This chapter aims to disentangle some the different views that have often been associated with the term ‘pessimism’. This includes the claims that (1) there is no historical progress; (2) this world is the worst of all possible worlds; (3) happiness is impossible; and (4) life is not worth living. The last thesis is identified as the central concern of the ‘pessimism dispute’, and three different justifications for it are presented. The final section of the chapter considers the expression of pessimism throughout human history and culture, with special attention paid to Schopenhauer’s analysis of religion.

The intellectual excitement of nineteenth-century Germany was reflected by the Romantic and Existential movements, although both had international aspects as well. Both movements were to some extent reactions against the dominant idealism of rationalism, coming primarily from Kant’s views on the active mind, constructing reality. Fichte, von Schelling, and Hegel explored the implication of Kant’s philosophy, with Hegel coming to dominate the age. Romanticism found its roots in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and exerted tremendous influence in art, literature as well as philosophy, particularly in the first half of the nineteenth century. Recognizing the complexities of human experience, particularly in the dimensions of emotions, passions and desires, romanticism explored those aspects not readily explained by rational, intellectual processes. Existentialism was a direct reaction against rationalism and found initial expression in the nineteenth century by Kierkegaard, in Theology, and Dilthey, in psychology. Further, the Kantian notions of the strivings of the will and the unconscious were explored more fully by Schopenhauer and von Hartmann.