Quote:
Originally Posted by Frownland
Nihilism presupposes neither positive nor negative outcomes, though, it simply asserts that the action or the outcome doesn't have any meaning, which is a neutral stance. Philosophical pessimism is more of a means of protection from disappointment than the more or less objective premise of nihilism.
There's overlap in the Venn diagram of nihilists and pessimists but it's far from a circle and the philosophies themselves are even less connected. One could easily exist without the other and to say that the two philosophies are rooted in one another is to confuse the trend for the rule.
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Both nihilism and philosophical pessimism are neutral, realist philosophies. That's the specific fundamental crossover I'm talking about. They both seek to accept the harsh, chaotic realities of our society, our world, and our universe. Nietzsche took influence from Schopenhauer's pessimistic realism but presented it in a more life-affirming light. Instead of pessimism's arguably defeatist approach to the inconsequentiality of existence, nihilism aims to present it as a reason to keep living.
I read somewhere that pessimists like Schopenhauer used this "will to nothingness" as a fuel to keep living. Would you not say nihilists do the same thing? All I'm saying is the scholars who developed the idea of pessimism greatly influenced those who developed nihilism. This certainly does not make them the same thing, nor the believers in either the same. They just have a little bit of eachother within them, as cheesy as that sounds.
TL;DR: I'm not saying philosophical pessimists and nihilists are the same thing, but the base ideologies have a lot of crossover. This is the reason there's such an overlap in the Venn diagram.