Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(Download PDF) The Value of The World and of Oneself Philosophical Optimism and Pessimism From Aristotle To Modernity Mor Segev 2 Full Chapter PDF
(Download PDF) The Value of The World and of Oneself Philosophical Optimism and Pessimism From Aristotle To Modernity Mor Segev 2 Full Chapter PDF
(Download PDF) The Value of The World and of Oneself Philosophical Optimism and Pessimism From Aristotle To Modernity Mor Segev 2 Full Chapter PDF
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-value-of-the-world-and-of-
oneself-philosophical-optimism-and-pessimism-from-aristotle-to-
modernity-mor-segev-2/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-history-of-hylomorphism-from-
aristotle-to-descartes-1st-edition-david-charles/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-aesthetic-value-of-the-world-
tom-cochrane/
https://ebookmass.com/product/aristotle-and-the-earlier-
peripatetics-being-a-translation-from-zellers-philosophy-of-the-
greeks-zeller/
Baudelaire and the Making of Italian Modernity: From
the Scapigliatura to the Futurist Movement, 1857-1912
1st Edition Alessandro Cabiati
https://ebookmass.com/product/baudelaire-and-the-making-of-
italian-modernity-from-the-scapigliatura-to-the-futurist-
movement-1857-1912-1st-edition-alessandro-cabiati/
https://ebookmass.com/product/psychology-and-value-in-plato-
aristotle-and-hellenistic-philosophy-fiona-leigh-editor/
https://ebookmass.com/product/islam-state-and-modernity-mohammed-
abed-al-jabri-and-the-future-of-the-arab-world-1st-edition-zaid-
eyadat/
https://ebookmass.com/product/on-the-origin-of-evolution-tracing-
darwins-dangerous-idea-from-aristotle-to-dna-john-gribbin/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-anatomy-of-dance-discourse-
literary-and-philosophical-approaches-to-dance-in-the-later-
graeco-roman-world-1st-edition-karin-schlapbach/
The Value of the World and of Oneself
The Value of the
World and of Oneself
Philosophical Optimism and Pessimism
from Aristotle to Modernity
M O R SE G EV
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197634073.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
To the memory of Martha Leonhardt,
née Löwenberg (1902–1943).
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
References 245
Index 253
Acknowledgments
The following are the abbreviations used for the titles of the works
by the main authors discussed in this book.
Works by Aristotle:
Cael. De caelo
DA De anima
De phil. De philosophia
Div. De divinatione per somnum
EE Eudemian Ethics
GA Generation of Animals
GC Generation and Corruption
HA History of Animals
IA Progression of Animals
Metaph. Metaphysics
Meteor. Meteorology
MM Magna Moralia
NE Nicomachean Ethics
PA Parts of Animals
Poet. Poetics
Pol. Politics
Protr. Protrepticus
Rh. Rhetoric
Top. Topics
Works by Maimonides:
EC Eight Chapters
GP The Guide of the Perplexed
MT Mishneh Torah
HD Hilchot Deot (in MT )
xii Abbreviations
Works by Spinoza:
E Ethics
TTP Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
Works by Schopenhauer:
MR Manuscript Remains
PP Parerga and Paralipomena
FHP Fragments for the History of Philosophy (in PP)
WWR The World as Will and Representation
Works by Nietzsche:
BGE Beyond Good and Evil
BT The Birth of Tragedy
BVN Briefe von Nietzsche (Nietzsche’s letters)
EH Ecce Homo
GM The Genealogy of Morals
GS The Gay Science
HH Human, all too Human
NCW Nietzsche contra Wagner
NF Nachgelassene Fragmente (Posthumous fragments)
Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Works by Camus:
F The Fall
MS The Myth of Sisyphus
R The Rebel
Introduction
In evaluating the world and one’s life within it, two positions, dia-
metrically opposed to one another, have often been taken by prom-
inent figures in the history of philosophy. The view traditionally
referred to as philosophical optimism may be encapsulated by the
two following propositions:
that, upon evaluation, it turns out that x is not at all valuable (notice that, in addition,
P1’s evaluation of the condition of the world as woeful in fact attributes disvalue to the
world). The view that one might not appropriately form value judgments concerning the
world, or anything in it, will be considered in Chapter 3.
The Value of the World and of Oneself. Mor Segev, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197634073.003.0001
2 Introduction
2 All translations and page numbers of Schopenhauer’s texts are taken from E. F.
Reisebuch 33, pp. 30–1 (Payne, 13–14). See Chapter 2 for a more detailed discussion
of these texts. Payne translates Werthlosigkeit as “worthlessness”; reasonably, since
Schopenhauer uses the word as an evaluative term (as I use “valuelessness” throughout).
Nichtigkeit, for him, is an evaluative term as well (making Payne’s translation of it as
“vanity” appropriate), as it denotes primarily the futility of all striving and aiming, which
inevitably lead to suffering (WWR I, §68: 385, 394–7; II.XXXVII: 435; II.XLVI: 634–5).
Introduction 3
4 S. Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 2008), ad “opti-
8 On this point see also Prescott (2012, 341–3), discussing J. F. Dienstag, Pessimism
Philosophy 1860–1900 (Oxford, 2016), 153, associate a similar move with Eduard
von Hartmann. See also S. Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History
of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ, 2015), 22; M. Migotti, “Schopenhauer’s Pessimism in
Context,” in R. Wicks (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Schopenhauer (Oxford, 2020), 284–
98 at 285–6.
10 J. B. Cabell, The Silver Stallion (New York, 1926), 129. Quoted in D. Benatar, The
12 Loemker (2006, 244) traces the term “optimism” to 1737 and “pessimism” to 1795.
13 Dienstag (2006), 8–9; cf. ibid., 166.
6 Introduction
15 A. Guttmacher, Optimism and Pessimism in the Old and New Testaments (Baltimore,
individuals worse than they otherwise would have been. For, since
optimism encourages one to look favorably upon one’s individual
life, it also promotes egoism, which inevitably leads to cruelty.
In Chapter 2, we shall turn to Schopenhauer’s own pessimistic
theory and to Nietzsche’s critique of it. Schopenhauer presents an
alternative to Jewish and pantheistic optimism, and the unreason-
able self-commendation that he believes they promote. Human
life, as Schopenhauer thinks it is standardly lived, is objectively fu-
tile and indeed miserable. Life, for him, involves continuous strife
(WWR I, §61: 331), which is inescapable even by means of suicide
(§54: 281). Whenever we find ourselves under the impression that
our human condition is any better than that, we are simply mis-
taken. However, Schopenhauer also thinks that there is a way out
of this predicament. The solution is to be found in his notion of the
“denial of the will-to-live” (§68: 397). Knowing and acknowledging
that no form of life can be free from suffering, and that attempting
to alleviate one’s suffering from within the framework of one’s
life is necessarily done in vain, one gradually grows frustrated
with living as such, and ceases to will it. Such a process, if carried
out properly, ultimately yields “[t]rue salvation” (§68: 397). By
dimming (and, ultimately, eliminating) the subjective investment
in one’s own life, with its various aims, goals, choices, and values,
Schopenhauer thinks, one could potentially exist in an objectively
praiseworthy way.
However, Schopenhauer’s claim that self-abnegation is pref-
erable over any standard instance of individual life seems to in-
volve him in a paradox. As Nietzsche (GM III.28) argues directly
against Schopenhauer, and as Thomas Nagel (in Mortal Questions)
later argued against similar positions, the recommendation of
eliminating one’s aims is itself explainable only as the willful pursuit
of an aim. Willing not to will, in other words, is still willing, and a
desire not to desire is still a desire. Indeed, this criticism exposes
an even graver problem for Schopenhauer. Since Schopenhauer
promotes self-abnegation as a desirable goal, his view turns out to
Introduction 13
optimist is just as bad as, if not worse than, the pessimist (EH IV.4).
Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s view arguably does ultimately revert to
the same evaluation of the world and of oneself that both he and
Schopenhauer find problematic. It has been argued, that is, that
Nietzsche, too, endows the world and its various parts, including
individual human beings, with ultimate value. In The Rebel, Albert
Camus suggests that Nietzsche’s top goal—“creation” (Schaffen)
or “yes-saying” (Ja-sagen), roughly, aligning one’s will with the
world—amounts to thinking of the world as a deity and of one-
self as divine, after and despite the “death of God.” Thus, although
Nietzsche criticizes monotheism for privileging God as singularly
valuable and believers in Him as singularly correct (GS 143), he
himself privileges the world and those individuals who value it in
just this way.
Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, though criticizing optimistic
views for overvaluing human beings, are nevertheless led, in dif-
ferent ways, to overvalue individual human beings to an arguably
unprecedented degree. There is, however, one readily available view
that seems to deliberately and consistently avoid this consequence.
This view, which dates back to Aristotle and is later developed by
Moses Maimonides, is interestingly one which both Schopenhauer
and Nietzsche would consider optimistic, and rightly so.
Aristotelian optimism will be examined in detail in Chapters 5 and
6. However, in order to appreciate the relevance of that theory to
later views, we will first, in Chapter 4, compare the ancient pessi-
mistic approaches that Aristotle engages with to their modern
counterparts, and especially to Schopenhauer’s view (as we have
already seen, pessimistic sentiments and views make an appear-
ance already in ancient Greek philosophy and literature, and the
connections of those to modern pessimism, as we shall see, do not
elude Schopenhauer himself). In a fragment from a lost dialogue,
titled the Eudemus, Aristotle tells a story about Silenus, who, upon
being captured by King Midas, utters a statement encapsulating a
pessimistic view resembling Schopenhauer’s views on human life
Introduction 15
The Value of the World and of Oneself. Mor Segev, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197634073.003.0002
SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITIQUE OF OPTIMISM 19
the tone for the rest of Jewish religion and culture as he sees them.
Interestingly, he finds the most distinct pronouncement of this ap-
proach in Clement of Alexandria— a Church Father. In Stromata
III.3, Schopenhauer notes, Clement opposes the Marcionites for
“having found fault with the creation” (WWR II.XLVIII: 621). For
Clement, he continues, upon accepting the fact that God created
the world “it is a priori certain that it is excellent, no matter what
it looks like” (WWR II.XLVIII: 622). This attitude, Schopenhauer
concludes, makes Clement “more of a Jew than a Christian” (WWR
II.XLVIII: 622). Judaism, for Schopenhauer, is essentially opti-
mistic. It is founded on the belief in a God responsible for the crea-
tion of an absolutely flawless world.
Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Judaism on this point is con-
sonant with prominent voices in Jewish theology and philosophy.
In GP III.13, Maimonides comments on Genesis 1:31, where it is
stated that “God saw all that He has created, and behold, [it was]
very good ()והנה טוב מאד.” The word “very” ( )מאדis added at
Genesis 1:31 for the first time, after repeated references earlier
in the chapter to God’s seeing His creation and simply declaring
it “good.” According to Maimonides, this addition means that
Creation, in its entirety, conforms to God’s intention perma-
nently (327:16– 21).1 Later, he assimilates that idea to “the philo-
sophical opinion ( דעת הפילוסופים, ”)אלראי אלפלספיthat “in all
natural things there is nothing that may be described as futile”
(III.25, 365:30– 366:9), i.e., to the Aristotelian dictum that “nature
does nothing in vain” (e.g., IA 8, 708a9– 11).2 Thus, in GP III.10,
Maimonides extends the statement at Genesis 1:31 to the exist-
ence of particular natural phenomena, including organisms made
of inferior, perishable matter, such as human beings. In the light
of Genesis 1:31, Maimonides thinks, such beings are doomed to
1 The pagination and Judeo-Arabic text of the Guide is based on Joel 1930/1. The
טוב מאדat Genesis 1:31 to “( טוב מותit is good to die”). Interestingly, this text is often
interpreted as indicating pessimism; see Guttmacher (1903), 78.
4 Thus, Guttmacher (1903, 28–9) reads the declarations in Genesis 1 of Creation as
“good” as endorsing optimism and finds further evidence for this view in the Hebrew
Bible, such as Isaiah 45:18; Psalms 33:6, 9; 104:10–15.
5 R. Hendel, The Book of Genesis: A Biography (Princeton, NJ, 2013), 37–9. However,
Hendel (2015, 43) adds that, by contrast, the account of the Garden of Eden in Genesis
2–3 “depicts a reality that is very earthly and—from the human point of view—very
imperfect.”
6 Guttmacher (1903), 241.
7 In a recent work, Lasine, discussing Schopenhauer’s and Guttmacher’s evaluation
“Schopenhauer and Spinoza,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 10.2 (1972), 181–96;
P. F. Moreau, “Spinoza’s Reception and Influence,” in D. Garrett (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge, 1995), 408–33 at 423–5; J. Golomb, “The Inscrutable
Riddle of Schopenhauer’s Relations to Jews and to Judaism,” in R. Wicks (ed.), The
Oxford Handbook of Schopenhauer (Oxford, 2020), 425–51, at 426–7; 437–8.
24 The Value of the World and of Oneself
and “Whatever has being, has its being in God” (E1p15: Quicquid
est, in Deo est). The inevitable consequence of deriving one’s
explanations of the natural world from such a starting point, for
Schopenhauer, is the rejection of the possibility of anything less
than a perfect state of the world a priori. The pantheistic world, as
Schopenhauer puts it, exhausts the “entire possibility of all being,”
and it is for this reason that he thinks pantheism, like Judaism, is
“essentially optimism” (WWR II.L: 644).
The optimistic worldview underlying both Judaism and
Spinozism is a crucial common denominator between them, and
constitutes a crucial difference between them and other religions
or systems of thought, in Schopenhauer’s view. As he puts it
(WWR II.XVII: 170):
11 S. Nadler, “Spinoza in the Garden of Good and Evil,” in E. J. Kremer and M. J. Latzer
(eds.), The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy (Toronto, 2001a), 66–80, at 69–70.
12 Rappaport (1899), 42, citing E5p6s, E5p15, and E5p33.
13 Rappaport (1899), 49–51.
30 The Value of the World and of Oneself
One standard way out of the problem of evil is of course via the idea
of reward in an afterlife. While Schopenhauer criticizes Spinoza for
not supporting either this or an analogous feature, he also thinks
that he would have been inconsistent in doing so. No internally
consistent optimistic theory can allow for the possibility that any
features of either human life or the world at large leave anything to
be desired. And so, it is to Spinoza’s credit that he does not compro-
mise the consistency of his theory by resorting to an idea promising
improvement in a life to come.
Here, too, Schopenhauer interprets Judaism as closely akin to,
and as substantially informing, Spinoza’s theory. For Schopenhauer,
Judaism “has absolutely no doctrine of immortality” (FHP §13: 125).
He is often accused of being ignorant on the subject,14 and he has been
more generally called a “metaphysical anti-Semite” who “abhorred
Judaism, of which he knew very little.”15 More recently, it has been
shown that at least Schopenhauer’s early comments on Judaism were
either neutral or even positive.16 In any case, Schopenhauer is aware
of discussions of metempsychosis in testimonies regarding Jews (e.g.,
in Tertullian and Justin) (WWR II.XLI: 506). He also reads a part of
the Talmud (Sota 12a) as referring to the transmigration of soul be-
tween Abel, Seth, and Moses (WWR II.XLI: 506),17 though it should
be noted that the Talmudic text only implicitly draws a connection
not antisemitic, despite his metaphysical critique of Judaism and occasional antisemitic
remarks (especially in later writings), but rather engaged critically with Judaism, re-
garding it as a “formidable enemy,” see Golomb (2020), 440 et passim.
16 See R. Wicks, “Schopenhauer and Judaism,” in S. Shapshay (ed.), The Palgrave
18 See S. Magid, From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History and the Interpretation of
1 (Detroit, 2007), 441. For Guttmacher (1903, 115), Daniel 12:2 is exceptional in the
Hebrew Bible for introducing the idea of immortality. See also Lasine (2019, 132–4)
on the general absence of personal immortality from the Hebrew Bible, with a few
exceptions which nevertheless “prove the rule: nothing worthwhile happens after one
dies,” so that we might as well follow Eccl. 9:7–10 and “content ourselves with eating
our bread and drinking our wine with joy . . .” (2019, 134). As we shall see presently,
Schopenhauer appeals to these verses in a similar vein.
20 See Wicks (2017), 341.
32 The Value of the World and of Oneself
Guttmacher (1903, 42–4; 57–8), while calling the account of “the Fall” “a sad and some-
what pessimistic tale,” goes on to say that it does not originally trace sin back to Adam,
and that the idea of the inherent moral depravity of human nature is added to the ac-
count and given the status of doctrine in Christianity, giving that religion “a pessimistic
tinge” distinguishing it from Judaism.
22 See Brann (1975), 14–18; cf. WWR II.XLVIII–XLIX; FHP §12. Again, Guttmacher,
while interpreting Ecclesiastes as overall pessimistic (1903, 84–5), qualifies that reading
by saying that “Ecclesiastes is not a Pessimist, in the modern acceptation of that term”
because, “[u]nlike the modern Pessimist, he nowhere makes assertion that this is the
worst of all possible worlds” (on this point, Guttmacher cites Schopenhauer), and does
not adhere to the idea that the world either degenerates or is to be denied (1903, 87).
Unlike Schopenhauer, Guttmacher adds (1903, 88), Ecclesiastes’s despair does not lead
him “to a denial of God’s existence.”
23 See Golomb (2020), 430– 1; Brann (1975), 14– 18. Controversy on the assessment
of the attitude and general message of Ecclesiastes still rages to this day. Knopf reads
the book as containing an optimism regarding the permanence of certain things in
the cosmos and one’s potential share in good deeds; see “The Optimism of Koheleth,”
Journal of Biblical Literature 49.2 (1930), 195– 9. More recently, Sneed argues against
interpretations maintaining “that the recurrent carpe diem found throughout the book
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
CHAPTER XXII
CAROLINA CONSTRUCTS A DRAMA