重新认识和评价叔本华的悲观主义

叔本华的悲观主义产生于西方哲学从传统的理性主义和基督教信仰向现代意志主义的转变过程中。在此意义上说,它既是西方传统哲学发展的必然结果,同时也是背离西方传统哲学的产物。重新认识和评价叔本华的悲观主义对于我们今天正确认识人类自身的处境,克服当前所遇到的危机具有重要的启发意义。     

Pessimism

The problem of pessimism is the secular analogue to the evidential problem of evil facing traditional theism. The traditional theist must argue two things: that the evidence shows that this is on balance a good world and that it is the best possible world. Though the secular optimist who advocates any form of secular moral theory need not argue that the current and future world will likely be the best possible world, she nonetheless must argue that were there a clean solution to the problem of current and future suffering in which all sentient life could be instantly and painlessly eliminated, we would have reasons not to employ the clean solution because the future promises to bring on balance a good world in which the evil of human and animal suffering is outweighed by whatever is good in the world. Pessimism is the view that the evidence argues against secular optimism. It is argued here that it is anything but clear that secular optimism is warranted when viewed from an impersonal point of view. The problem is then evaluated from the personal point of view in which a form of personal optimism is defended even in the face of impersonal pessimism.     

Unrealistic Pessimism

Abstract

Various data suggest that individuals tend to be unrealistically optimistic about the future. People believe that negative events are less likely to happen to them than to others. The present study examined if the optimistic bias could be demonstrated if a threat is not (as it has been researched up to the present) potential, incidental, and familiar, but real, common, and unfamiliar. The present research was conducted after the explosion at the atomic power station in Chernobyl, and it was concerned with the perception of threat to one's own and to others' health due to consequences of radiation. The female subjects believed that their own chance of experiencing such health problems were better than the chances of others. Thus, in these specific conditions, unrealistic optimism was not only reduced but the reverse effect was obtained: unrealistic pessimism.     

叔本华天才哲学述评

著名哲学家、中国佛教史家汤用彤先生在20世纪20年代初留学美国哈佛大学时,曾用英文写过数篇课业论文。其中一篇作于1921年1月17日,详尽评述了叔本华天才哲学,对我们研究西方哲学史以及汤用彤本人的思想发展有较高参考价值。     

进化心理学中的悲观主义色彩

进化心理学作为现代西方心理学三种新取向之一,提出了一些新的心理学观点与研究方向,但其理论本身体现出了一种悲观主义色彩。例如在对男女两性在伴侣选择和婚姻维持的心理行为机制的探究上体现出的一些人类高级情感,如爱情的缺失。文章探讨了进化心理学理论中悲观主义色彩在其主要理论假设中的体现,并简要地将其与另外两种取向———后现代心理学与积极心理学进行了对比。其目的是为了通过对进化心理学的反思,以推进心理学科的深入研究。     

Pessimism About Motivating Modal Personism

In ‘What's Wrong with Speciesism?’, Shelly Kagan sketches an account on which both actually being a person and possibly being a person are relevant to one's moral status, labelling this view ‘modal personism’ and supporting its conclusions with appeals to intuitions about a range of marginal cases. I tender a pessimistic response to Kagan's concern about motivating modal personism: that is, of being able to ‘go beyond the mere appeal to brute intuition, eventually offering an account of why modal personhood should matter in the ways we may intuitively think that it does.’     

Oral Pessimism and Depressive Symptoms

I examined the relation of oral optimistic and oral pessimistic personality traits to depressive symptoms to assess the psychoanalytic claim that fixation at the early phase of the oral stage of psychosexual development is related to depression. College students (N = 140) were administered the Oral Optimism Questionnaire (OOQ; Kline, 1978) and Oral Pessimism Questionnaire (OPQ; Kline, 1978) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Ward, Mendelsohn, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961). Oral pessimism and levels of depressive symptoms were positively correlated, and a subsample of subjects with clinical levels of depressive symptoms also scored significantly higher on the Oral Pessimism Questionnaire than the rest of the sample. For the whole sample, 10 BDI items correlated significantly with the OPQ scores, and 5 OPQ items correlated significantly with the total BDI scores. The psychoanalytic claim relating fixation at the oral pessimism stage to depressive symptoms was supported.     

The World as Representation: Schopenhauer's Arguments for Transcendental Idealism

In this paper, I discuss Spinoza's conception of the cosmological argument for the existence of God (hereafter CA), as it can be reconstructed taking departure from Letter 12. By a CA, I understand, quite broadly, an argument which infers a posteriori the existence of a necessary being, usually identified as God, from the experience that there exists some other being, often oneself, the existence of which is contingent upon the existence of this necessary being. The difference between various versions of the CA stems from differences in the way in which the relation of existential dependence is understood. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct a version of the CA which would be valid on Spinoza's principles. I argue that such a version must be understood in the context of Spinoza's causal rationalism. By such causal rationalism, I mean a doctrine committed to the idea that everything is rational and thus explicable and that causal explanations are somehow fundamental. Moreover, I hold that, in Spinoza's causal rationalism, there is one form of causation through which all other types of causation are ultimately understood. This ‘archetype’ of causation is self-causation.     

Optimism, Pessimism, and Friendship

Peterson and Bossio (1991) have proposed that pessimistic people, by default, will have predominantly pessimistic friends. We tested that notion by examining the correlation between the scores of close friends on both separate and direct measures of optimism and pessimism (via the O/P instrument) and a measure of explanatory style (EASQ), which purports to tap optimistic-pessimistic tendencies as a bipolar dimension. In two studies, only pairs of male friends yielded significant correlations, and only on the direct optimism measure (r= .65, both studies). Another significant correlation (r= .37) was found in Study 2 between sensation seeking scores of mixed-sex friends. No between-friend correlations were found in Study 2 for loneliness and assertiveness. Finally, both pessimism, as directly measured, and loneliness were correlated with typical friendship duration (r=-.24 and-.32 respectively), while none of the personality measures were correlated with number of reported friends.     

Nihilism: Beyond Optimism and Pessimism

Studies in Philosophy and Education - Is the youth culture, or more precisely aparticular kind of it, to be characterized as “nihilistic”? And is this a threat or ablessing for...     

Optimism, Pessimism, and Friendship

Peterson and Bossio (1991) have proposed that pessimistic people, by default, will have predominantly pessimistic friends. We tested that notion by examining the correlation between the scores of close friends on both separate and direct measures of optimism and pessimism (via the O/P instrument) and a measure of explanatory style (EASQ), which purports to tap optimistic-pessimistic tendencies as a bipolar dimension. In two studies, only pairs of male friends yielded significant correlations, and only on the direct optimism measure (r= .65, both studies). Another significant correlation (r= .37) was found in Study 2 between sensation seeking scores of mixed-sex friends. No between-friend correlations were found in Study 2 for loneliness and assertiveness. Finally, both pessimism, as directly measured, and loneliness were correlated with typical friendship duration (r=-.24 and-.32 respectively), while none of the personality measures were correlated with number of reported friends.     

Optimism and Pessimism in Business Leaders1

Male business leaders responded to 3 instruments, the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI-SELF), the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI), and a measure of optimism and pessimism (O/P). Approximately 5 to 6 (range = 3 to 9) of each of the 48 leaders' direct reports rated their leaders on the LPI (LPI-OBSERVER) and also responded to the O/P instrument. As predicted, both the leaders and their direct reports had lower mean scores on pessimism than a normative group; neither group differed from the norm on optimism. The leader KAI scores were negatively correlated with pessimism, and positively, though not significantly so, with optimism. Optimism was positively correlated with 2 factors of the LPI-OBSERVER, but pessimism was not correlated with any of the five LPI factors.     

《静盦文集》所据叔本华作品考原

中国现代学术的开辟者、文史学家王国维早年研究、介绍德国哲学家叔本华的哲学思想,主要是依据19世纪末到20世纪初出版的数种叔本华作品英译本。在《静盒文集》的正、续编中,他以多种方式引用和化用了这些英译本的原文,以实现他建立一种“中西化合相互推助之学”的理想。本文对这些脱胎于叔本华作品的文字做了考证和还原,试为评估王国维对西洋哲学的理解提供一个客观有效的方法。     

国外防御性悲观研究述评

防御性悲观是指在过去的成就情境中取得过成功,但在面临新的相似的成就情境时仍然设置不现实的低的期望水平并反复思考事情的各种可能结果。它的两个基本成分是消极期望和反思性。国外相关研究主要涉及防御性悲观与乐观、抑郁及自我妨碍等相关概念的比较,并探讨了导致防御性悲观的形成的个人情感动机因素及文化、家庭环境等因素。未来研究可在被试的选择、测量工具的编制和研究范围等方面加以改进,并加强跨文化比较研究     

Optimism, Pessimism, and Hope in Durkheim

In Book Two, Chapter (1), of The Division of Labor in Society (1984) entitled "The Progress of the Division of Labor and Happiness", Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) stages a provocative encounter between the attitudes of optimism and pessimism, an encounter that reveals certain problematic assumptions regarding the status of hope in relation to the project of binding oneself to life under conditions of anomie. Durkheim's theoretical assault on the utilitarian-based optimism of his day is accomplished against the backdrop of a critical pessimism that is shown to be equally untenable. However, his critique leaves the question of the status of hope in relation to the question of human happiness unclarified and ambiguously framed, even as Durkheim defends hope against the despair of pessimism. The essay concludes with a critical appraisal of Durkheim's partial critique of pessimism and a few observations regarding the links between memory, expectation, pessimism, suicide, hope, and happiness.