Pessimism is a philosophical school which considers life to have negative rather than positive value, as an experience largely consisting of pain and suffering without meaning. While there are a great diversity of pessimist positions, when Nietzsche refers to pessimism he has in mind the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, who saw life as the product of cosmic will which human reason is powerless to make sense of, let alone overcome.
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Pessimism Term Timeline in Beyond Good and Evil
The timeline below shows where the term Pessimism appears in Beyond Good and Evil. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
3. What Is Religious
Criticizing Schopenhauer’s version of pessimism as limited by its morality, Nietzsche still sees a grain of truth in its “world-denying”...
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