Pessimism and Social Peace: The Thesis That Crumbles Under a Counterexample

Philosophical Pessimism as a Recipe for Social Peace, Examined

The philosophical pessimism—the kind that assigns a negative value to existence and holds that suffering outweighs pleasure—does not, by itself, make a society peaceful. The opposing thesis is defended with enthusiasm: civilizations educated in this doctrine would have lived with greed, physical violence, and territorial disputes at a minimum, yet cohesive through mutual empathy. The problem arises when a concrete example is requested.

Cathars, Amish, and the Problem of the Counterexample

The case of the Cathars is the most cited and the least sustained. The 'perfects'—who did not eat meat but did eat fish—lived in monastic austerity and without descendants; the body of believers, knights, nobles, and armed men who protected them, did. This brings up the first major objection: the ideal was preached, but the society that housed it continued to kill.
The proponent of the thesis responds that they were only referring to the perfects, and this nuance defuses half the discussion.

In contrast, the Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, and partly Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses share a documented pacifism without needing to renounce descendants. The equation pessimism equals peace does not hold up on this front.

Schopenhauer's Germany Was Not Pessimistic

Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger are invoked as proof of the pessimistic German soul, but the argument sinks on its own merits: they were distinct kinds of Germany—pronatalist, built upon pogre, nation, and race. None of them assigned a negative value to existence. This flank, even conceded by those who defend the thesis, is the most fragile.

A precision remains that almost no one concedes: pessimism and effort are not incompatible. The better your life is, the less likely it is that you will suffer. There is no contradiction between maintaining that pain predominates and working to live better.

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Other ideas float around: selective natalism—regulating who reproduces and how many children, adjusting to growth and mortality flows—or the nostalgia for a monastic and penitent Europe, antiestéticarful of God, between the 8th and 18th centuries.

With these concepts, the thesis of peaceful pessimism will continue to be cited in learned discussions. And it will continue to fail against a well-chosen counterexample, which is sure to appear.