XIII. The Value of Life (Optimism and Pessimism)

Anyone who more or less adopts this view of thinkers like Eduard von Hartmann may think it necessary, in order to arrive at a correct valuation of life, to clear out of the way those factors which falsify our judgment about the balance of pleasure and of pain. He can try to do this in two ways: first, by showing that our desire (instinct, will) operates as a disturbing factor in the sober estimation of feeling-values, e.g., whereas we ought to judge that sexual enjoyment is a source of evil, we are beguiled by the fact that the sexual instinct is very strong in us into anticipating a pleasure which does not occur in the alleged intensity at all. We are bent on indulging ourselves, hence we do not confess to ourselves that the indulgence makes us suffer. Secondly, von Hartmann subjects feelings to a criticism designed to show that the objects to which our feelings attach themselves reveal themselves as illusions when examined by reason, and that they are destroyed from the moment that our constantly growing intelligence sees through the illusions.