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? (...) class='Hi'>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. (shrink)

Joshua Foa Dienstag engages in a critical encounter with the work of Stanley Cavell on cinema, focusing skeptical attention on the claims made for the contribution of cinema to the ethical character of democratic life.

Cinema Pessimism explores the challenges of representative democracy through film. Film allows us to see the problems of democracy from a unique perspective, illuminating dangers that are not always visible to us either from day-to-day experience or the classics of democratic theory. Joshua Foa Dienstag argues that there are threats lurking in our political systems that we fail to perceive due to the many pleasures that representation provides. Ultimately, Dienstag seeks to defend a kind of pessimistic politics (...) that might produce a better sort of democratic representation than what we have today. (shrink)

Philosophy is often depicted as generically distinct from literature, myth, and history, as a discipline that eschews narration and relies exclusively on abstract reason. This book takes issue with that assumption, arguing instead that political philosophers have commonly presented their readers with a narrative, rather than a logic, of politics. The book maintains that philosophical texts frequently persuade through the creation of a 'role' that they invite their audience to inhabit. The author also investigates the place of narrative in politics (...) in two ways. It offers a hypothesis of a broad connection between political identity and narrative, and it analyzes three major figures in the history of political thought - Locke, Hegel, and Nietzsche - to demonstrate that their work is best understood through the hypothesis. The author argues that each of these philosophers rewrites the past in an attempt to direct the future. (shrink)

This dissertation is an attempt to examine the role of historical argument in political theory. Its main contention is that political theory, rather than relying on concepts of abstract right and timeless duty, often attempts to convince by giving its readers a particular sense of history. I argue that authors of political theory in many instances present to their readers a narrative, rather than a logic, of politics. Political theory persuades not simply by reason but by giving the reader a (...) more convincing account of history and of the particular role s/he is to play. Consequently, I maintain, we put our own powers of interpretation in a strait-jacket if we approach each book of political theory only in search of an everlasting argument. Our readings will be more fruitful if we consider the qualities of historical argument alongside those of abstract right. The project of political theory, I conclude, is not so much to reform our morals as it is to reform our memories. ;The weight of my argument falls on extended interpretations of three figures in the history of political thought: G. W. F. Hegel, John Locke, and Friedrich Nietzsche. My aim in each chapter is to show that these theorists are at their most persuasive when the historical element in their thought is brought to the forefront. Taken together, however, they do not provide a single 'historical' viewpoint; instead they offer markedly different narratives which rest on different notions of human experience: Locke's account stresses labor, both mental and physical. Hegel's story is rooted in his understanding of art and beauty. Nietzsche's history centers on matters of violence and pain. ;In the prologue and conclusion I consider how political debates can often appear as historical disputes . By reading political theory with an eye to history, I hope to restore it to a position from which it can contribute to such controversies and speak directly to some of our political concerns, even if it must remain, to some degree, persistently aloof from them. (shrink)

In the past few decades, political theorists have attempted to articulate a nontheological basis for a special human place in the moral universe. These attempts, I argue, generally fall into two groups, one centered around the concept of “dignity” and the other around ideas of “difference.” Both of these attempts ultimately fail, I maintain, but their failures are instructive and help us along a path toward a better kind of relationship with nature and the earth as well as one another. (...) In the face of increased scientific knowledge about the environment, animals, and our own species, we have every reason to recalibrate our stance toward nature as a whole. But in doing so we must acknowledge that the human relationship with nature is ultimately a representative one that can therefore never achieve the kind of reciprocity available in human society. Whatever form our respect for nature takes, it will always be distinct from the relationships we have with those we consider co-citizens. (shrink)

Pessimism today is poorly understood. Indeed, such is the disdain that pessimism engenders, that it often has difficulty being taken seriously as a theoretical position. Yet pessimism, which is distinct from skepticism and nihilism, has much to offer those who have discarded the Enlightenment's expectation of progress. Through an examination of Rousseau, Schopenhauer and Unamuno, this paper traces out some of the common themes of pessimistic thought. Pessimism, it is argued, is con-cerned with the burden of time and with the (...) problem of organizing the best kind of human life in the absence of a promise of progress, happiness, or salvation for society as a whole. But it need not urge passivity or resignation in response to these conditions. The figure of Don Quixote, first appealed to in this context by Unamuno, illustrates pessimism's capacity to craft a positive ethic of personal conduct for life in a disordered and disenchanted world. Key Words: Miguel de Cervantes • Don Quixote • history • nihilism • pessimism • progress • Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Arthur Schopenhauer • time • Miguel de Unamuno. (shrink)

A variety of theorists have emphasized the paradox at the center of democratic legal authority, viz., that it cannot be self-derived but must ultimately rest on some extra-legal phenomenon, usually an act of exclusion. John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance examines precisely this paradoxical situation and, I argue, actually suggests a novel response that has escaped theorists who have considered the problem in the past. The film's best-known line ("print the legend") in fact represents the opposite of its (...) perspective—which is to carefully deconstruct and reveal (without debunking) the complicated interrelation of law and power in the formation of any state. Rather than undermining democratic authority, we can be strengthened, if sobered, by the revelation that law is not self-sustaining. By setting the facts alongside the legend, the film perpetuates the fortuitous moment of state formation. What constitutes the state, then, is neither law nor power, but rather the matrix of representation that creates the relationship between them—here a film, but perhaps, more generally, a sustaining narrative. (shrink)

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Many have pointed to Blade Runner's humanization of its 'replicants' as a compelling statement against exploitation and domination. I argue, however, that the film has another kind of agenda: a Rousseauvian concern about the dangers of representation, about confusing the imitation with the real and confusing the consumption of images with political action. Rather than humanizing the other, Blade Runner's central concern is to humanize our own social and political relationships, which are in danger of (...) falling into the same trap Rousseau outlined in his Letter to D'Alembert. To do so, we must learn to appreciate the difference between mutual surveillance and mutual regard. To live freely in any regime, we must understand the dangers of representation, even if, in a large state, we must continue to make use of it. (shrink)

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Many have pointed to Blade Runner's humanization of its 'replicants' as a compelling statement against exploitation and domination. I argue, however, that the film has another kind of agenda: a Rousseauvian concern about the dangers of representation, about confusing the imitation with the real and confusing the consumption of images with political action. Rather than humanizing the other, Blade Runner's central concern is to humanize our own social and political relationships, which are in danger of (...) falling into the same trap Rousseau outlined in his Letter to D'Alembert. To do so, we must learn to appreciate the difference between mutual surveillance and mutual regard. To live freely in any regime, we must understand the dangers of representation, even if, in a large state, we must continue to make use of it. (shrink)

In one of the first scenes of the True Detective pilot episode "The Long Bright Dark", detective Rust Cohle is being badgered by his partner Marty Hart about his beliefs. In True Detective, the optimism is embodied in Rust's partner, Marty. Pessimism is the reason that Rust is a better detective than Marty. He is deceived by illusions of his own making. Rust may have had this problem once, but, having given up his optimism, he is never shocked by the (...) depravity that he encounters as the investigation unfolds. Optimism and pessimism do not exhaust the characters Rust and Marty: "Hart and Cohle" sounds too much like "heart and soul" to be a coincidence. Before their final encounter with the sadistic murderer they have been pursuing, Rust Cohle is at the point of giving up. His pessimism has shriveled into hopelessness and despair. (shrink)

In this volume, Simona Goi and Frederick M. Dolan gather stimulating arguments for the indispensability of fiction_including poetry, drama, and film_as irreplaceable sites for wrestling with nature, meaning, shortcomings, and the future of modern politics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Memory and Justice:Narrative Sources of Community in Camus's The First ManJohn Randolph LeBlancThere as a certain frustration involved in trying to find Albert Camus's conception of justice in express positive statements. But inasmuch as Camus saw his work in the trope of journey, his complex set of ideas about justice are to be discerned in the narrative structure of his texts. This is particularly so in his last work, (...) the incomplete autobiographical The First Man.1 In the novel, Camus has his protagonist and fictional self Jacques Cormery seek the sources of his orientation to questions of love and justice by attempting to reconstruct the brief life of a father he never knew. It is in the life reconstructed, chiefly through the recollected memories of those who knew the man that Jacques comes to understand his own responses to questions of love and justice. A necessary by-product of the process is that through his questioning, Jacques recreates a community of which he is a product but, until the journey is undertaken, he has never been a part. His journey is, thus, one of self-discovery and inextricably ties justice to community formation. Camus's last novel, I will argue, suggests the importance of memory and narrative to the fundamental questions of political theory, particularly, questions regarding community-formation and the role and nature of justice.IContemporary reflections on the nature of politics take narrative encounters with reality seriously. The significance of narrative to political theory is, I think, tied to the Augustinian recognition that, temporally speaking, we live forward but learn backwards. It is through reconstructing [End Page 140] our experiences as individuals that we learn about who we are and how we got here. Recent political theory has come to recognize that this epistemological structure works at both the individual and the communal level. Michael Walzer, for example, has suggested that a community's culture is the story its members tell so as to make sense of the different pieces of their social life and justice is the doctrine that distinguishes the pieces.2 But distinguishing the pieces can mean and has meant blocking or restricting our access to that reconstruction. While a time-honored political practice, the impulse to control the contents of the narrative by deeming it unworthy or too dangerous to speak became a self-conscious political practice and a particularly dangerous phenomenon in the last century. Controlling the contents of narrative means control in past, present, and future tense. Memory can become a site of resistance because narrative depends on memory for its points of reference. What gets narrated gets remembered. Most often, what does not get narrated either gets lost or must find another way.Narrative and memory have always been political resources, Joshua Foa Dienstag suggests in his important work on memory and narrative in political theory, but the self-conscious control of them is dangerous.3 At the end of a century wherein we perpetrated much we might be tempted to forget, it is increasingly evident that we must remember before we can speak of justice, that is, our stories must be told and heard before we can reconstitute (or re-member) a functional conception of political community. It is in these terms that I want to talk about narrative and its relationship to political community and justice. But what is silenced is as important as what is articulated. Dienstag, who reads political theory as narrative, suggests that, practically speaking, what we have learned is that memory unarticulated is even more dangerous than memory manipulated. Memory unarticulated either festers and becomes a flashpoint for turmoil or is articulated by an interest for its own ends and becomes a tool of control if not oppression. In either case, memory is bastardized to the ends of power politics and distinguishing between authentic and inauthentic experiences becomes the province of politicians. Leaving these distinctions to politicians, I want to suggest, is risky business. When memory represents the absence of a set of experiences rather than their presence, we are confronted by the end of a community rather than its beginning.All cultures, Walzer suggests, have an interest in... (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between the philosophical marginalisation of pessimism in Joshua Foa Dienstag's Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (2006) and the concept of mimesis in the work of Luiz Costa Lima, particularly in his Control of the Imaginary (1988). My aim is threefold: (1) to compare the shared background and peripheral contexts of Dienstag's and Costa Lima's work; (2) to discuss the significance of Cervantes's Don Quixote in this comparative analysis; and (3) to characterise Costa Lima's (...) thinking vis-à-vis conventional institutional thinking. The nature of my subject requires a narrative approach in which the writer remains on the margin of the material, bringing the reader into the same position; to proceed otherwise, as articles conventionally do, would be to adopt a position of authority, institutionality, and hierarchy that is at odds with the material. It is a position that avers conclusions and prefers ongoing questioning. (shrink)

A great deal of fascinating research has gone into an attempt to uncover the fundamental criteria that people use when assigning moral responsibility. Nonetheless, it seems that most existing accounts fall prey to one counterexample or another. The underlying problem, we suggest, is that there simply isn't any single system of criteria that people apply in all cases of responsibility attribution. Instead, it appears that people use quite different criteria in different kinds of cases. [This paper was originally circulated under (...) the title 'Strawsonian Variations.']. (shrink)