 |
| An optimist and a pessimist, by Vladimir Makovsky (1846–1920) |
Hans Lassen Martensen (1808–1884) was a Danish Lutheran bishop, theologian, and thinker. He was a contemporary of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), with whom he had a very complicated relationship (not merely because of Kierkegaard, from what I can understand).
Like Kierkegaard, Martensen was a complicated figure (both theologically and personally), though for different reasons. Martensen was fascinated by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Though Martensen read Hegel critically, Martensen speculated about progress and historical development along Hegelian lines (one of the reasons that attracted Kierkegaard's fierce criticism).
However, I found Martensen's discussion on (philosophical) optimism and pessimism both insightful and balanced, a good way between the cosmic pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) and Hegel's Christ-less optimism.
These are passages that I selected from Martensen's Christian Ethics: Vol. 1, General Part, trans. C. Spence (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1873), 164–191. I believe they contain helpful philosophical, theological, and psychological considerations.
Non-Christian optimism and pessimism defined
Naturalistic optimism, apart from Christianity, ignores sin and redemption, and is ignorant that the world, by the Fall, lias become this world; it assumes that this world still maintains its original condition, when "God saw all that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." [Genesis 1:31] The supreme Good has never been lost, the world's harmony has never been disturbed; the world preserves a normal position, a normal development; and everything viewed from the standpoint of totality is good. The supreme Good is the free self-development of humanity in a world affording all the required conditions. The optimist view of life takes in only the creative and sustaining powers of existence, and shuts out the contemplation of death and disorder. Evil is considered as only a defect, a limitation, nay, as the condition for life movement and progress; the supreme Evil is only lack of wisdom, ignorance and barbarism, which are to be overcome by advancing culture.
The view of life diametrically opposed to this, which we shall call pessimism, assumes, on the other hand, either that the world originally, and from the beginning until now, has been and remains a vale of sorrow, that man was formed for suffering and for a disturbed development of life; or it admits a golden age in the beginning of history, which has disappeared and given place to a depravity ever on the increase. But its constant complaint is that the supreme Good cannot be found by man in this world, that the supreme Good is but a mere ideal, a thought, an image of the fancy, generated by human desire, and which unhappily man must ever pursue with eagerness; whilst the reality presents to him only the supreme Evil, namely life, and even existence, as an unsolved and unsolvable problem of dissonance—a painful contrast to the pretensions of the ideal. [166]
The Christian view on optimism and pessimism
Christianity is the truth both of optimism and pessimism. It is pessimist, in that it teaches that the whole world lieth in wickedness, that man has a lost paradise behind him, that the supreme Good has disappeared, that human life with all its excellences only shows us the ruins of an empire which has been overthrown, since man by the abuse of his free-will has lost his royal dignity on earth. But it is optimist, in that it teaches that it is possible for man to be redeemed and to be reinstated in his sovereignty, that the supreme Good is restored in Christ, who has opened again the gates of paradise. [167]
The advantage of non-Christian optimism over non-Christian pessimism
If we compare optimism and pessimism as they appear in the natural life of man, the last of the two may be designated as the more elevated view, since it unveils the incongruity of the reality with the ideal, which optimism conceals. Pessimism, in the midst of its errors, has yet a deeper perception than optimism of the jar in existence; and just because of this more correct apprehension of the actual condition of the disturbed harmony, it is the constant corrector of the other, troubling the calm of its contemplation. Yet optimism and pessimism are near akin, bearing the relation of immediate perception and reflection. They are both found at all times in the human race. For man has an impulse to life, and finds satisfaction and enjoyment in existence, whilst, on the other hand, he bears sin and sorrow secretly in his heart.
It is indeed characteristic of pagan pessimism, that the ethical is more or less dominated by the fatalistic, that the blame of the whole is cast on a mysterious destiny. But yet it approaches more closely to Christianity than does this self-satisfied optimism; for "they that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick" [Luke 5:31-32; Mark 2:17; Matt. 9:12].
The contemplation of the condition of paganism at the time of Christ's birth is specially instructive, because it shows us the result to which this belief at last conducted through the long course of its history, the total absence of result, the pure nihilismus in which the whole terminates. Through sorrow the way is opened to the acknowledgment of sin, and the pessimism of Christian ethics paves the way for true Optimism...The Optimism of unrenewed human nature never permits itself to be carried through to a conclusion. [167–168]
What non-Christian optimism gets right
There is no one who does not require to listen to it, who does not require to open his eyes to the beauties of creation and of human life; no one who does not require this appeal to contemplate the grandeur of life, not merely in what is most elevated, but also in the minute and lowly, not merely in the far removed, but also in that which lies nearest to us, and which just on that account is so unnoticed, whether it be the sunbeam which shines in on us in our chamber, or the men who appear to us so commonplace, but in whom there is yet something original, some ray of eternity, if we have but eyes to perceive it; or it may be the circumstances or the occupation which we look upon as so trivial and unimportant, but of which we might make something useful and important, if we had but energy and love. The question is only, if pessimism is really excluded by such life-teaching, without the intervention of Christianity. We maintain that all optimism which is not Christian contains a pessimism, hidden and repressed it may be, but not annihilated. [169]
The fixation of non-Christian pessimism
The want of result in which optimism terminates, and which it most commonly seeks to conceal from itself, is, from the first, prominently brought forward by pessimism as the great, all-embracing, fundamental discovery. Pessimism fixes its glance on the disturbing and destroying powers, and beholds these as the conquering. In nature, it discerns everywhere death in life in human affairs, the evil overpowering the good; in history, the incessant rolling of a Sisyphus stone; and thence arrives at the conclusion that the life of man is without aim, the last object and intention of existence—nothing. Not the less does it continue to demand an ideal of a world which must be real; and however otherwise it may be regulated, this work must always be such that the individual can find in it absolute satisfaction. This contradiction, at the same time denying the ideal and demanding it, often appears like scepticism, as doubt of the reality of life ; but in the very demand for this reality there lurks a secret belief that it is to be found. Sceptic pessimism must therefore clear gradually into belief or sink into fatalism. [174]
The tragic in the world
It is only through true pessimism that we can arrive at true optimism. We add still further, that as Christian pessimism finds its corroboration in the actual experience of life, so also its truth is powerfully confirmed by the great phenomena of the tragic and the comic. We speak not here of the poetic art, but of the tragic and the comic, as cosmological appointments, as essential conditions of the present world over which we are moved both to laughter and to tears. They both preach the old text: "All is vanity!" [Ecclesiastes]
Let us then take first the tragic, and inquire what sort of world, what general condition of the world, does it exhibit to us? Does it not show us a world of liberty, which is at once a world of crime and a world of cruel destiny—a world which just on the principal points of the moral life exhibits a painful contrast between the ideal and the reality? Does it not show us ideal men, who succumb to the complications of the life of free-will? Does it not show us the overthrow of the magnanimous, the beautiful, the noble, the good—a contradiction which can only find its solution in the contrast which Christianity institutes between this world, the course of this world, this present world, and the world that is to come, which last contains the possibility of solution?
The tragic, as the painful contrast between ideal and reality, lias in its lower forms a fatalistic impress; but in the highest fornis the fatalistic is changed into the ethical, fate into guilt. The contrast between ideal and reality appears already in nature, and in the relation of nature to man. It oppresses our feelings as a painful contradiction that creation in all its beauty must submit to decay, that the animal world is subjected to such great sufferings, that the powers of nature so often encroach upon human life, that blooming manhood, just at the point where it should most gloriously unfold itself, is blighted by a gnawing worm; that an unfortunate accident—and the number of unhappy accidents is legion—suddenly annihilates the anticipations of a great future. This feeling still more oppresses us when we see the ideal life of free-will so often struggling, perishing under sickness and bodily suffering, in poverty and want.
Yet not merely external fate oppresses us with the feeling above named, but also when we obtain a glimpse of the inner being of men, human individualities; when we see many noble and beautiful characters perish, not by external fate, but from an internal mental agony, which is deeply seated in their individuality, their will, their affection, since they are devoured by an inward contradiction, and cannot attain equilibrium as regards their surroundings, so that towards these they are like plants indigenous to a milder region, when transported to a bleak and ungenial climate. [I wonder if Martensen is thinking about Kierkegaard here.]
Actual life shows us in many ways that there are such minds [the ones described in the previous paragraph], for whom in this world there is no preparation (except that of redemption); whilst we cannot avoid the assertion that these mental sufferings are on account of sin, not merely personal sin, but also that of the race, the effects of which, like that of a benumbing prose, are death-bringing to those finer natures which are devoted to an ideal passion. The tragic, in the present course of the world, shows itself more clearly in its ethical significance, in the fact that those who stand high in the moral world, who, armed with mighty power of action, aspire to realize a great ideal, again and again perish through their own crime. [181–183]
Aesthetic tragic
It is this form of the tragic which dramatic poetry specially makes its subject (historic tragedy); and the history of the world shows us constantly the same phenomenon, shows us the destruction of heroes, because these either pursue a merely subjective ideal, or because they wish to carry a real ideal beyond its limits. It is essential to the representations of dramatic art, and enforced by Aristotle and Hegel, that the tragic hero must have a crime, and that in a tragedy no perfectly good and upright being should be represented as suffering entirely without blame, because this would be too distressing;, too woundings to the moral feelings. [183]
The tragedy of the world at the tragedy of the cross
We will not contest the merely aesthetic validity of this theory. But actual life does not restrain itself within these limits. It shows us in this world the good in itself, the absolutely just, perishing; shows us that there is a suffering on account of sin, which is not a suffering for personal guilt, but exclusively a suffering for the guilt of others for the sin of the nation, for that of the race; shows us the rejection and crucifixion of Christ by men; shows us under different forms the verification of the Saviour's words "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!" [Matt. 23:37] Under the cross of Christ, on the height of Golgotha, the real nature of the world displays itself. Here the optimism of the natural man fades, though it is just here that a higher optimism originates. But the utmost which here appears is this: So stands it in this world; this is the earthly fate of sacred truth and uprightness! [183–184]
The comic in the world
But the same world which shows us the tracrlc shows us also the comic. The comic is an indirect testimony to the validity of the pessimist theory. The comic contemplation of the world views it not as a world of sin, of guilt, of destiny, but as one of folly and fortuitous occurrences. Here is no painful contrast, but one entirely painless, which calls forth in the mind a feeling of pleasure of quite a peculiar kind. But in its inmost essence the world of folly is the world of sinfulness; only where there is sin, where freedom has declined from its ideal, can there be folly. Folly, or the intellectual contrast, the intellectual opposition to the ideal, has its presupposition and origin in the ethical contrast, in the contrast of the will to the ideal.
As now, in the comic contemplation of the world, the ethical consideration is withheld, and as it were suspended, as the comic contrast to the ideal is without suffering—a contrast which dissolves itself in laughter—it may certainly be affirmed that the comic view of the world may, above all, be designated optimist. Tragedy brings Pessimism into view; comedy, on the other hand, exhibits optimism: for in all dilemmas, difficulties, and dangers, it is apparent that these are only imaginary and to be overcome, that the perils of this life "have no necessity," and that all will come right in the end. But comic optimism is only apparent—is only, in the strict significance of the term, a mere phenomenal superficial optimism, under which tlie real character of existence is concealed; while, on the contrary, this is unveiled by the pessimism of tragedy. Comic optimism has moral earnestness, and thereby pessimism, in the veiled background, as folly has sin in the background, as fortune and the easy play of chance have stern fate in the background; and it is a shrewd observation, that the comic writer acts wisely in letting the curtain fall at the exact instant when the game is at its height: for if he should carry on his narrative, and show us how it fared with these fortunate beings at a later period of their history, he would infallibly arrive at a time of misery, in which there opens a wide field for pessimism.
In humour, the mind does not soar merely above this or that individual matter, but above the whole world of relativities, above the contrast between the great and the small, the high and the trivial, nay, even over tragic pathos, in so far as human earnestness, even when it embraces the great and the high, is encumbered with a limitation of naiveté, a narrowness of perception which causes it to confound the humanly great with the absolutely great—a limitation by which the heroes of tragedy often show themselves to be encumbered. Thus they maintain the relatively great aim which they pursue, and for which they suffer shipwreck, to be the unconditionally great and important. Humour makes the diversity between great and small fluctuating; for it possesses a sharp eye for the fact that great and small, the high and the trivial, the deep and the superficial, the touching and the ridiculous, approach each other nearly, and often pass over into each other: wherefore it is also the union of weeping and laughter, of smiles and tears. Undoubtedly this humoristic contemplation, which soars above this whole world of relativities, must have its ultimate hold, its last refuge, in something which is not relative, in the absolutely great—namely, in God. And there is therefore a twofold kind of humour. There is a humour which rests in religion, in faith, and which in religious reconciliation has overcome Pessimism. In a partial manner this humour often sparkles forth in Luther's letters, and in his Tischreden (Table-talk). But there is also a humour in which consciousness in this world of tragedy and comedy has not found its refuge in religion, but seeks a final refuge without finding one—an unhappy, shattered consciousness, which vainly craves repose and satisfaction in this world of contrasts, and which now, by making everything fluctuating, seeks deliverance from the pressure which rests on the mind. An example of this melancholy humour is that of Hamlet, who endeavours to escape from the heavy burden of his soul by indulging in a philosophic humour—a philosophy which, in spite of its brilliant and deep thought, is without result, and ends in unsubdued dissonance. [184–188]
The tragic's and the comic's common witness
Thus both the tragic and the comic—the former directly, the latter indirectly—bear testimony to the sin and misery of the world, a world needing redemption. Though it has not seldom been asserted that writers or actors of comedy pay homage to an optimist view of the world, yet experience most frequently shows the very opposite. [188]
The failure of non-Christian optimism and pessimism
It appears from all that has been remarked in the foregoing pages concerning the condition of the world, from the ancient complaint on its vanity, from the tragic and the comic as its essential qualities, that the Optimism of the natural life of man cannot be carried through to the end, because that its Pessimism always hursts forth. But, on the other side, neither can the Pessimism of the natural life of man be carried through, just because the character of the world is a mixture of good and evil, and not exclusively the one or the other. Pessimism carried out to the end would be absolute despair. But while this may indeed affect certain individuals and particular periods, it is not true of maidvind as a whole. Not merely do the creating and sustaining powers continue to react against those of destruction; not merely do life and the impulse to life and its enjoyments, merely for life's sake and without any wherefore...there is, moreover, in tlie heart of man an ineffaceable feeling of certainty that suffering and death cannot be the ultimate object of life—an imperturbable hope, which after each mortification arises anew, that in spite of all obstacles and restrictions, a highest Good must yet at last be possible as the portion of humanity, and that there must be possibility for a happy result as regards the whole. [189–190]
Christianity's optimism and pessimism (190–191)
Christian pessimism and optimism are both merely relative ideas, which will not stand the test of practice and experience, for which reason also most men alternately follow both views entirely according to circumstances; which may also be expressed thus, that most men live in an unsolved contradiction, which is exactly the fundamental character of this world.
Pessimists are to be found who live according to optimist maxims, who, whilst lamenting over this world as a vale of tears, contrive not the less in daily life to make themselves as comfortable as possible, which is notably the case with Schopenhauer, who has written a so-called lower eudaimonistic system of morality and prudence, to which he adheres in practice, in direct opposition to his ascetic "doctrine of unhappiness" (Uugluckseligheitslelire) which he developed in theory.
Optimists are to be found who live in a pessimist frame of mind; for whilst, as regards the human race as a whole, they maintain that all is well, that everything in this world goes on exactly as it ought, yet in their own concerns, and in their daily circumstances and relations, they are vexed and irritated, complain incessantly over much which is wrong, and which must and ought to be entirely otherwise.
Systems of philosophy endeavour to escape this contradiction, but life constantly exhibits it afresh under forms innumerable.
Doubtless, also, in the Christian life many inconsistencies appear; yet it is Christianity alone which makes it possible for man to attain, in the deepest sense, unity in his view of life and in his frame of mind—to combine without self-contradiction optimism and pessimism. As Christianity, by awakening consciousness of sin and of guilt, awakens the true fundamental pain of existence in regard to which all other sorrows and calamities are subordinate, so it awakens also the true exaltation over all misery which hallows every pure and innocent joy. In showing us existence in the light of redemption, it shows us the new creation as the completion of the first, gathering up the fragments of this world into a whole whenever the eve is fixed on that structure which is to be erected in the fulness of time, so that all things may be assembled under Christ as their head. And although Christian consciousness only sees the perfecting of the world and of individuals in hope—and there will thus always be in the Christian mind a tinge of pain at the contrast between the ideal and the reality, a craving for the overthrow of the fragmentary and the substitution of the complete—yet there is agreement in the inmost being, in faith and in love, which work for the coming of God's kingdom.
Aristotle has said that great and noble minds have a disposition to melancholy; and the truth of this saying is confirmed by history, both in the pre-Christian and the Christian world, because such minds have a perception of the great dissonance, of which the multitude are unconscious. It may be added that it is not by any means to great minds alone that this is applicable, but to every real Christian. But this pain is constantly changed into joy, as it is thus expressed in an old Danish song:
Never am I without grief,
Never still without relief.
