Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900

Weltschmerz is a research of the pessimism that dominated German philosophy within the second half of the nineteenth century. Pessimism was basically the idea that life shouldn’t be value dwelling. This concept was launched into German philosophy by Schopenhauer, whose philosophy turned very trendy

within the 1860s. Frederick C. Beiser examines the extreme and lengthy controversy that arose from Schopenhauer’s pessimism, which modified the agenda of philosophy in Germany away from the logic of the sciences and towards an examination of the worth of life. He examines the most important defenders of pessimism

(Philipp Mainlander, Eduard von Hartmann and Julius Bahnsen) and its chief critics, particularly Eugen Duhring and the neo-Kantians. The pessimism dispute of the second half of the century has been largely ignored in secondary literature and this e-book is a primary try for the reason that Eighties to re-examine

it and to research the essential philosophical points raised by it. The dispute involved probably the most basic philosophical situation of all of them: whether or not life is value dwelling.