ABSTRACT

Olga Plümacher (1839–1895) published a book entitled Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart in 1884. It was an influential book: Nietzsche owned a copy, and there are clear cases where he borrowed phraseology from Plümacher. Plümacher specifies philosophical pessimism as comprising two propositions: ‘The sum of displeasure outweighs the sum of pleasure’ and ‘Consequently the non-being of the world would be better than its being’. Plümacher cites Schopenhauer as the first proponent of this position, and Eduard von Hartmann as the thinker who has developed it to its fullest potential. She heavily criticizes Schopenhauer in many respects, not for being a pessimist, but rather for not achieving as good a pessimism as he might have done, on the following major grounds: that his account of pleasure as merely privative is implausible, that he has a confused account of individuation, that his retention of a Christian notion of guilt is gratuitous, that he lapses into the self-pitying subjectivity of the condition she calls Weltschmerz, and that his philosophy leads to quietism, and is thus inferior to von Hartmann’s combination of pessimism and optimism, which allows for social progress.

摘要

奥尔加·普吕马赫 (Olga Plümacher) (1839–1895) 出版了一本书，题为《悲观主义》（ Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart ）1884 年。这是一本有影响力的书：尼采拥有一本，并且有明显的案例是他从 Plümacher 那里借用了措辞。Plümacher 将哲学悲观主义指定为包含两个命题：“不快乐的总和超过快乐的总和”和“因此，世界的非存在将比它的存在更好”。Plümacher 引用叔本华作为这一立场的第一个支持者，而爱德华·冯·哈特曼则是将其发挥到最大潜力的思想家。她在许多方面严厉批评叔本华，不是因为他是一个悲观主义者，而是因为他没有达到他可能做的那样好的悲观主义，基于以下主要理由：他将快乐仅仅作为剥夺的解释是不可信的，他有一个对个体化的混淆解释，Weltschmerz，并且他的哲学导致安静主义，因此不如冯哈特曼的悲观主义和乐观主义相结合，这使得社会进步。