Schopenhauer and His Anger

The foremost representative of modern pessimism is Schopenhauer. (The word pessimism comes from the Latin pessimus, worst.) The world and all of life, according to him, have no value whatsoever; this world is the worst of all possible worlds. So saying, he placed himself in opposition to the view which Leibniz had formulated — that this is the best of all possible worlds. Opposing this optimism (from the Latin optimus, best) he proceeded to reject its philosophical foundation, the belief in God. Schopenhauer’s conviction that the world and life are evil is, in principle, atheism — the view that this world can not be the work of an omniscient and perfectly good God.