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List of things to add

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I'm starting a list of things that would be great to add. Please expand as you see appropriate. It may help us coordinate and see what could still be improved. "[x] Item" means that the item is done. Discussions regarding individual items, if necessary, can be started in individual sections or immediately underneath each point. Whatever suits us best.

TODO list

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Done

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Low importance items, maybies, discarded ideas

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Comments on the list

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I suggest adding Thomas Ligotti to this list! Delukiel (talk) 06:42, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Of course! By all means. Please edit the above list and add an additional points, as you see fit. This is not "my" list. This is our list. Fantastiera (talk) 08:45, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good day, Fantastiera. I would like to share my opinion regarding two of the suggestions you mentioned above. For the first suggestion, namely, "Add a section regarding Philosophical pessimism#Procreation, briefly mention Antinatalism, while refering to the target article", I believe that philosophical pessimism naturally intersects quite significantly with antinatalism, to the point that the creation of a new section specifically for procreation/antinatalism seems to me redundant/unnecessary, which can be noted in the fact that antinatalism is already mentioned and/or linked in many different parts of this article (more specifically, in the second introductory paragraph of the article, in the recent section on Ecclesiastes, in the Middle Ages section, in Cioran's section, and in Benatar's section). And for the second suggestion, that is, "Add something about Dialogue of Pessimism" (which was previously marked as done), I have decided to remove, as explained in the revision history of the article, the section on the Dialogue of Pessimism and replaced it instead with a section on the Book of Ecclesiastes (also considered to be a piece of wisdom literature), due to finding it more relevant and persuasive regarding philosophical pessimism. Maybe someone could find it pertinent to add the Dialogue of Pessimism for purely historical reasons, but I would still insist on the text of Ecclesiastes being more clear and compelling in its pessimistic perspective towards life. Kind regards. Sirhu (talk) 23:58, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Overdue update: I ultimately decided to add the Dialogue of Pessimism once again, but in connection with the section on the Book of Ecclesiastes Sirhu (talk) 17:24, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You may be right about that, Sirhu. The reason why I wanted to introduce a dedicated section on antinatalism was that it's usually better to split an article into thematically cohesive sections, rather than having an idea be spread thin across hundreds of words. Similarly to the Philosophical pessimism#Regarding non-human animals section. Fantastiera (talk) 18:19, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see. Now that I thought a bit more about it, it definitely seems like a viable option to create a separate section for antinatalism. I understand philosophical pessimism to be (and I suspect you would agree) an overall diagnosis about human life and, often, the life of other sentient beings as well, while antinatalism (humancentric or sentiocentric) appears as a possible response to this diagnosis.

In this sense, I think we could add a section about antinatalism as a subheading to the "philosophical responses to the human condition" section. If we do so, we may or may not need to alter/remove some mentions of antinatalism in other parts of the article in order to avoid repetition. Sirhu (talk) 20:41, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

On the lead section

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A WP:LEAD is a very important fragment of the text as very often it's the only text a reader will read from that page. It should contain only the most general overview, without specifics that would be appropriate for the rest of the article. So, it's similar to an abstract/summary of academic papers.

Manual of style, Writing better articles, "How to" page list among other things, these points:

  • brief introduction of the topic, without jargon
  • include only the most important topics: based on the sources, not editors' preferences
  • significant information (details) should be left to the body of the text
  • links to broader topics (e.g. Philosophy) are allowed to contextualize a given topic
  • some of the best articles' lead sections are 250-400 words in length. In the case of longer articles, 3-4 paragraphs wold be optimal.

Examples of Good Articles with nice lead sections:

Where we see a nice overview of the main ideas of a given topic, and a short history, especially of the beginnig of something. We don't really see there being overviews of specific points beings made.

Taking all of the above into consieration, our lead section should contain a brief paragraph on the history of the philosophical tradition, and it should not contain overview of select few particular points from the content of the body, but rather a summarization of the main sections. This means that we should not have a paragraph on procreation and a paragraph on suicide, but rather a paragraph on the responses to the evils of existence that would briefly announce the variety of ideas there, rather than expand on the specifics of select few. Otherwise, we're introducing improper balance. Fantastiera (talk) 11:17, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're right -- most of the good articles indicated above include 300 to 400 words in the lead section.
One exception is the article on Evolution, which contains 532 words.
Our current article on philosophical pessimism might be granted an exception (or so I would wish to argue) regarding the length of its lead section -- while 617 words may still be a little too long, I find that the present lead section summarizes well both the arguments, responses, criticisms, and influences beyond philosophy -- providing the reader, thus, with a comprehensive and holistic view of this philosophical movement/school.
Thoughts? @Fantastiera @Phlsph7, @Patrick, @Throughthemind. Alice793 (talk) 20:05, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A shorter lead would be stronger. Right now it's slightly longer than philosophy (and its body is much longer). Or, another article I've been working on intermittently, postmodernism, which also remains under 8,000 words. If you cannot condense the body, I would suggest considering a WP:SPINOFF article and making use of WP:SUMMARYSTYLE. I'm going to hold off on my detailed comments, however, until the article is more stable. Patrick (talk) 21:06, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have shortened the lead section -- what do you think about it now?
And how you suggest us to condense the body of the article itself? Alice793 (talk) 21:44, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because it is a summary of the body, I doesn't make sense for me to review the lead while the body is in flux.
How to shorten the body is something that you and the other editors working on the article will have to decide among yourselves. I don't know the literature on this topic. Patrick (talk) 21:50, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand. Regarding making yet another WP:SPINOFF, I don't think it would be a good idea; we already did that with the historical article.
This present article's intent is to focus on both the arguments and responses that pessimists gave to main issues of their concern (that is, the lack of value of life).
If we did yet another Spinoff article, it would likely be very short. And, at that point, it could as well be merged with the current article. Alice793 (talk) 21:53, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just to make it clear: do you think we presently should shorten the body of the article or it is fine as it currently is? Alice793 (talk) 21:59, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The body of the article is currently 9,314+ words, which (obviously) is above the recommended 8,000, which is about as much as most visitors are willing to read. So yes, I think it should be shortened. Unfortunately, I do not have any specific suggestions for how best to do this. Maybe brainstorm with the other editors also working on the article.
Did you see my comment on the peer review with a link to the policy and another general suggestion? Patrick (talk) 22:25, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One thing I noticed: the article on Hegel (a good article) currently has 11178 words.
Thus, I find it weird that the philosophical pessimism article in specific needs to be trimmed down to 8,000 or less words in order to be eligible for GAN, as it currently has 9324 words.
The user @Fantastiera suggested that we could "create one subarticle for the responses to the evils of existence (with a better title, of course), and another with arguments (with an appropriate title)." But I find that doing this would make the content of the topic too dispersed among different articles.
In my view, it is enough to have a separate subarticle for the history of philosophical pessimism together with a topical article that addresses the arguments, responses, criticisms, and the relations of philosophical pessimism to other topics within philosophy. Alice793 (talk) 20:09, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The 8,000 word limit is not a requirement for GAN, but it's a WP:GUIDELINE that should be followed when possible. Patrick (talk) 20:36, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not reverting your edit of the text above, but please familiarize yourself with WP:TALK#REPLIED and avoid doing this in the future.
Also, insinuating hypocrisy on behalf of a peer-reviewer here at your request is not a great look.
If you have suggestions for shortening the Hegel article, please share them on its talk page. (I'd love some cover to cut back the irrelevant biographical material people keep adding!) Patrick (talk) 22:55, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you help me understand how I am insinuating hypocrisy by mentioning that the article on Hegel is above 8,000 words?
I could have mentioned, for example, the articles on Noam Chomsky or Conscience -- both are also considered good articles and yet they contain, respectively, 9680 words and 14060 words.
In conclusion, it doesn't seem to me that trimming the article on philosophical pessimism (which is shorter than the articles on Hegel, Chomsky and Conscience) should be strictly necessary for GAN.
I understand your concern about editing my own comment after you already replied to it, and thus I shall endeavor to respect such advise in the future; the reasoning for editing my own comment is due to typos I made (such that the overall point I wished to make wasn't initially clear without the subsequent edits). Alice793 (talk) 00:53, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I propose we create a separate section with a discussion on splitting the article into shorter articles. There may be many points raised by many individuals, so it would make sense to have it separated, rather than being dispersed in the comments in the lead section discussion. PS. I think the 5th response by @Alice793: is missing a colon, which breaks formatting a little bit. I took the liberty to fix that. Fantastiera (talk) 22:54, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on the approach to the lead section

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@Alice793: I see that you are very engaged in working on the article and especially on the lead section. I appreciate the engagement and the information you're including. However, I've noticed that the lead section of the article is only ever growing. Seems like you would like to include all the information that seems relevant. This may not necessarily be the purpose of the lead section. Could we discuss how can we work on the lead section? It could be a good idea to agree on a couple of points, instead of exchanging edits.

I'll make my case; tell me what you think about this. Just above I linked to some resources from Wikipedia itself on writing a lead section. From this I learned that the lead should include the most important information, not necessarily information about everything there is in the article, most of the details are better left to body of the text, and the length should be not more than 400 words in most cases. Why is that? Because a reader will likely not read the text if it is too long, and the lead may be the only fragment that will be read by most people. Currently, the lead section is 640 words long, which is 160% of the suggested max length. There is too much detail about minutiae. I would suggest getting back to version 1262119122 and think to reduce it still (as it was over 520 words), not enlarge it. What do you say? Fantastiera (talk) 20:37, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have no objections. Alice793 (talk) 00:14, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A road to make Philosophical pessimism one of the Wikipedia:Good_articles

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Currently, this is still a relatively new article. So it's no wonder that the quality is mixed, not the greatest. Aiming at making this article be one of the Wikipedia:Good_articles will help us improve the content and readability to a great degree.

Wikipedia has a general list of Wikipedia:Good article criteria and Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Instructions we can follow. It is very helpful to look at some of the pages that already are of very high quality — the list can be checked out at Wikipedia:Good articles/Philosophy and religion. Fantastiera (talk) 18:04, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Stage 1: Change the historical account to a topic account

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Stage 2: Improve the citations

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The very first things, and maybe the easiest to do, are improvements to citations and references.

  • [x] Provide page numbers to references/citations
  • [x] Provide more citations to secondary literature (books and articles about philosophical pessimism, not books written by philosophical pessimists per se) Fantastiera (talk) 18:06, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Stage 3: Address points from Review 1

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Completed points from the review

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What to do with 'Bibliography'

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There may be a debate whether it's valid to have the "Bibliography" section. There is no source that would say "yes, this is a good work, include it in the Bibliography". It can be up to the editors to include some of the works there.

Some might say that because this sub-section is very long and there are no good criteria for including items, the entire section should be removed.

Many high quality articles on Wikipedia have a dedicated "Bibliography" section. It has various names, such as "Bibliography", "Further reading", "References", "Sources".

It can be found on these articles, for example:

The articles do not provide a citation that would provide any merits for inclusion of the selected works in bibliography. If so, then it provides a good precedent for having Philosophical pessimism#Bibliography. Fantastiera (talk) 20:26, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Update: The name of the sub-section is now Further reading according to Wikipedia:Further reading and MOS:FURTHER. Fantastiera (talk) 10:32, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on the merits of having "Bibliography"

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@Alice793, Phlsph7, Javierfv1212, Throughthemind, Gaeanautes, Spencerk, Lestrade, Omnipaedista, Sirhu, Tisane, Sinveil, Ihcoyc, FitzColinGerald, Nero's Fiddle, Delukiel, GreatLeader1945, Explicit, Immanuelle, AManWithNoPlan, Silver seren, Salpynx, Arjayay, ThaLibrarian, Revirvlkodlaku, Pessimu, Srich32977, 2NumForIce, Bruce1ee, Rkieferbaum, A.sav, Tommi1986, and TheVictoryOfTheProletariat: I'm pinging some interested parties. Please voice your opinions. After getting feedback from the editors, we could vote on a solution. Fantastiera (talk) 20:26, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't looked at all of them, but GA or FA articles with bibliographies are probably using a shortened footnote template. The principle of inclusion for the bibliography, then, is that fact that the source is being used in the article. Sources listed that are not cited anywhere in the article are flagged by scripts, and citations to anything not in the bibliography generate errors when you publish the edit.
As an illustration, compare the appearance of the end matter of this article with that of Hegel, and then look at them in source-editing mode. (You switch back and forth between this and visual mode with the little pencil icon in the upper right side of the editing window.)
I prefer shortened citations with sfn and harv templates, but this is not required even for FAC. Also, converting the article's currently consistent use of ref tags would require several hours of tedious work that few readers would even notice.
My approach would be to stick with ref tags and lose at least the list of secondary sources. (After all, if they're important enough to make the list, they should already be represented in the Citations.) A list of primary sources would be much easier to justify—although it would, of course, still be best if you could find a source with a list encompassing what is included in the article's list. Patrick (talk) 21:21, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the input. I checked the pages. In the following pages there are "Bibliography" sections (with various names) that have at least some works (books, articles) that don't seem to be cited anywhere in the main article: Cynicism (philosophy), Humanism, Eliminative materialism, DNA, Metabolism, Archaea, Confirmation bias. This means that there is a precedent for "good" (and even "featured") articles to have such sections. So, the only thing that may be under question is the name of the section. Maybe it should be named "Further reading" to make its purpose clearer? It would be good if there was a Wikipedia-internal article that would be about this exact topic; otherwise, there doesn't seem to be anything authoritative to latch onto. Fantastiera (talk) 14:58, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See MOS:FURTHER and the essay linked as "See also". I have no idea why the community gives this section a pass on basic sourcing requirements, but as a matter of fact most editors do.
To make the list useful to readers, should you include it, I suggest you keep it short and provide brief annotations. You should also be prepared to deal with WP:BOOKSPAM.
I obviously do not like these sections, but it should not be an issue for GAN. Whatever involved editors decide should be fine. Patrick (talk) 15:44, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We reached an agreement with regard to this section. Could you please take a look at Philosophical pessimism#Bibliography from the perspective of assessment for GA? Fantastiera (talk) 18:23, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Parring it back is a definite improvement. I would consider adding annotations to the entries so that they are not redundant with the "Citations" section and are potentially more useful to readers. I think there's a template for this, but I haven't used it. You could check in at the Help Desk for information on best practices or just use standard formatting markup. As long as the descriptions avoid WP:PEACOCK terms and are generally written in a neutrally descriptive tone, I don't think they require supporting sources (by all means, though, link to good reviews if you're aware of them). Patrick (talk) 20:41, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you help us understand how we might add annotations to the entries in the trimmed bibliography section, Patrick? Alice793 (talk) 03:01, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I asked the question on the help desk page. I got info that we should look into Wikipedia:Further reading and MOS:FURTHER. Looks like simple annotations such as "An introductory text" or "A rigorous theoretical text for advanced readers" would be enough. We'll look through the entries and add some annotations. Fantastiera (talk) 09:51, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Patrick Welsh and Alice793: I added annotations and renamed the section to Further reading. Fantastiera (talk) 10:32, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, looks good. Nice idea to annotate the "See also" as well. Patrick (talk) 18:20, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have a very strong opinion on the existence of the section in itself, though I'd add Cioran's The Trouble with Being Born to it. Could probably also use Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays.
Also, unrelated, or maybe tangentially related, I haven't checked this page in a while, but I was reading the Suicide heading and I noticed the use of "the suicide" in the second sense, and it got me thinking—anyone ever read The Savage God: A Study of Suicide? Alvarez almost exclusively uses suicide in that way from memory and some of his cited works could really help flesh that section out. I haven't read it in about four years though. Delukiel (talk) 03:48, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see that Al Alvarez is not described as a philosopher, let alone a philosophical pessimist. I don't think adding writers would fit as a relevant and reliable source in the context of the present article. It could, however, be appropriate for an article about pessimism in literature. Fantastiera (talk) 10:25, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, you might be right. I wouldn't be open to adding Alvarez himself as a philosopher, but rather some of the ground he covers in Section 2. But it is true that he is not a historian. I could always give it a skim and see if there's something that could be useful. Delukiel (talk) 15:06, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On Definitions

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On Ignacio L. Moya's definition

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Currently, Philosophical pessimism#Definitions is pretty simple and straightforward, with the most relevant fragment being:

Many scholars of philosophical pessimism characterize it as the view that life is not worth living and that non-existence is preferable to existence. Some philosophers define pessimism in other ways, emphasizing the claim that the evils in life outweigh the goods or present it as "the denial of happiness or the affirmation of life's inherent misery".

Some would want to include Ignacio L. Moya in there. However, his definition is out of whack with regard to the above. Moya defines pessimism (in his thesis and in the Transcendental pessimism paper) like so:

The proposed definition has four points, all rooted in the philosophies of the original 19th Century pessimist philosophers.

  • The essence of existence can be known either fully or partially and it is will. This is a metaphysical claim;
  • This will is what characterizes life as an experience conditioned by need, want and pain. Ultimately, suffering is inescapable;
  • There are no ultimate reasons for our sufferings. This means that there is no cosmic plan or purpose to our suffering;
  • Nonexistence is preferable to existence.

His definition necessarily includes the concept of will, speaks about lack or purpose to suffering, and only then adds that "nonexistence is preferable to existence". So, I believe it is not a proper citation/reference for the first sentence of the definition ("Many scholars of philosophical pessimism characterize it as the view that life is not worth living and that non-existence is preferable to existence.") as Moya's definition contains additional points and skips "life is not worth living".

At best, it would have to be incorporated into the Definitions in some other way. For example, we could write "Some philosophers define pessimism in other ways, emphasizing the claim that the evils in life outweigh the goods or in other ways.[citation-number]"

I would like to discuss this item and reach a conclusion. I'm thus calling for opinions from recent contributors: @Whynotno1, Alice793, Delukiel, and Throughthemind:. What are your thoughts? Please comment immediately below this line. Regards, Fantastiera (talk) 18:19, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My own unsolicited opinion:
The Philosopher appears to be an RS, but one that would not qualify as high-quality for the purposes of this article.
It also looks as if it is probably being added by its author. If they are going to use their expert knowledge to help build out the article, that is fantastic and it doesn't matter if they cite their own work in the process. Otherwise, though, it's just promotional ref-spam and should be reverted.
Cheers, Patrick (talk) 21:00, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the meantime, I reverted the edit by @Whynotno1:, as the definition in the references article is not consistent with what is written in the text. For details, please see above. The version with the edit is: 1263965545. Fantastiera (talk) 14:26, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Don't have strong thoughts here. You know more about pessimism than me, but my impression is pessimists in the 20th century onward don't seem to emphasize the will as much as Schopenhauer or even Nietzsche, so I'm not sure how applicable that would be to contemporary pessimists. Delukiel (talk) 04:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

two non-content related items

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1) I've created an archive page to which editors can move conversations that have been fully resolved or that have sat around for more than a year (or whatever) and don't show any promise of being revived. You'll see the link up near the top of the page. To archive something, just cut it from this page and paste it into the archive.

Thanks for creating the Archive. I moved (almost all of) our archived topics there. Fantastiera (talk) 15:00, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2) I have little experience with article titles, but I think that a more appropriate title for this article might be Pessimism (philosophy). (Just as I type this, I realize that this title does exist as a redirect to a subsection of Pessimism. I'll change the target to this article.)

Right now, this article does not show up among the ten suggestions I get when I type "pessimism" into the search box—yet it is clearly much more relevant that some of those that do. Editors might want to take a look at WP:TITLE and also review the terms used in the sources for the article. If there is a strong consensus here in support of the change, we don't need to go through a formal request procedure. Or, if there is reason to prefer the current title, then cheerfully disregard! Patrick (talk) 00:44, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestion. This is a very good point. We'll try to look into the sources to see if there is a prevalence of one term over the other. Fantastiera (talk) 15:00, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

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A list of sources for various things to add/change referenced from other sections on this page.

  • Benatar, David (2006). Abortion: The ‘Pro‐Death’ View. In: David Benatar (2006). Better Never to Have Been.
  • Benatar, David (2017). The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions
  • Beiser, Frederick C. (2018). Humor as Redemption in the Pessimistic Philosophy of Julius Bahnsen. In: Moland, L. (eds) All Too Human. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91331-5_7
  • Beiser, Frederick C. (2016). Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900
  • Cabrera, Julio (2021). For a Critique of Suicidal Reason. https://archive.org/details/n.t.-revista-nota-do-tradutor-23_20220715_2338/page/44/mode/1up
  • Cabrera, Julio (2019). Discomfort and Moral Impediment
  • Casey, Myles (2019). Book Review: Discomfort and Moral Impediment by Julio Cabrera (Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 2019). Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College, 91-97. https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/dianoia/article/download/11741/9771
  • Cholbi, Michael (2022). Schopenhauer, Suicide, and Contemporary Pessimism. In: In Patrick Hassan (ed.), Schopenhauer's Moral Philosophy. Routledge (2022)
  • Cooper, David E. (2024). Pessimism, Quietism and Nature as Refuge. Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda. ISBN 978-1788217705.
  • Fox, Joshua I. (2022). Does Schopenhauer accept any positive pleasures? European Journal of Philosophy, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12830
  • Fremstedal, Roe (2013). Meaning of Life: Peter Wessel Zapffe on the Human Condition. In: Beatrix Himmelmann (ed.), On Meaning in Life. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. pp. 113-128 (2013)
  • Gloor, Lukas (2017). Tranquilism. https://longtermrisk.org/tranquilism/
  • Hassan, Patrick (2021). Individual vs World in Schopenhauer's Pessimism. The Southern Journal of Philosophy
  • Hassan, Patrick (2021). Striving as Suffering: Schopenhauer's A Priori Argument for Pessimism
  • Hassan, Patrick (2023). Nietzsche's Struggle Against Pessimism
  • Hwang, Jiwoon (2018). Why it is always better to cease to exist (pro-mortalism, promortalism). https://jiwoonhwang.wordpress.com/2018/07/12/promortalism/
  • Janaway, Christopher (2022a). Worse than the best possible pessimism? Olga Plümacher's critique of Schopenhauer. British Journal for the History of Philosophy. 30:2, 211-230, DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2021.1881441, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09608788.2021.1881441
  • Janaway, Christopher (2022b). Schopenhauer's Consoling View of Death In: Essays on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: Values and the Will of Life (Oxford, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 17 Nov. 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198865575.003.0007
  • Kahane, G. (2022). Was evolution worth it? Philosophical Studies, 180(1), 249–271.
  • Kidd, Ian James (2020). Philosophical Misanthropy. Philosophy Now. Issue 139. https://philosophynow.org/issues/139/Philosophical_Misanthropy
  • Kidd, Ian James (2021). Varieties of Philosophical Misanthropy. Journal of Philosophical Research 46:27-44. https://philpapers.org/rec/KIDVOP
  • Kidd, Ian James (2024). "David E. Cooper Pessimism, Quietism and Nature as Refuge (Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda, 2024). pp. xiv + 168. £18.99 (Pbk. ISBN 9781788217705)". Religious Studies: 1–3. doi:10.1017/S003441252400074X.
  • Knutsson, Simon (2022). Undisturbedness as the hedonic ceiling. https://www.simonknutsson.com/undisturbedness-as-the-hedonic-ceiling/
  • Knutsson, Simon (2023). Roger Thisdell on undisturbedness, positive experiences, and the hedonic peak. https://www.simonknutsson.com/roger-thisdell-on-undisturbedness-positive-experiences-and-the-hedonic-peak/
  • Krusé, Cornelius (1932). The Inadequacy of the Hedonistic Interpretation. Journal of Philosophy.
  • Langsam, Harold (2022). The will as joy-bringer: Nietzsche’s response to Schopenhauer. Inquiry. DOI:10.1080/0020174X.2022.2126392
  • McGregor, Rafe & Sullivan-Bissett, Ema (2012). Better No Longer to Be: The Harm of Continued Existence. South African Journal of Philosophy, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 55-68. DOI: 10.1080/02580136.2012.10751767 https://philpapers.org/rec/MCGBNL
  • Mainländer, Philipp. The Philosophy of Redemption
  • Metzinger, Thomas (2016). Suffering. In: Kurt Almqvist & Anders Haag (2016)[eds.], The Return of Consciousness. Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation. https://www.philosophie-e.fb05.uni-mainz.de/files/2013/07/Metzinger_Suffering_2017.pdf
  • Moen, Ole Martin (2021). Pessimism Counts in Favor of Biomedical Enhancement: A Lesson from the Anti-Natalist Philosophy of P. W. Zapffe. Neuroethics 14 (2):315-325. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12152-021-09458-8
  • Parker, Allison (2019). A Pragmatic Look at Schopenhauer's Pessimism. https://philpapers.org/archive/PARAPL-2.pdf
  • Prescott, Paul (2012). What Pessimism Is
  • Sherman, Toby (2017). Epicureanism: An Ancient Guide to Modern Wellbeing. https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/32103/ShermanT.pdf
  • Simmons, Byron (2020). A thousand pleasures are not worth a single pain: The compensation argument for Schopenhauer's pessimism
  • Sullivan-Bissett, Ema (2022). Better to Return Whence We Came. Journal of Value Inquiry. 56 (1). Pages 85–100. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-022-09888-4
  • Sully, James (1891). Pessimism: A History and a Criticism
  • Tangenes, Gisle (2004). The view from mount Zapffe. Philosophy Now 45: 33-34. https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Tangenes_on_Zapffe.pdf
  • van der Lugt, Mara (2021). Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering. Princeton University Press
  • Vinding, Magnus (2022). A phenomenological argument against a positive counterpart to suffering. https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/phenomenological-argument/
  • Wicks, Robert (2018). Arthur Schopenhauer: Humor and the Pitiable Human Condition. In: Moland, L. (eds) All Too Human. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91331-5_6
  • The Power of Pessimism (https://einzelganger.co/the-power-of-pessimism/)

Completed - Closed - Done

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GA Review

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Unsuccessful. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:57, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Philosophical pessimism/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Alice793 (talk · contribs) 22:20, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Phlsph7 (talk · contribs) 10:57, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]


Hello Alice793 and thanks for all your improvements to this article. However, despite the improvements, the article fails criterion 2b since there are too many unreferenced paragraphs. Examples are the paragraphs starting with "In the 20th and 21st centuries,", "Constant dissatisfaction — duḥkha — is an intrinsic", and "In Buddhism, the concept of duḥkha". According to criterion 2b, these passages require inline citations "no later than the end of the paragraph". I suggest that you add all the relevant references before a renomination.

A few other observations

  • WP:EARWIG detects one potential copyvio but this is because of a quotation.
  • The article presents some WP:NPOV views in Wikivoice. They need to be attributed to a person or a school of thought. Spotting all these cases for an article of this length can be tricky. You could try sending it to WP:PEERREVIEW for a more thorough examination. Examples are
    • Constant dissatisfaction — duḥkha — is an intrinsic mark of all sentient existence
    • The person who attains this state of mind lives his life in complete peace and equanimity
  • since existence is bad, it would have been better had it not have been. I think the last "have" should be removed.
  • thus explaining what it means to feel better, all that just with relying on taking away disturbances. replace "with" with "by". Or express more directly as "all that just by taking away disturbances"
  • the article switches between English variants, e.g. "favour" (British English) and "behavior" (American English)
  • and thus is only experienced in an indirect or mediate way replace "mediate" with "mediated"
  • that the moral dillemas of life replace "dillemas" with "dilemmas"
  • But they do serve to clarify as to why there are cases remove "as to"

Phlsph7 (talk) 10:57, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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