I’m an irreverent person. There are few things in life that I don’t like to mock, and there are few people I won’t eventually start to wind up. I enjoy laughing at serious things and being serious about ridiculous things.

I’m irreverent and occasionally cynical, but not pessimistic. Underneath this chortling, mocking exterior, I have a hopeful heart. I generally think most people are good people, that things will never be as bad as I imagine, and that the future is going to be better than the past in almost all measurable outcomes.

A pessimist is different. Pessimists talk about suffering a lot. They focus on the meaninglessness of existence, the drudgery of the everyday, and there’s not a motivational meme they’ve passed by without comment. I am sure you know a pessimist or two, and most of us are pessimistic about something. But in the history of ideas, there is only one King of Pessimism: Arthur Schopenhauer.

In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with associate professor and Schopenhauer expert David Bather Woods from the University of Warwick about religion, character, and compassion. For Bather Woods, Schopenhauer’s pessimism is not an embarrassing blip consigned to the obscure past. It’s both true and unavoidable. It can even be beneficial in certain ways.

So, here are three philosophical benefits to pessimism.

You will be more compassionate…

Schopenhauer’s basic starting point was that there is no such thing as happiness, but simply temporary moments free from suffering. The best we can hope for is not to experience an excess of pain or unmet desires. He has a famous line where he writes that “life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.” Not for nothing was he called the pessimistic philosopher.

But Schopenhauer didn’t stop there. Even he was aware that by presenting life as little better than hell on Earth, he wasn’t going to win a loyal readership. Pessimism doesn’t really sell. There had been bleak and pessimistic voices before him, but they were never popular for long.

“To be honest,” Bather Woods says, “love is incredibly important. Schopenhauer’s philosophy would be so much harder to take if he didn’t believe in some form of love. Pessimism might seem to be a hard-bitten, misanthropic philosophy… but it can go hand-in-hand with compassion. To be compassionate towards somebody is to believe in the reality of their suffering, to take their suffering at face value. Taking other people’s suffering seriously and responding with love and compassion—that seems to be the nub.”

Schopenhauer argued that compassion is the root of morality. And we can only be compassionate to other people if we appreciate two things. First, that everyone is suffering. Second, that their suffering is serious. Only when we accept these two pessimistic things can we start to be there for other people.

…to all living things

Pessimism does not discriminate. Suffering is borderless. For Schopenhauer, to live is to suffer, and of course, humans are not the only beings living. As Bather Woods puts it, “Anything that feels, for Schopenhauer, is anything that suffers. And anything that suffers is an appropriate object of compassion.”

Schopenhauer “hated animal cruelty with a passion,” and “the early pioneers of the animal welfare movement took inspiration directly from Schopenhauer.” If we accept that every living thing suffers, and the root of morality is compassion in the face of suffering, then it makes no sense to stop showing compassion where there is still suffering.

This is not a biological argument. This is not based on mapping an octopus’s nervous system or debating degrees of sentience in the animal kingdom. This is a philosophical argument. It says suffering is the direct expression of what Schopenhauer calls “the will” — a blind, ceaseless force that drives all living things to desire, strive, and inevitably, suffer. Wherever the will is, there is suffering.

“And, for Schopenhauer, anything that suffers,” Bather Woods says, “is an appropriate object of compassion. Either compassionate forbearance — like letting people or things live as they were — or actual kindness, like going out of your way to alleviate this suffering.”

And you can appreciate art more

If pessimism means we show compassion to ourselves, other humans, and all living things, then how can compassion alleviate suffering, even for a fleeting, temporary, existentially insignificant period of time?

Much of this alleviation is getting what you want. You suffer when you’re thirsty; it’s alleviated when you drink. You suffer when you’re lonely; you’re better when you have a friend. But Schopenhauer, possibly influenced by the swirling infusion of Indian philosophies at the time, argued that this is a pointless game. The endless cycle of desire and satiation will only occasionally give relief, but never anything more substantial.

For Schopenhauer, who wasn’t a Buddhist, the only way to meaningfully alleviate suffering is to lose yourself in aesthetic experience. It’s to dance in a clubbing reverie, dive into a literary world, or splash paint in an egoless trance.

“Schopenhauer was very well regarded by artists after he died,” Bather Woods says, “and in particular because he thought that aesthetic experience of natural beauty in the arts was some kind of temporary form of release from the will to life. Finding some oasis of calm and serenity within the arts is something people can actually apply. Even though ‘the arts’ can be very exclusive, of course, they’re still less exclusive than, you know, upstaking to a monastery and becoming a Buddhist monk or whatever.”

Life is suffering, and that’s certainly a pessimistic thing to say. But pessimism is also the greatest motivator to action. All living things suffer, and all living things want to alleviate suffering. We can do that in three ways: by showing compassion to other humans, showing compassion to living things, and enjoying the arts.