Is all true religion necessarily optimistic, or, conversely, is pessimism a sign of resignation before the power of evil in this world and, therefore, a votum of no-confidence in God?
The following passage from Nietzsche’s Menschliches #28 provides a delightfully stimulating platform for thinking along these lines:
"Disreputable words. Away with those tedious, worn-out words 'optimism' and 'pessimism' (reference to Schopenhauer). Every day there is less cause to use them; only babblers still cannot do without them. For why should anyone want to be an optimist if he does not have to defend a God who has created the best of all possible worlds, given that he himself is goodness and perfection? What thinking person still needs the hypothesis of a god? Nor is there cause for pessimistic confession, if one is not interested in irritating the advocates of God, the theologians or theologizing philosophers, and energetically asserting the opposite claim, namely that evil reigns, that unpleasure is greater than pleasure, that the world is a botched job, a manifestation of an evil will to life. But who worries about theologians these days, except the theologians? All theology and its opposition aside, it is self-evident that the world is not good and not evil, let alone the best or the worst, and that the concepts 'good' and 'evil' make sense only in reference to men. Perhaps, even there, as they are generally used, they are not justified: we must in every case dispense with both the reviling and the glorifying view of the world."
Everything in this passage is a great pleasure to read, but our main focus for the purpose of this entry ought to be on Nietzsche’s challenge concerning the religious connotations of optimism and pessimism. In other words, is optimism “religious” and pessimism “anti-religious”?
Equating religiosity with optimism reminds me of those American Evangelical preachers (or, perhaps, not only American?) who allow only the major chords and tunes in their Sunday music, while considering all minor chords a sign of doubt in the Glorious Goodness of God. In this matter, I am forever with Bach, and with all composers of church music who use minor chords with total disregard of its being "pessimistic," or not optimistic enough, and frankly that flatulent majors-only singing in modern Sunday services makes me sick. No, I do not consider the optimism of the majors, or any other kind of affected optimism, as a sure sign of religiosity. Happiness over the present, which is contentment, is a sign of an animal. Happiness toward an idyllic future, which is optimism, is not warranted by the dire predictions of tribulations of the end of days, in the Christian Apocalypse. Nor is it warranted in personal terms, given man’s propensity for sin, whereas a belief in wholesale redemption through God’s love for all those who demonstrate their faith by attending church services with regularity, plus generous tithing or even better, tithing-plus (more than ten per cent) is incomparably worse than trying to buy redemption by good works. Needless to say, neither practice can be justified as a genuine cause for optimism. (So that there is no misunderstanding in this matter, I must point out that in this discussion I do not include the case of benign optimism which is a generally good disposition and attitude to life. Such natural, innate optimism, as opposed to an affected optimism, does not require any self-justification, or all-major chords for that matter.)
Which now leaves us with the key question of this entry: is pessimism compatible with religiosity? My own experience provides an answer to me for myself. I can trust the reader to come up with a personal answer as well. This kind of question can only be answered in strictly personal terms: we answer it to ourselves alone, and no generalization of any sort should be credible in the eyes of those who do not share our experience.
Well, here is my answer. In my younger years I used to be a natural optimist. I believed that as long as you do things according to the inner voice of your conscience, your life has the Divine Promise to be steered in the right direction, and sometime, somehow all ends well. I also believed that the world could be bettered by an extraordinary individual impacting it under extraordinary circumstances, and the reason why it could be bettered was that it contained a seed of goodness that such an extraordinary effort would allow to sprout. Alas, in the course of the last thirty years of my experience I have become a pessimist. I no longer believe in the possibility of bettering the world. I see it being coarsened and corrupted through a will to profit and worldly success, I see the loss of good taste and both ethical and aesthetic values. I see religiosity yielding to God-mocking Tartuffery… Tired with all this, for restful death I cry… Wait, this is Shakespeare, this is a sentiment expressed four hundred years ago, expressing a sentiment that must have been there since the beginning of time…
Yes, each age in the past had its terrible flaws, no doubt that each age in the future will have its own. That is beside the point. My point however is that in the course of my life I have abandoned all optimism which my natural disposition had imbued me with. I have become a pessimist, both about the world and about an individual’s effort to change it. I have also become a pessimist about myself which is perhaps the worst kind of pessimism to be imagined… Yet my religiosity, my belief in God and His Goodness has not abated one iota. It is my feeling that as a custodian of my life I may have failed Him, which makes me a pessimist. As for the world, if I have failed, then the world as a whole must really be beyond redemption…
The following passage from Nietzsche’s Menschliches #28 provides a delightfully stimulating platform for thinking along these lines:
"Disreputable words. Away with those tedious, worn-out words 'optimism' and 'pessimism' (reference to Schopenhauer). Every day there is less cause to use them; only babblers still cannot do without them. For why should anyone want to be an optimist if he does not have to defend a God who has created the best of all possible worlds, given that he himself is goodness and perfection? What thinking person still needs the hypothesis of a god? Nor is there cause for pessimistic confession, if one is not interested in irritating the advocates of God, the theologians or theologizing philosophers, and energetically asserting the opposite claim, namely that evil reigns, that unpleasure is greater than pleasure, that the world is a botched job, a manifestation of an evil will to life. But who worries about theologians these days, except the theologians? All theology and its opposition aside, it is self-evident that the world is not good and not evil, let alone the best or the worst, and that the concepts 'good' and 'evil' make sense only in reference to men. Perhaps, even there, as they are generally used, they are not justified: we must in every case dispense with both the reviling and the glorifying view of the world."
Everything in this passage is a great pleasure to read, but our main focus for the purpose of this entry ought to be on Nietzsche’s challenge concerning the religious connotations of optimism and pessimism. In other words, is optimism “religious” and pessimism “anti-religious”?
Equating religiosity with optimism reminds me of those American Evangelical preachers (or, perhaps, not only American?) who allow only the major chords and tunes in their Sunday music, while considering all minor chords a sign of doubt in the Glorious Goodness of God. In this matter, I am forever with Bach, and with all composers of church music who use minor chords with total disregard of its being "pessimistic," or not optimistic enough, and frankly that flatulent majors-only singing in modern Sunday services makes me sick. No, I do not consider the optimism of the majors, or any other kind of affected optimism, as a sure sign of religiosity. Happiness over the present, which is contentment, is a sign of an animal. Happiness toward an idyllic future, which is optimism, is not warranted by the dire predictions of tribulations of the end of days, in the Christian Apocalypse. Nor is it warranted in personal terms, given man’s propensity for sin, whereas a belief in wholesale redemption through God’s love for all those who demonstrate their faith by attending church services with regularity, plus generous tithing or even better, tithing-plus (more than ten per cent) is incomparably worse than trying to buy redemption by good works. Needless to say, neither practice can be justified as a genuine cause for optimism. (So that there is no misunderstanding in this matter, I must point out that in this discussion I do not include the case of benign optimism which is a generally good disposition and attitude to life. Such natural, innate optimism, as opposed to an affected optimism, does not require any self-justification, or all-major chords for that matter.)
Which now leaves us with the key question of this entry: is pessimism compatible with religiosity? My own experience provides an answer to me for myself. I can trust the reader to come up with a personal answer as well. This kind of question can only be answered in strictly personal terms: we answer it to ourselves alone, and no generalization of any sort should be credible in the eyes of those who do not share our experience.
Well, here is my answer. In my younger years I used to be a natural optimist. I believed that as long as you do things according to the inner voice of your conscience, your life has the Divine Promise to be steered in the right direction, and sometime, somehow all ends well. I also believed that the world could be bettered by an extraordinary individual impacting it under extraordinary circumstances, and the reason why it could be bettered was that it contained a seed of goodness that such an extraordinary effort would allow to sprout. Alas, in the course of the last thirty years of my experience I have become a pessimist. I no longer believe in the possibility of bettering the world. I see it being coarsened and corrupted through a will to profit and worldly success, I see the loss of good taste and both ethical and aesthetic values. I see religiosity yielding to God-mocking Tartuffery… Tired with all this, for restful death I cry… Wait, this is Shakespeare, this is a sentiment expressed four hundred years ago, expressing a sentiment that must have been there since the beginning of time…
Yes, each age in the past had its terrible flaws, no doubt that each age in the future will have its own. That is beside the point. My point however is that in the course of my life I have abandoned all optimism which my natural disposition had imbued me with. I have become a pessimist, both about the world and about an individual’s effort to change it. I have also become a pessimist about myself which is perhaps the worst kind of pessimism to be imagined… Yet my religiosity, my belief in God and His Goodness has not abated one iota. It is my feeling that as a custodian of my life I may have failed Him, which makes me a pessimist. As for the world, if I have failed, then the world as a whole must really be beyond redemption…
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