Nietzsche and the Philosophy of Pessimism: A Study of Nietzsche’s Relation to the Pessimistic Tradition: Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Leopardi (review)

Tobias Dahlkvist’s Nietzsche and the Philosophy of Pessimism is an important contribution to the study of nineteenth-century pessimism and its influence on Nietzsche’s thought. The author develops a highly nuanced analysis of pessimism as it unfolded during the period and rightly interprets much of Nietzsche’s philosophy as a response to the pessimistic claim that nonexistence is preferable to existence. While I agree with the general thrust of Dahlkvist’s thesis, I remain unconvinced by certain details of his argument, especially the treatment of pessimism in BT.

Dahlkvist divides his analysis into three sections and five chapters. In the first part (two chapters), he develops an understanding of nineteenth-century pessimism through his reading of figures such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Eduard von Hartmann, and Giacomo Leopardi. Dahlkvist argues that while pessimism initially had a wide variety of meanings, it eventually became synonymous with the view that “non-existence is preferable to existence” (15). In the second part (two chapters), he analyzes the appearance of pessimism in Nietzsche’s early Nachlass and then highlights the important role that pessimism plays in both BT and UM. Dahlkvist dedicates the final chapter of the book to showing how pessimism remains a significant issue in Nietzsche’s later writings.

In the introduction, Dahlkvist identifies four variants of pessimism present in nineteenth-century philosophy. The first form of pessimism (1) is the psychological tendency to believe in the worst possible outcome in any given situation. According to Dahlkvist, this is also how pessimism is understood today. The second (2) is a historical-philosophical claim that states that mankind tends to grow worse as society develops. The third (3) is what Dahlkvist calls the etymological conception. This version states that our world is the worst of all possible worlds. The final definition (4) is the one that Dahlkvist will emphasize as the work unfolds. It is the view that “existence cannot be justified, which means as much as that non-existence is preferable to existence” (14). Indeed, Dahlkvist spends much of the first chapter arguing that although Schopenhauer did not use the term pessimism in his published works until 1844, the point of the first edition of The World as Will and Representation is nevertheless to show that nonexistence is preferable to existence (61).

In the second chapter, Dahlkvist presses for a more restricted meaning of pessimism, arguing that Hartmann and Eugen Dühring played a crucial role in associating the notion more exclusively with concerns about the value of life. He then treats lesser-known pessimists such as Philipp Mainländer and Julius Bahnsen and antipessimists such as James Sully and Elme Marie Caro. Dahlkvist argues that such figures continued to discuss pessimism in the terms established by Hartmann and Dühring. Interesting is Dahlkvist’s argument that the antipessimists tended to reduce the pessimists’ claim that nonexistence is preferable to existence to pathological outbreaks of melancholy and even madness (95). The penultimate section of the chapter consists of Dahlkvist’s treatment of Leopardi. Although a little outside the parameters of his proposed area of study, Dahlkvist argues that Leopardi was an antioptimist (contra Leibniz) who nevertheless affirmed life in spite of its meaninglessness (114–15).

Dahlkvist concludes the second chapter with an attempt to clarify his initial understanding of the four variants of pessimism (112ff.). Here, however, is where some of the difficulties latent in his previous discussion of pessimism come to the fore. While he rightly argues that opponents of pessimism tend to define it in the first sense (1) and that Hartmann should be regarded as an optimist in the sense of (2), Dahlkvist encounters problems in his attempt to deal with the distinction between (3) and (4). Specifically, he contends that (3) can be subsumed under (4) on the grounds that (3) is vague and (4) somehow provides...