PESSIMISM, WELL-BEING, AND THE GOODNESS OF LIVES

Abstract

Moral philosophers have long sought to define what constitutes a good life, or what things make a life go well for the person living it. Common candidates are achievement, friendship, knowledge, among others. Typically, it is widely assumed that these goods are often attainable, leading to the belief that life is generally worth living. However, a significant debate in nineteenth century German philosophy challenged this assumption. Philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer, history’s most famous advocate of pessimism, argued that a deeper, unbiased examination of human life – characterized by futile striving and pointless suffering – would reveal that existence is something to be regretted rather than celebrated. Schopenhauer even suggested that the world’s non-existence would be preferable to its existence. This view, known as philosophical pessimism, sparked extensive debates, particularly during what became known as the “pessimism dispute” as thinkers grappled with the question of whether life is worth living. This dissertation is a concerted effort to rejoin pessimism and propose a philosophically satisfactory account of how life, in many cases, is worth living. Schopenhauer himself made the fatal error of assuming that life is worth living only if there is a highest good, where goodness gets construed as a state of affairs that is valuable simpliciter. However, he fails to consider how prudential value can still render a human life worth living. While Schopenhauer’s pessimism does not ultimately succeed, there are contemporary reformulations of pessimism, for instance from David Benatar, that still require refutation. In this dissertation, I contend that while contemporary pessimism remains plausible, there is nevertheless a novel hybrid theory of well-being that can account for why many lives are ultimately worth living. In fact, a decisive reason to favor the hybrid theory over its competitors is the extent to which it resolves various philosophical problems posed by contemporary pessimists better than alternative accounts of well-being.