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Book Progress and Pessimism

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jeffrey Paul Von Arx
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 1985
  • ISBN : 9780674713758
  • Pages : 268 pages

Download or read book Progress and Pessimism written by Jeffrey Paul Von Arx and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faith in progress is a characteristic we often associate with the Victorian era. Victorian intellectuals and free-thinkers who believed in progress and wrote history from a progressive point of view--men such as Leslie Stephen, John Morley, W. E. H. Lecky, and James Anthony Froude--are usually thought to have done so because they were optimistic about their own times. Their optimism has been seen as the result of a successful Liberal campaign for political reform in the sixties and seventies, carried out in alliance with religious dissenters--a campaign that removed religion from the arena of public debate. Jeffrey Paul von Arx challenges this long-standing view of the Victorian intellectual aristocracy. He sees them as preoccupied with and even fearful of a religious resurgence throughout their careers, and demonstrates that their loss of confidence in contemporary liberalism began with their disillusionment over the effects of the Franchise Reform Act of 1867. He portrays their championing of the idea of progress as motivated not by optimism about the present, but by their desire to explain away and reverse if possible contemporary religious and political trends, such as the new mass politics in England and Ireland. This is the first book to explore how pessimism could be the psychological basis for the Victorians' progressive conception of history. Throughout, von Arx skillfully interweaves threads of religion, politics, and history, showing how ideas in one sphere cannot be understood without reference to the others.

Book Pessimism

    Book Details:
  • Author : Joshua Foa Dienstag
  • Publisher : Princeton University Press
  • Release : 2009-02-17
  • ISBN : 1400827485
  • Pages : 313 pages

Download or read book Pessimism written by Joshua Foa Dienstag and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-17 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pessimism claims an impressive following--from Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, to Freud, Camus, and Foucault. Yet "pessimist" remains a term of abuse--an accusation of a bad attitude--or the diagnosis of an unhappy psychological state. Pessimism is thought of as an exclusively negative stance that inevitably leads to resignation or despair. Even when pessimism looks like utter truth, we are told that it makes the worst of a bad situation. Bad for the individual, worse for the species--who would actually counsel pessimism? Joshua Foa Dienstag does. In Pessimism, he challenges the received wisdom about pessimism, arguing that there is an unrecognized yet coherent and vibrant pessimistic philosophical tradition. More than that, he argues that pessimistic thought may provide a critically needed alternative to the increasingly untenable progressivist ideas that have dominated thinking about politics throughout the modern period. Laying out powerful grounds for pessimism's claim that progress is not an enduring feature of human history, Dienstag argues that political theory must begin from this predicament. He persuasively shows that pessimism has been--and can again be--an energizing and even liberating philosophy, an ethic of radical possibility and not just a criticism of faith. The goal--of both the pessimistic spirit and of this fascinating account of pessimism--is not to depress us, but to edify us about our condition and to fortify us for life in a disordered and disenchanted universe.

Book Technology  Pessimism  and Postmodernism

Download or read book Technology Pessimism and Postmodernism written by Yaron Ezrahi and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1994 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first systematic examination of the contemporary and prior connections between technological progress and pessimism over the future. If the hallmark of the Enlightenment was a firm belief in technology as a principal instrument of universal progress, the hallmark of postmodernism may well be skepticism, even despair, over technology's role in shaping our world. This book incorporates the perspectives of historians, political scientists, philosophers, and literary scholars to illuminate the origins, evolution, and influence of technological pessimism and to evaluate its long-term prospects. The volume should appeal to specialists in technology studies and the history of ideas but also to general readers concerned with these dilemmas of technological progress.

Book Progress

    Book Details:
  • Author : Max B. Gomberg
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 1911
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 34 pages

Download or read book Progress written by Max B. Gomberg and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Progress Vs  Pessimism

Download or read book Progress Vs Pessimism written by Samuel Walker and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 2 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Infinite Progress

Download or read book Infinite Progress written by Byron Reese and published by Greenleaf Book Group. This book was released on 2013 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Forecasting, Futurology.

Book Pessimism

    Book Details:
  • Author : James Sully
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 1891
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 518 pages

Download or read book Pessimism written by James Sully and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Progress

    Book Details:
  • Author : Johan Norberg
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2017-04-06
  • ISBN : 1786072327
  • Pages : 256 pages

Download or read book Progress written by Johan Norberg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Book of the Year for The Economist and the Observer Our world seems to be collapsing. The daily news cycle reports the deterioration: divisive politics across the Western world, racism, poverty, war, inequality, hunger. While politicians, journalists and activists from all sides talk about the damage done, Johan Norberg offers an illuminating and heartening analysis of just how far we have come in tackling the greatest problems facing humanity. In the face of fear-mongering, darkness and division, the facts are unequivocal: the golden age is now.

Book Pessimism  a History and a Criticism

Download or read book Pessimism a History and a Criticism written by James Sully and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV. THE SOURCES OF PESSIMISM. Having now completed our journey of investigation in the somewhat inclement regions of pessimism, let us review our wanderings so as to see what results have been reached. First of all, then, scientific and speculative pessimism has been found to be an unverified and in many respects distinctly incorrect doctrine. The attempt to prove that human life always is and must be an excess of misery shows itself, when looked at in a calm and critical light, to be a complete failure. On the contrary, an impartial view of the facts of life and the teachings of science properly so called has led us to believe that happiness, interpreted in a rational sense, is and has been attained by some indeterminable proportion of mankind. Even if, however, --which is far from probable--it could be made out that this number has been an inconsiderable one in the past, it is certain that human progress tends, however slow the process may be, very largely to heighten the quality of individual happiness and to increase the proportion of those to whom it is a possibility. And even if the existing order of things and human life itself are limited in duration, the conclusion is, for all practical purposes, too remote to modify the value of progress. As far as we can see, the world will move through its 'ringing grooves of change' long enough for mankind to raise their condition indefinitely, and to secure for themselves, and even in a lesser degree for the lower animals who are dependent on their protection, a mode of life which, though far from being a state of ecstatic bliss, will be held by sober-minded persons to have a real and even a high value. Now this conclusion appears to me to provide an adequate basis for...

Book The Idea of Decline in Western History

Download or read book The Idea of Decline in Western History written by Arthur Herman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1997 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enth.: "Historical and Cultural Pessimism. Jacob Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche" (S. 76-108).

Book The Technology Trap

Download or read book The Technology Trap written by Carl Benedikt Frey and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, Carl Benedikt Frey offers a sweeping account of the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society's members. As the author shows, the Industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth and prosperity over the long run, but the immediate consequences of mechanization were devastating for large swaths of the population.These trends broadly mirror those in our current age of automation. But, just as the Industrial Revolution eventually brought about extraordinary benefits for society, artificial intelligence systems have the potential to do the same. Benedikt Frey demonstrates that in the midst of another technological revolution, the lessons of the past can help us to more effectively face the present. --From publisher description.

Book Sociology Faces Pessimism

Download or read book Sociology Faces Pessimism written by Robert Benjamin Bailey and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My initial interest in sociology stemmed from the desire to see specific social change in certain areas of my native United States of America. My rather naive assumption at that time was that if the truth is known about social phenomena and presented to rational and educated persons, public opinion will bring about the desirable social change. That is, I assumed some automatic linkage between truth, rationality and social progress. Certainly some of the so-called "pioneers" of sociology also assumed this automatic linkage. Thus, the opportunity to study in Europe, on the soil of some of these "pioneers" heightened my interest and desire to learn more about the relationship between sociology and social progress. After living and studying several years in various parts of Western Europe - England, Germany, France, Holland - one finds that European sociology has remained very closely associ ated with social philosophy and history, has often been resisted by the universities, and is not as empirical as American sociology. The European sociologist, still quite conscious of the mistakes of the early fathers - Comte, Spencer, Marx, among others - is extremely cautious concerning problems of social progress and social action. He is aware that his science is still young and sus pect. He is also less sure than his predecessors about the exact role of sociology.

Book Pessimism

    Book Details:
  • Author : Joe Bailey
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 1988
  • ISBN : 0415002486
  • Pages : 187 pages

Download or read book Pessimism written by Joe Bailey and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Book Philosophical Progress

    Book Details:
  • Author : Daniel Stoljar
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 2017
  • ISBN : 0198802099
  • Pages : 201 pages

Download or read book Philosophical Progress written by Daniel Stoljar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people believe that philosophy makes no progress. Members of the general public often find it amazing that philosophers exist in universities at all, at least in research positions. Academics who are not philosophers often think of philosophy either as a scholarly or interpretative enterprise, or else as a sort of pre-scientific speculation. And - amazingly - many well-known philosophers argue that there is little genuine progress in philosophy. Daniel Stoljar arguesargues that this is all a big mistake. When you think through exactly what philosophical problems are, and what it takes to solve them, the pattern of success and failure in philosophy is similar to that in other fields. In philosophy, as elsewhere, there is a series of overlapping topics that determine what the subject is about. In philosophy, as elsewhere, different people in different historical epochs and different cultures ask different big questions about these topics. And in philosophy, as elsewhere, big questions asked in the past have often been solved: Stoljar provides examples. Philosophical Progress presents a strikingly optimistic picture of philosophy - not a radical optimism that says that there is some key that unlocks all philosophical problems, and not the kind of pessimism that dominates both professional and non-professional thinking about philosophy, but a reasonable optimism that views philosophy as akin to other fields.

Book Pessimism and Progress

Download or read book Pessimism and Progress written by Alexander Isaac Jacobs and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Silence of Animals

Download or read book The Silence of Animals written by John Gray and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An exploration of the failures of reason in human life and the enduring role of myth in science, politics, and morality"--

Book A Feeling of Wrongness

Download or read book A Feeling of Wrongness written by Joseph Packer and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2018-11-28 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Feeling of Wrongness, Joseph Packer and Ethan Stoneman confront the rhetorical challenge inherent in the concept of pessimism by analyzing how it is represented in an eclectic range of texts on the fringes of popular culture, from adult animated cartoons to speculative fiction. Packer and Stoneman explore how narratives such as True Detective, Rick and Morty, Final Fantasy VII, Lovecraftian weird fiction, and the pop ideology of transhumanism are better suited to communicate pessimistic affect to their fans than most carefully argued philosophical treatises and polemics. They show how these popular nondiscursive texts successfully circumvent the typical defenses against pessimism identified by Peter Wessel Zapffe as distraction, isolation, anchoring, and sublimation. They twist genres, upend common tropes, and disturb conventional narrative structures in a way that catches their audience off guard, resulting in belief without cognition, a more rhetorically effective form of pessimism than philosophical pessimism. While philosophers and polemicists argue for pessimism in accord with the inherently optimistic structures of expressive thought or rhetoric, Packer and Stoneman show how popular texts are able to communicate their pessimism in ways that are paradoxically freed from the restrictive tools of optimism. A Feeling of Wrongness thus presents uncharted rhetorical possibilities for narrative, making visible the rhetorical efficacy of alternate ways and means of persuasion.