Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-5r2nc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T11:23:28.927Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two Concepts of Optimism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Sidney Axinn
Sidney Axinn*
Affiliation:
Temple University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

1. Objective of the Paper. This is an exercise in formalism; an attempt to see what a certain hypothesis would look like if it were spelled out in more detail than it has so far received. The object is to frame a self-consistent hypothesis that includes certain contributions of both optimism and pessimism. We would like to save the moral advantages of each position; at first glance they seem logically exclusive.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , January 1954 , pp. 16 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1954

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I think that the argument of this paper is directly descended from the position of Edgar A. Singer, Jr. (12). I should also mention that I owe my interest in Nietzsche to the instigations and stimulation of Professor Thomas A. Cowan, and my interest in Schopenhauer to the highly sophisticated analysis of Professor J. Stokes Adams.

References

(1) Ackoff, Russell L.: “Toward a Science of Ethics,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. IX, 1949, pp. 663–672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2) Churchman, C. West: “Ethics, Ideals, and Dissatisfaction,” Ethics, Vol. LXIII, 1, Oct. '52, pp. 64–65.Google Scholar
(3) Churchman, C. West: Theory of Experimental Inference, The MacMillan Co., New York, 1948.Google Scholar
(4) James, William: Principles of Psychology, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1890.Google Scholar
(5) Kant, Immanuel: Idea for a Universal History on a Cosmopolitical Plan, Sociological Press, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1927.Google Scholar
(6) Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Philosophy of Nietzsche, The Modern Library, New York, 1927.Google Scholar
(7) Pope Leo XIII: The encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” issued in 1891, reprinted in part as “ The Condition of the Working Classes,” in Social Reformers, edited by Wagner, Donald O., The MacMillan Company, 1947.Google Scholar
(8) Rand, B.: The Classical Moralists, Houghton Mifflin Co., New York, 1948.Google Scholar
(9) Santayana, George: Character and Opinion in the United States, Scribner's Sons, New York 1921.Google Scholar
(10) Schopenhauer Selections: Scribner's Sons, 1928, edited by De Witt, H. Parker.Google Scholar
(11) Schrecker, Paul: Work and History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1948.Google Scholar
(12) Singer, Edgar A. Jr.: In Search of a Way of Life, Columbia Univ. Press, New York, 1948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar