Crossword clues for pessimism
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pessimism \Pes"si*mism\, n. [L. pessimus worst, superl. of pejor worse: cf. F. pessimisme. Cf. Impair.]
(Metaph.) The opinion or doctrine that everything in nature is ordered for or tends to the worst, or that the world is wholly evil; -- opposed to optimism.
A disposition to take the least hopeful view of things.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1794 "worst condition possible," borrowed (by Coleridge) from French pessimisme, formed (on model of French optimisme) from Latin pessimus "worst," originally "bottom-most," from PIE *ped-samo-, superlative of root *pes- "foot" (see foot (n.)). As a name given to the doctrines of Schopenhauer, Hartmann, etc., that this is the worst possible world, or that everything tends toward evil, it is first recorded 1835, from German pessimismus (Schopenhauer, 1819). The attempt to make a verb of it as pessimize (1862) did not succeed.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A general belief that bad things will happen. 2 The doctrine that this world is the worst of all possible worlds.
WordNet
Wikipedia
Pessimism is a state of mind in which one anticipates undesirable outcomes or believes that the evil or hardships in life outweigh the good or luxuries. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the " Is the glass half empty or half full?" situation. The degree in which situations like these are evaluated as something good or something bad can be described in terms of one's optimism or pessimism respectively. Throughout history, the pessimistic disposition has had effects on all major areas of thinking.
Philosophical pessimism is the related idea that views the world in a strictly anti-optimistic fashion. This form of pessimism is not an emotional disposition as the term commonly connotes. Instead, it is a philosophy or worldview that directly challenges the notion of progress and what may be considered the faith-based claims of optimism. Philosophical pessimists are often existential nihilists believing that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. Their responses to this situation however are widely varied and are often life-affirming.
Usage examples of "pessimism".
It was the difference between the manners of Tewksbury and Tuscumbia, between being brought up amid the cruelties of the almshouse and the affectionate warmth of an upper-middle-class Southern home, between an Irish cultural heritage of black pessimism and hot hatred of patronizing rulers and the genial, self-confident outlook of a class that despite the Civil War was still master.
I sensed his despairing pessimism, his conviction that the corruption, the inefficiency and bumbledom that pervaded the army and the court would land us like an overripe plum in the lap of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, whom he loathed more than any man on earth.
The Escapee, however, faced with this insurrection of militant pessimism, turned pale and wan and murmured to himself comforting phrases of Kropotkin, etc.
If modernism was often anti-science, this was because its pessimism was sparked by that same science.
It has deep significance for those who have lived through social chaos, uprootedness, irrational torture, and this accounts for the pessimism and nightmarish imagery that pervade much Existentialist writing.
Indeed, many depressing attitudes have a long history: feeling inferior, helplessness, pessimism, guilt, self-criticalness, perfectionism, hypersensitiveness, shyness, dependency, socially neediness, hostility, and being without systematic values to guide our lives.
Looking thus at life, shorn of its superrational sanctions, Saxon floundered into the morass of pessimism.
It is this vein of poetry which awoke Italy to self-consciousness, made her in a few years forget the nightmare of Catharist ideas, and rescued her from pessimism.
Even the first mate, his present interlocutor, a grim man given to muttered abuse of his calling and a pious pessimism in respect to human nature, gradually thawed under the influence of so cheerful an acceptance of heavy weather and a clumsy deck cargo.
Nations allow Voltaire to extend his satire beyond the easy target of Leibnizian optimism and to verify his pessimism by a wide survey of the intractable evil of human societies.
That is why it deals blows impartially right and left, at the pessimism of the Manichean or the optimism of the Pelagian.
His metaphysics were green with age, his theories as to the syntheses of the arts silly and impracticable, while his Schopenhauerism, pessimism, and the rest sheer dead weights that were slowly but none the less surely strangling his music.
She even went further in her opinions than they did, displaying the wildest pessimism, and such extreme views on literature and art that they themselves could not forbear laughing.
Christmas and the Aesthetes The world is round, so round that the schools of optimism and pessimism have been arguing from the beginning whether it is the right way up.
At 23, he is about as far Left as a man can get in these times, but his revolutionary zeal is gimped by pessimism.