According to the cliché, the difference between pessimism and optimism is that pessimists see the proverbial glass as half empty while optimists judge it to be half full. Since both verdicts are perfectly accurate descriptions of the factual state of affairs, the implication is that neither pessimism nor optimism is a better or worse reflection of reality; the difference simply comes down to perception or attitude, or perhaps personality and mood. According to Peter Heinegg's Better Than Both, however, the fact is that only one outlook is compatible with an honest appraisal of the world: pessimism. (His title invokes a verse from Ecclesiastes: "And I thought the dead… more fortunate than the living… but better than both is the one who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun"– a pessimistic pronouncement if there ever was one.)

The starting premise in Heinegg's case for pessimism is that the world is more or less as the pessimist describes it: irredeemably bad. Since "life, when all is said and done, is a losing proposition" (2), it follows that "we're bound to lose the game in the end" (146). The pessimist recognizes this fact, refusing to indulge in "inflated, unrealistic expectations" (97) or "idle reveries" (84). The optimist, by contrast, is like the maniac who buys a lottery ticket and then spends "hour after hour visualizing what [he'll] do with the prize money" (5). And since common sense is a matter of probabilistic reasoning, and only pessimism, according to Heinegg, calculates the odds realistically, it follows that pessimism is the outlook most consistent with common sense. Hence Heinegg's conclusion: "Pessimism, the sober calculating of the odds by the best lights we have, is wiser than hedonism, wiser than hope, and certainly wiser than the dumbest, most naive, and most (consciously or otherwise) self-deceiving of all philosophies: optimism" (147).

Written in a chatty, colloquial style and liberally spiced up with literary references and even the occasional original verse, Better Than Both builds the case for its conclusion over the course of 20 short chapters, each a somewhat meandering exploration of the different ways in which, according to Heinegg, the world is as bad as the pessimist thinks. Human societies are mired in poverty, inequality, and misery; history, with its seemingly endless cycles of murderous cruelty, provides no evidence that things will improve. The human condition condemns us to frailty, old age, and death, and the consolations of religion are futile– incoherent myths that dissolve under the scrutiny of logic. There is no basis for the belief that the universe is governed by any rational order, nor that it is characterized by anything other than randomness, chaos, and brute contingency. And against that cosmic vastness, our small lives, our petty strivings and disappointments, are vanishingly insignificant.

Given such realities, Heinegg argues, "pessimism fits the facts" (13). But pessimism itself need not entail depression or perpetual gloom– a point underscored by the lighthearted tone of his own writing. Indeed, according to Heinegg, pessimism helps us to savor whatever pleasures we do find in life, since it helps us to appreciate them by reminding us of how rare they are. Moreover, because pessimism tells us to expect the worst, it protects us from the inevitable let-downs caused by false hopes and inflated expectations. Thus, in the end, the pessimist's life turns out to be less painful and more equable than the optimist's life, or so Heinegg maintains.

In some cases, it is less than clear why the considerations he discusses are supposed to provoke pessimism. His repeated invocations (e.g. chapters 9, 15, and 18) of the randomness and contingency of the universe are a case in point. While it may be unsettling to imagine ourselves let loose in an anarchic cosmos without rhyme or reason, or to reflect on how little is in our control– "Earth is like a leaky ocean liner, minus captain and crew, sailing a limitless ocean" (118)– it's not obvious that these reflections support Heinegg's argument for pessimism. After all, if the universe is purely random, then we should expect random good results to be just as likely to occur as random bad results. Yet the advantage of pessimism was supposed to be that it gets the probabilities right.

Similarly, it may be disorienting and deflating to contemplate our terrible smallness in relation to the sprawling immensity of the universe, or to reflect on the teeming superfluity of nature and to realize that we are "just so many tiny molecules of H₂0 in the roaring stream of life" (77). But surely to adopt the point of view from which we can see ourselves as mere specks in an abyss of empty cosmos is to leave behind any perspective from which either pessimism or optimism could make sense. From the standpoint of the 50 billion or so galaxies in the universe, don't even the ghastliest of human horrors barely register? From the standpoint of those measureless reaches of "lifeless empty space, rocks, dust, sand, gases" (139), what could justify the judgment that the universe is either a good or a bad place?

A more general problem is that it is not always clear what Heinegg means by "pessimism." Sometimes it seems that he has in mind anything that follows from the realization that things are not as we'd like to believe. (Thus, for example, since we'd prefer to believe that the world is a comfortable fit for our size, organized around our own purposes and our own perspective, contemplating the incalculable stretches of the universe would lead to pessimism.) But showing that things are not as we'd like to believe is not the same thing as showing that the actual state of affairs is objectively bad, which would seem to be the conclusion needed in order to justify pessimism. After all, in Heinegg's view, pessimism is not supposed to be merely an attitude or mood like gloom or grumpy disapproval, but a belief system whose advantage over optimism is precisely that it provides a more accurate picture of reality. As Heinegg says, "truth is what pessimism is all about" (32).

Pessimism as a philosophical belief is often taken to be the view that this is the worst of all possible worlds, the opposite of Leibniz's famous doctrine, much maligned by Voltaire, that ours is the best of all possible worlds. However, this is not a good fit for Heinegg's notion of pessimism because it is not the sort of thesis that could be established by his argument. Heinegg gives us plenty of evidence that this is a pretty bad world– the historical record provides a sufficiently damning indictment by itself– but this is not enough to prove that ours is the worst possible world. (Imagine a world exactly like ours, but with no symphonies. Wouldn't that be worse?)

The structure of Heinegg's argument– probability is the best guide to making decisions, and the odds favor the pessimist– fits a more limited notion of pessimism that applies specifically to individual interests and endeavors: things always (or almost always) turn out badly, so don't get your hopes up. The problem, however, is that Heinegg does not offer enough evidence to show that the odds line up with this more limited sense of pessimism. Most of Heinegg's attention goes to establishing the badness of the world on a big scale: for example, the world is full of injustice and misery, we are destroying the environment, and on top off it all, your life is a mere blip in a huge and alien cosmos. Despite these facts, however, we all know that on a smaller scale, some people's lives go perfectly well. Indeed, the only clear sense in which life is always a losing proposition for everyone is that everyone is bound to die. But the fact of death by itself is not enough to justify pessimism. Perhaps Epicurus was right in claiming that death can't harm us, since "where we are death is not, and where death is we are not."

Without doubt, Heinegg is right that much in the world is irredeemably bad, and given the vapidity of most of our news coverage, this is an important enough point to make. But you don't have to be a pessimist to recognize the evils of the world, and if pessimism simply tells us that life's a losing proposition anyway, so we'd better "grin and bear it" (10), then it won't be the pessimists who find any solutions.

© 2007 Elisabeth Herschbach

Elisabeth Herschbach has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania and teaches in Rhode Island.

Categories: Philosophical