Pessimism and Individualism

Georges Palante (1862-1925) is arguably the greatest theorist of individualism of his age. In this book he pushes his life-long exploration of individualism to the domain of emotion and affect, studying pessimism and individualism as emotional reactions to social life.

To test his ideas, he studies numerous writers and their ideas. He assembles, categorizes, and discusses many flavors of pessimism, writing chapters on each: Romantic and neo-Romantic, historical, misanthropic , irrationalistic, scientific, and theological pessimism.

The result of his study shows pessimism to be as a natural, although not necessarily universal, reaction of the individual to a feeling of alienation in society. Palante argues that "pessimism produces, or tends to produce individualism". He also argues that those who start with individualism already "carry the seeds" of pessimism: there is a mutual attraction between these two attitudes.

The philosopher Michel Onfray (1959-) has written of Palante: "His autobiography sticks out from under every word, lies behind every thesis... I suffer, therefore I am; I am, therefore I write. The sensibility is the genealogy of individualism, and hence of pessimism."