Philosophical pessimism is the view that life and existence are of negative value. It is often expressed as the claim that life is not worth living and that non-existence would, at least in many cases, be preferable to coming into or remaining in existence. Other formulations focus on claims that suffering and other harms have more impact or severity than pleasure and other goods; that the amount of bad in the world exceeds the quantity of good; or that existence lacks inherent value or purpose and can at most be fleetingly beneficial or limitedly meaningful.
Themes associated with pessimism appear in a range of religious and philosophical traditions, including parts of Buddhism, the book of Ecclesiastes, certain forms of Gnosticism, and the work of Hegesias of Cyrene. In the 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer gave pessimism a systematic form in his The World as Will and Representation, and later German thinkers such as Eduard von Hartmann and Philipp Mainländer developed their own versions. In the 20th and 21st centuries, authors including Peter Wessel Zapffe, Emil Cioran, Thomas Ligotti, David Benatar, Julio Cabrera and Drew Dalton have revisited pessimistic ideas using arguments from ethics, psychology and the natural sciences.
