporality' (p. 132)
'The palliative effect of illusion' (p. 234).
'Optimism makes us perpetual enemies of those future moments that do not meet our expectations, which means all future moments'. (...) ' Expectations are an endless deferral of freedom.' (p. 247)
'All that is necessary is an illusion to carry us through seventy or so years of life' (p. 252).
I particularly like the part of the 'first thought' and the value of thinking (p. 260/262).
Perhaps the first thought was that 'things could be otherwise'. An evolutionary journey along animal 'suffering' to a state of 'a brute desire to be anywhere but at that one particular place where it is at that moment' leads (on animal level), in Dienstag's view, to a death-wish. 'The discovery (or the creation) of time is thus linked to the wish to depart from existence, from life'. (...) And so we say that humanity only began to live when it wanted to die'.
Unfortunately 'a pessimist believes that time is linear' (p. 264). Maybe that is the reason that pessimistic thoughts - just like optimistic thoughts - are bound to reach short of their goal: their frame of mind is simply too simple. 'Time' in a dialectic (two-fold, oppositional) setting is for losers, but 'time' in a cyclic (four-fold, quadralectic) setting is for winners - although this statement bites, like the ouroboros - in its own tail, like it is bound to do. Hmmm (MK).