Concept
Optimism
Overview
positive mental attitude
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
For the charge of Optimism there is even less ground than for that of Fatalism. The latter was, to a certain extent, connected with the rise of the Positive spirit; but Optimism is simply a result of Theology; and its influence has always been decreasing with the growth of Positivism. Astronomical laws, it is true, suggest the idea of perfection as naturally as that of necessity.
Auguste Comte, A General View of Positivism Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and Life
Names Optimism several times; states what Optimism is.
It becomes too readily the creed of those who live at ease, in comfort, of those who have been successful in obtaining this world's rewards. Too readily optimism makes the men who hold it callous and blind to the sufferings of the less fortunate, or ready to find the cause of troubles of others in their personal viciousness. It thus co-operates with pessimism, in spite of the extreme nominal differences between the…
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy
Names Optimism several times; opens on Optimism.
No such attempt can be a _general_ solution of the problem; and to minds of sombre tinge, who naturally feel life as a tragic mystery, such optimism is a shallow dodge or mean evasion. It accepts, in lieu of a real deliverance, what is a lucky personal accident merely, a cranny to escape by. It leaves the general world unhelped and still in the clutch of Satan.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
States what Optimism is; names Optimism twice.
Philosophers who discussed Optimism
Related ideas
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Philosophical realism
- Philosophy
- Isaac Newton
- Atheism
- Idealism
- Positive psychology
- Lisbon
- Best of all possible worlds
- Psychology
- Pessimism
- Merriam-Webster
- Voltaire
- Attitude (psychology)
- Blaise Pascal
- Naturalism (philosophy)
- Deity
- Free will
- Alexander Pope
- Intelligence
- Nicholas Rescher
- Stroke
- Philosophical pessimism
- Health
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of French philosophy.