In this essay I will explain and discuss Schopenhauer’s pessimism, with the titled quote being the motif throughout. Section I is dedicated to a thorough explanation of his reasons for advocating pessimism, warts and all. Section II is dedicated to a discussion of its merits but more importantly its flaws, some of which I believe discredit particular arguments that are made in its favour and thus must be rectified, in a way that I believe resolves the value problems of the theory. This is thanks to a “cross-temporal” approach promoted by Byron Simmons (2021).
At the core of Schopenhauer’s pessimism lies his conception of the Will. The Will is “…the thing-in-itself, [it] constitutes the inner, true, and indestructible nature…” (Schopenhauer, W2, p.201). In other words, it is the unending, universal, and unified striving that is present in all things. Schopenhauer’s account of the Will applies to everything that exists, and we are of course no exception. He states that there is a persisting inaccessible form constituting our identity throughout the ‘Time’ of our existence, said ‘Time’ being an imposition we place on the appearance of reality, which is in itself conjured by us in the form of ‘Space’ (Schopenhauer, FR §21). The thing-in-itself of our being is a striving that exists outside of the human constructions that allow us to navigate the world.
With this in mind, how does Schopenhauer blacken our existence with pessimism through Will? As stated, Will is a ceaseless striving. When one strives for something – and to Schopenhauer this could very well be anything – there is a clear lack or deficiency of what it is we are striving for. To desire something by virtue of its present lacking is what brings suffering (Schopenhauer, W1 §56, p.309). As a result, the blind, uncontrollable persistence of Will results in an existential hunger for more than we currently have. It is fundamentally impossible to satisfy. Therefore, for as long as we live, we are condemned to an existence of deficiencies with intermittent, ephemeral periods of satisfaction.
It is all well and good to be told this, but the idea that we are constantly suffering throughout our existence does not do much without some semblance of tangible proof. Fortunately, Schopenhauer gives numerous reasons as to why life - human life in particular - is a lot more effort than it is worth on both a logical level and a practical one. First, he argues that satisfaction is the negation of suffering, not the other way around (Schopenhauer, W2, p. 575). For example, to have a cool glass of water on a hot day is the negation of the original reason why your Will desired the water. That is, you were experiencing the suffering associated with dehydration and cold water negates that state of being. To quote Schopenhauer: “We feel pain, not painlessness; care, but not freedom from care; fear, but not safety and security.” (ibid.). As a result, the source of our Will being the existence of suffering naturally entails that suffering is the positive state of being.
Even if one denied that satisfaction is the negation of pain, satisfaction is only good insofar as the Will desires it. Once it has been obtained, it has no reason to be pursued any longer and ceases to have the value that it had when you strove to obtain it. The blindness of the Will’s desire for the things we lack results in an incessant conflict with the Will of other individuals. It does not care that I may desire one thing at the expense of another person – either I suffer, or they do. Due to this species-wide friction, there are entire libraries of historical anecdotes of the relentless striving of one resulting in the pains and damages of another (Schopenhauer, W2, p. 578). The multiplicity of the Will results in varying grades of its existence, meaning there are an endless number of different levels of struggle experienced by living creatures. Schopenhauer writes that “every animal is the prey and food of some other” (Schopenhauer, W1 §27, p.147), and you need not restrict this idea to the animal kingdom to see that the will to survive in the world essentially requires one to cause suffering to avoid their own.
The Will spans existence in its entirety, which means that we live to be in all-too-brief satisfaction at best, and constant, suffering-laden opposition with others at worst. At worst is right, as the conclusion of life by any means does not result in the conclusion of the Will’s dissatisfaction. If one chose to end their own life in order to escape such suffering, you are not ending your being in itself, as the Will is a state of existence beyond anything we can interact with in our self-imposed physical space. To end your own life is simply to end the representation of your life, the life in-itself continues in turmoil (Schopenhauer, W2, pp. 490-492).
Now that Schopenhauer’s pessimism is in play, how can we defend ourselves from it? I do not think it is necessary to dismantle every single point that is made. In fact, it is likely that he has made numerous correct judgements as far as satisfaction’s fleetingness and suffering’s prevalence is concerned. It merely seems to be the case that the function of these states can be debated, and I believe that Schopenhauer’s conception of pessimism does not quite capture how we navigate the world in spite of those states.
Firstly, we may as well attempt to cut the theory out at the root. It could be argued that Schopenhauer’s conception of Will as the thing-in-itself is not truly the thing-in-itself, but merely another representation. His idea of the thing-in-itself is derived partially from Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, and it is him that makes the claim that the thing-in-itself is a reality that is fundamentally unknowable(). Schopenhauer takes this idealism but instead argues that you can know the thing-in-itself, as it exists as Will that can be observed internally, and then universalised as a result(). Surely, then, this is a conceptualisation and therefore a representation, not, in fact, reality as it is. Schopenhauer can respond by claiming that the Will is suitably foundational. That is, it cannot be broken down any further than further accounts of Will. Representations can be spoken of in terms of Will, but to Schopenhauer it is not possible to talk of the Will at any smaller scope, which would be easy to do if it were truly a representation and not a thing-in-itself.
Moving further down the line of reasoning, it could be disputed that striving need not be a negative state. There are plenty of intuitive examples of goal-directed behaviour that involves struggle towards a goal, but is not painful in itself. There are even cases where struggle is involved, but it is endured for the sake of the struggle itself, and any potential assistance is denied out of commitment to enduring it. Schopenhauer could counter this by claiming that it is not proof that striving doesn’t result in suffering, but that we are merely substituting the boredom resulting from a lack of struggle with the frustration involved in its existence, both of which still entail suffering (Schopenhauer, W2, p. 575). That said, the negative value of pleasure may still be disputed. Byron Simmons (2021) argues that Schopenhauer’s “negativity thesis” (Simmons, p. 6), that is, his notion that happiness is the negative state of suffering’s positive state, fails to account for situations in which happiness seems like quite a direct form of experience, not one that is felt through the absence of pain, or even acknowledgement of a preceding pain. Examples of the former include eating your favourite meal, or looking forward to a future event, while examples of the latter include being awakened from “a peaceful sleep to a beautiful piece of music” (ibid, p. 12). Pleasant surprises are also a counterpoint that is acknowledged in this way. By definition these surprises have no antecedent, let alone a painful antecedent that would invalidate the value of the pleasantry involved.
Non-experiential goods are also something that is undervalued by Schopenhauer, as Simmons makes the claim that desires for which there is no actual experience can still be good for me, such as wanting to be buried rather than cremated and then having that wish fulfilled (ibid.). You of course cannot experience this, but it still seems like something with intuitively good value. This is a kind of good that exists without experience, without painful precedent per se, and has positive value – value for its own sake. It is in this way that Simmons argues there are types of happiness that “should be able to compensate for some of life’s evils” (ibid.), and therefore the idea of covering the costs of the business of life is not futile after all.
But not so fast. Simmons clarifies that Schopenhauer is not too concerned with the negativity thesis as the be-all end-all of philosophical optimism. There are sections of his own work which state as much. Schopenhauer’s example of an artist that is consoled by art as a whole is what he argues to be a positive pleasure (W1, p. 267), and so it’s clear that “he does not accept the negativity thesis in full generality.” (ibid, p. 14). There must be something more fortified if Schopenhauer himself doesn’t go all in with the negativity thesis. This is where Simmons asserts the futility of a cross-temporal approach to the compensation of evil by good in a person’s life (Simmons, p. 14). He makes it clear that throughout Schopenhauer’s writing, there is an implication that the pain of one person is not invalidated by the hypothetical pleasures experienced by everybody else in the world (Schopenhauer, W2, p. 576). Pain cannot be compensated for cross-spatially, and it can be argued that the same applies across time as well. The pain I experience in the present is not compensated by the mere existence of pleasure I once had, or pleasure I will soon have. Such things “fill their time just as [my present pain] fills its own” (Schopenhauer, W2, p. 577), and as a result we are forced to acknowledge that present pain cannot be compensated in any way unless that pain is nullified as soon as it comes to us (Simmons, 2021, p. 17). Compensation should not be conflated with remedy, in this sense, because compensation is accounting for pain that has already occurred, whereas providing a remedy is to “undo” a pain before a compensation ought to take place.
Throughout this essay I have argued that Schopenhauer’s intuitive conception of pessimism is too prone to fringe cases of pleasure. His argument is saved by Simmons’ clarification, specifying that a cross-temporal account of pleasure and its fundamental inability to compensate for all evils is what strengthens the argument, not the standard value-based approach which is what tends to draw in the most critics. In this way, I believe that Schopenhauer’s pessimism can still stand.
Schopenhauer, A., (1818), The World as Will and Representation Vol 1-2, New York: Dover Publications.
Schopenhauer, A., (1813), On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Cosimo Classics.
Simmons, B., (2021), ‘A thousand pleasures are not worth a single pain: The compensation argument for Schopenhauer’s pessimism’ European Journal of Philosophy 29 (1):120-136.