The Epistemology of Pessimism

The glass is half full; the glass is half empty. What is the big deal? Clearly, both statements are empirically valid descriptions of reality. Why is he the pessimist who sees the glass as half empty, and she the optimist who sees it half full? Why is it not intelligible to exclaim in consternation, "Oh No! The glass is full," or "How wonderful! The glass is empty!" Why is plenitude an indicator of positivity and emptiness the sign of negativity? At what point is a neutral perception made to take on the interpretive bias of a certain worldview, a lean, a certain conative orientation? In other words, why should the description of reality have any bearing on the mood or psychological disposition of the perceiver? Why does the objective description of the state of fullness or emptiness of the glass take a subjective turn? The underlying issue here is that of phenomenological perspectivism that seeks a balance between a given objectivity and the embodied subjective and perspectival path towards objectivity.¹ The given and pre-personal objectivity of the world as real does not preempt the reality that this very given objectivity may take on many different meanings for the various perspectives that constitute the objectivity of the world. What the different perspectives agree on is the fact they all are formal and constitutive participants in the given objectivity of the world; but they have no obligation to agree on the meaning of this objectivity, on what this objectivity spells for them. The two deeply inter-related questions are: What is the world and what is the world to me? What does the world mean, and what does the world mean to me? More problematically, who is the "me" here, is the "me" already a part and element of the objective totality, or a perspective of relative exteriority vis a vis the objective totality? Needless to say, the me here is simultaneously ontological, historical, epistemological, political, collective as well as individual. Phenomenology enjoins on the Cogito a double responsibility: honor the given objectivity of the one world despite its openness to the play of the endlessly heterogeneous perspectives that constitute it, and on the other hand live and die by the imperative of subjective embodiment without which objectivity would be but a lifeless formula. The significant take away is that every embodied subjective perspective speaks not just for itself but for its perspectival entanglement with all other perspectives. The pessimist has consequences for the optimist and vice versa. No wonder then that Ellison chooses to end his Invisible Man with this memorable sentence: "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" (Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man 568). Or for that matter, it is no coincidence that Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener should end with this poignant peroration: "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!" (Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener 41). Every perspective is entitled to its universalist truth claim, and every perspective has a legitimate say in what some other perspective has to offer.

Let me now try to weave together the significance of the foregoing paragraph in the direction of my thesis. The first issue has to do with distortion and recognition, and the second has to do with the yoking of cognition to the will. What is one aware of in thought? What does one will to be aware of in thought? Where is the question of rectitude in all this? Having perceived the glass as half full/empty, and having re-cognized the way of the world based on that perception, why does one subject turn optimist, and the other pessimist? To put it reductively, is it possible to evaluate optimism and pessimism with reference to their epistemological or cognitive correctness? Or, is it wiser to think of pessimism and optimism as the exhibition of conative excess over so called cognitive normativity? My concern here has to do with legitimation and valorization. Do pessimism and optimism warrant a different kind of ratification than say, straight forward cognition? If indeed pessimism and optimism are mood or attitude inspired disorders or distortions, how should they establish their truth claims...