19th Century History
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History
Pessimism
Just as De Sade diverged in his atheism from the virtuous, optimistic atheism of d'Holbach and others in eighteenth century France, equally nineteenth century Germany produced a number of atheists who diverged from the humanism of Feuerbachian atheism and the optimism of the Marxist variant and taught a depressing and (at least in several forms) disturbing form of atheism associated most prominently with Max Stirner, Arthur Schopenhauer, Eduard von Hartmann, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
As the historian Georges Minois has pointed out, the common focus of these atheistic authors is on individual psychology: whereas atheists such as d'Holbach and Marx think about the political consequences, these atheists think about the individual consequences.[1]
Schopenhauer is a main inspiration for these authors. For Schopenhauer, the principle behind the world - what he calls the 'Will' - is not, as is the case with Kant and his German Idealist interpreters Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, a rational, self- conscious principle, but rather a mindless, directionless, irrational impulse the essence of which we can apprehend by inspecting what lies at the base of our own most animal instincts. Although postulating an almighty 'Will', Schopenhauer's vision is strictly speaking Godless - the Will which lies at the foundation of the world is characterised by a blind, infinite, purposeless striving, and the world is consequently understood as being meaningless. The default condition of human beings is frustration and suffering, since their striving (and that of the world generally) is for no particular reason, and the whole cosmic process is heading nowhere. This is in stark contrast to the abovementioned German Idealists, who not only posited a rational, self-conscious principle as the ground of things but also supposed some form of human and cosmic progress.[2]
Max Stirner, a critic of Feuerbach's humanism and forerunner of Nietzsche, advocated in his The Ego and Its Own (1852) an intense form of individualism. In Stirner one also finds a strong strain of atheistic pessimism and an unambiguous rejection of the standard Enlightenment idea of progress. According to Stirner, the egoistic cultivation of total freedom demands a rejection of any sort of heteronomy. Religion is just one amongst other forms of slavery to which modern human beings can succumb. However, liberation from the constraints imposed by the religious attitude does not lead to a blessed secular future. As David Leopold has noted, Stirner himself admitted that few of his readers would find any comfort in his vision of the future; indeed, even were his ideas to lead to perpetual wars (as his egoism seems to imply) he would still have propagated them, since his motivations were consistently egoistic, not altruistic, and he had no interest in saving humanity from disaster.[3]
This pessimistic form of atheism was predictably unpopular with the general public, but as Minois notes, the public mood sees to have changed by the time of the publication of Eduard von Hartmann's (1842-1906) Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869), and its subsequent success. Hartmann's profoundly dispiriting atheistic philosophy finishes with a call for the collective suicide of humanity. In his The Self-Destruction of Christianity and the Religion of the Future (1874), Hartman predicts that humanity will come to a collective realisation of the futility of their atheistic fatse, and choose to bring about their collective annihilation. As Minois points out, in many respects these forms of atheism can be regarded as the most complete atheisms, since they allow for no God replacements: nation, race, progress, democracy, etc. Existence is looked in the face and is judged futile.[4]
References
"Max Stirner." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed Edward N. Zalta. Place Published, 2006.
Histoire de L'atheisme. La Fleche: Fayard, 1998.
"Arthur Schopenhauer " In The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed Edward N. Zalta. Place Published, 2007.
Footnotes
[1]↑ Georges Minois, Histoire de L'atheisme (La Fleche: Fayard, 1998), 505.
[2]↑ Robert Wicks. "Arthur Schopenhauer " In The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed Edward N. Zalta. ( 2007),
Online entry .
[3]↑ David Leopold. "Max Stirner." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed Edward N. Zalta. (2006),
Online entry.
[4]↑ Minois, Histoire, 508.