Schopenhauer: Criticism of Reason and Justification of Pessimism

Abstract

Pessimism can be recognized in many ways in Schopenhauer’s work although it doesn’t have a clear definition in general. First of all it appears as a kind of evaluation upon the existence just like it does its opposite — optimism. I try to show that Schopenhauer’s “pessimism” is not to be understood neither as a prejudgment or even a postulate about the originary being nor as a mere result of experience of living. It is rather an ultimate consequence of the critique of reason which leads to a full refutation of each and every kind of dogmatic theory on the reason to the existence of the world. Such consequence spreads itself all over philosophic matters, but according to its epistemological starting point it remains as a critical evaluation towards the world so far as it is thought under the principle of reason. So, one can say that Schopenhauer’s “pessimism” is not a philosophical doctrine about a substantial non-personal and metaphysical evil.