Readings

by Rick Dietrich

Tuesday's Child, Born on a Wednesday

Let's say I have a friend. And he — no, she — stops by to tell me about this book by Joshua Foa Dienstag, or "J. F. Tuesday," she says. "I'm making fun, but it's a really good book." [Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).] She's long been tired of being written off as a pessimist. Now, she's decided, it's a good thing to be, because pessimism is not, as all of her friends have been trying to tell her, "just a state of mind." It's a philosophy.

At least, that's what Tuesday argues, she says . . . Dienstag: When we see pessimism "more as a disposition than a theory," we see pessimists primarily as "cranks." They're not. Pessimism is a way of thinking, a "continuous alternative" with a sturdy philosophical history, at least since Rousseau. Moreover, it is a position worth considering, even for the optimist, if he weren't so pie-eyed.

Dienstag characterizes pessimists as cultural pessimists (Rousseau and Leopardi), metaphysical pessimists (Schopenhauer and Freud), and existential pessimists (Camus, Unamuno, and Cioran). All address in some way whether life is really worth living, and if it is, whether it is "meliorable."

Cultural pessimists are particularly concerned about the prospects for human happiness in society. Can we change society to enhance possibilities for happiness, or can we only adjust our own expectations? Metaphysical pessimists think that our unhappiness has not to do with our interactions with society however adjusted over time; time itself is the problem, for it does not bring change for the better (or for the worse, for that matter); time brings only the passage of time and at the end of our time, death.

Existential pessimists are less concerned with society or the

structure of things and more concerned about what we can do now, given "the ironic character of history." (It doesn't move forward, even if time does; it doesn't really move at all.) What we can do now: for existential pessimists also believe that "optimism has functioned to displace attention from the real world of today onto an imaginary future." As Dienstag puts it, "When we know (or think we know) the telos of history, even if it is a wonderful one," even if it is pie in the sky, "it renders our life one-dimensional." We have turned the future into an idol and come to "exist as a means of transit from point A to point B."

Within these broader categories (cultural, metaphysical, and existential pessimism), there are misanthropic pessimists, who counsel withdrawal from the world, and humanistic pessimists, who counsel involvement with it, though always with limited expectations and objectives. Maybe there is change, but whether we have made progress in anything besides hygiene and dental care is open to question.

So, what is left? Very little, it would seem. Pleasure is speculation; it is pain that is real. (That is the one inborn error, according to Schopenhauer, "the notion that we exist in order to be happy.") Education is an illusion. "Hope is . . . delirium" (Cioran). And faith is suicide (Camus). (His argument is that when faith prescripts history — or since it does — it allows "human beings to elude their responsibility for making their own choices — just like suicide.")

Why, then, would my friend want to be a pessimist? And can she be a pessimist and a faithful Christian? It's something to worry about, she admits.

Let's take the questions in order. Why would she want to be a pessimist? Because it is, as Nietzsche has argued, "not only [to] concede but [to] love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense."

It is to love the world as it is, not as we might hope it to be. And that is a truth that sets us free. Here's the way Dienstag frames it: " . . . there is a freedom to be gained when one's existence is detached from a narrative of progress. If human history is pregiven as [a particular story], then one's fate (however worthy) is already scripted in a sense, by what has come before" — or by what is coming after. "Pessimism, by freeing us from the script simultaneously frees us from enslavement to the past," or the future (or any other idol!). So, we can act now, though as we act we must also seek "to avoid the hubris common to more systematic philosophies" — or theologies, my friend would add. We must be modest.

"It's not that I don't want to be a faithful Christian," she says slowly, "if you mean by Christian 'a follower of Jesus Christ.'" She stops and looks around at all the books on my shelves. She sighs: "But a follower of Calvin — or even of Paul — I'm not so sure.

"Now," she says, "I'm going home and wash out my mouth with the Apostles' Creed."

"Don't expect that will work either," I say.

"I don't expect anything at all." As she leaves she waves, looking a lot like Stevie Smith.

To be continued . . . .