Take The Uses Of Pessimism: And The Danger Of False Hope Curated By Roger Scruton Listed As Script

one is going to be grand, I can feel it, You know that what you are reading is a conservative book when:
a the text is very simple and clear, even though it conveys ideas about the most complex problems of human existence
b the author leaves your brain some room for interaction, either accepting your disagreement by not making a caseclosed argument out of every conclusion, or inducing you to complete the thought.
And this is made straight clear, so you don't get manipulated
c every point is illustrated by a factual example, not only to prove it but to make it more understandable
d there is a lot of citations, but most of them are not arguments ab auctoritatem, I mean, they are not there to persuade you of something merely because somebody else, more important, said it: theyre there so it is clear its not an original thought it is a fruit of conservatism! and also to allow you to go and read it for yourself, so you get to know other authors and the complete thought.
Theyre open doors to knowledge,
That is exactly what one concludes when finishes “The Uses of Pessimism”: it is not a systematic study of a determined subject it is an open invitation for you to pursue information that, before reading it, you might think it was too complex or inaccessible.

And that is what conservatism is about: building up knowledge, aiming to find a final solution for each and every human problem, but knowing pessimistically that you will never grasp it entirely by yourself.
Nor will anybody else.
Roger Scruton has some odd notions about the Bible, He seems not to realize that the believers hope is in God and as a consequence is a bit down on Jeremiah Jeremiah is a pessimist in ways Scruton does not want to be.
But still Scruton wants to use pessimism, He uses pessimism to show how it helps to avoid seven fallacies that are in the world today, While Scruton is a bit screwy on his use of Scripture, the good news is that he uses Scripture very little in this bookmostly near the end.


What is good about this book is how he deploys pessimism to expose the fallacies,

The Best Case fallacy is a common one, You know how you are told to expect the best and plan for the worst Well this is the fallacy where you expect the best and plan for the best and dont think about the worst at all.
What makes this one interesting is where Scruton finds it occurring,

The Born Free fallacy is the notion that freedom is about being without constraints, Natural is better follow your heart, But we need customs, tradition, the gradual accretion of ways and means we call culture, Inhibitions allow us to live together in a civilized way, A certain pessimism, you see, about human abilities, human reason and human nature is in order,

The Utopian fallacy is easy to guess, What Scruton also delves into here a bit is why people can believe and proceed on the basis of such errors.
How can people think things are perfectible And yet they are still with us, . . after all the failed revolutions, Pessimism tells you this world is not going to be perfected and attempting final solutions only makes it worse.


The Zero Sum fallacy is the one in which people assume that if somebody gets ahead, they did it at the expense of somebody else.
The Republicans jumped all over a statement betraying this fallacy during their recent convention, How does pessimism help here Read the book,

The Planning fallacy is a harder one to get, but goes hand in hand with all the ones before it.
Its the idea that topdown management is the only way to make things work, Competing ideas only lead to confusion, people are led to believe, It favors oligarchy, you see, A bit of pessimism about anybody on a crusade is what is needed,

The Moving Spirit fallacy is the idea that things are as they are now out of some inexpressible necessity to which all must bow.
Get with the times, recognize the consensus, dont object to what people think everybody is doing because such must be.
Take this one to the Evangelicalsas well as the previous,

The Aggregation fallacy he puts nicely when he explains that these people will tell you, if you like chocolate, ketchup and cherries that the best thing then is to combine all three.
Or the old: whats better than the sound of one accordion The sound of two which happens to be true, but think of it in terms of the chap who bought a fuelefficient heater and cut his fuel consumption in half the next day he went to the store to buy a second and save himself on fuel altogether.
Scruton makes an accurate and snide remark about American palates and the combinations perpetrated by people here, but also about the French notion of combining liberty and equality, something even Americans may be persuaded to think about.


None of these fallacies have passed an expiration date, and having them explained and illustrated by Roger Scruton, it seems to me, will give you a certain clarity of perception which in the present condition is no small thing.
It isnt as

cheerless as it sounds, actually: it is kind of an exposition of the underlying philosophy of Puddleglum, and can anybody who knows the arc of Puddleglums story fail to see the value of that Next time I read The Silver Chair Ill have to see how many of these fallacies are there exposed.
A primeiríssima coisa que fiz assim que terminei esse livro foi voltar até a primeira página e reler tudo.
Isso porque cada frase que Roger Scruton escreve é um grande ensinamento, A sensação que tive depois que li é que aprendi e entendi tantas questões que nunca havia parado para pensar sobre, eu não poderia deixar nada passar, e por isso a releitura.


A relação que Scruton faz com o pessimismo conservador, contra o otimismo sem escrúpulos do progressismo, nos ajuda entender o tipo de raciocínio das duas pontas políticas.
Obviamente com tendência mais positivas conservadoras, afinal o próprio autor é um conservador e por sua vez um verdadeiro pessimista.
De qualquer modo, mesmo com otimismos pontuais por parte dos conservadores, ou pessimismo pontuais por parte de progressista, é possível notar que as suas visões de mundo são pautadas nesses dois aspectos.


Roger traz vários exemplos dos perigos do pensamento moderno que percebe o progresso sempre como algo positivo o próprio termo progresso é utilizado como sinônimo de algo que se tornou melhor com o tempo.
Tal falácia é um dos frutos dos pensamentos otimistas inescrupulosos,

O autor vai destrinchar cada falácia, perigo e as diferenças dos tipos de pensamento, Uma das leituras mais proveitosas que fiz esse ano, sem dúvidas! ”The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.
”

These lines from W, B. Yeatss poem The Second Coming pretty well summarize the point Roger Scruton makes in his intriguing book The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope, although in my reading Yeatss lines are not as unambiguous as they seem to be in Scrutons own but then poetry is like Humpty Dumptys approach to etymology or the promises of politicians in that it means whatever you choose it to mean.


The title The Uses of Pessimism may certainly sound a little bit odd to us because wouldnt we tend to regard optimism as a more humane and lifeaffirming attitude than its opposite At first sight, we might all agree but then we should remember that Scruton does not propagate a misanthropic and grumpy pessimism negating life as such.
Instead he touts what I would call a cheerful scepticism with regard to the pompous promises of our age that imply a complete malleability of humankind and society as such and inevitably end up in a destructively unrelenting and unfeeling feasibility mania.
In that light, Scruton is on the same team with Hannah Arendt, who saw the road to totalitarianism in everything that negates the essence of humanity and that presumptuously wants to create a new kind of society in which conflict, imperfection and frustration would be unknown, forgetting that the constraints leading to these imperfections are often the very sources from which life derives its fullness and human beings their freedom and individuality.


Scruton relies on Kants dictum that freedom is not present where man is able to do whatever he wants but where he is aware of the responsibility his decisions impose on him.
In Scrutons view, however, enlightenment, for all its beneficial effects, has also unleashed a bunch of fallacies that make it possible for people to pursue an “I” ideology, which places themselves or a collective “I” at the centre of the world, holding the promise of recreating the world in the image one would like it to appear, over the “we” attitude that regards compromise, the acceptance and careful reform of traditions and humility as the surest ways towards a better future.
He deals with these fallacies in various chapters, which make the bulk of his book and which, once again, show Scruton as a keen observer and a keener analyst.
Let me give you a quick overview on these fallacies, which, in Scrutons eyes are dependent on each other:

The best case fallacy implies that any risk towards what is deemed a better future is worth taking, either because progress is bound to obtain victory, anyway, or because the brunt of responsibility and social costs incurred with these risks can be shifted towards other people, be they those labelled as opponents to change and therefore reactionary or be they members of future generations.
The born free fallacy is based on Rousseaus assumption of the individuals absolute freedom and innocence in mans natural state, an idea that, according to Scruton has already played irreparable havoc with the educational systems in western states.
Scruton refutes this fallacy by confronting it with Kants idea of freedom that I summarized above, The utopian fallacy is more like a strategy employed by ruthless optimists: By leaving the ideal that society is going to achieve in a deliberately obscure fog just consider Marxs utterly naïve sketch of communist society , those optimists can devote all their energy to denouncing what is in favour of what is to be, and they can justify any ugly measure and foray into democratic structures by pointing out how splendid the future will be knowing, perhaps, that such a future will never exist.
Paradoxically, utopian visions are seldom truly optimistic but rather cynical in that they negate the present without any compromise and even denounce those who try to make small improvements that will actually help real people, by saying that this will contribute to the continuation of a system that is utterly rotten.
The zerosum fallacy is particularly nasty: It is based on the shortsighted assumption that one individuals gain is another individuals loss, an assumption that runs counter to the wealth, security and quality of life which are offered by complex and civilized societies.
The zerosum fallacy allows the ruthless optimist to target his hatred and his envy on those who are actually successful and content in a world the utopian regards as an obstacle towards a better future.
It is this kind of fallacy, by the way, that enables German FFF activists to deny old people their say in public affairs, on the grounds that they wont be here for long, anyway, and that they are to be blamed for global warming.
The planning fallacy depends on the misconception that complex things like societies or economic structures can actually be planned by those who are intelligent enough, whereas it is most certainly to be doubted that a system of countless interdependences can be successfully managed in a topdown manner.
Scruton here advocates the wisdom of tradition and custom, provided it leaves enough space to genuine attempts at improving what goes wrong by means of compromise, modest risktaking in a trialanderrorway and careful reform.
It is in this chapter that Scruton argues against the EU superstate which we have come to live under I deliberately dont say “in”, and whose evergrowing bureaucracy and tendency to curtail national legislation and sovereignty which, at least, have the legitimation of elections and accountability increasingly puts into question the European idea.
I know that Scruton is a Brexiteer, and a very convincing and prolix one at that, but still, I must say that I found my own views largely mirrored in what he has to say.
Lets hurry on to the next fallacy, the moving spirit fallacy, in which Scruton criticizes the ruthless optimists tendency to claim knowledge of the socalled Zeitgeist and to insist that he is simply clinging to the hem of Historys cloak when heading towards Utopia.
Scruton argues that the idea of Zeitgeist originally arose in the context of art and was an ex post way of looking at things, and that it is, indeed, a logical fallacy to transfer it into the realm of politics and morals and to use it a priori.
One could, I think, simply quote Goethe and say, ”Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heißt, / Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist, / In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln.
“ Last, not least, there is the aggregation fallacy, which Scruton exemplifies with the help of the slogan of liberté, égalité, fraternité in that the French Revolution soon came to labour under the contradiction between creating equality and upholding liberty.
The ruthless optimist is, like the perfect propagandist of Orwells state, able to promote two conflicting ideas at the same time but that is probably because he usually shies from defining his terms in understandable language.


Scruton also sketches the means with which ruthless optimists defend their fallacies as well as the power they have accumulated through them, and one of the most entertaining bits in this context is the scathing criticism of the emptiness and nonsensical quality the prose of people like Althusser, Derrida and others of that ilk evinces, probably as its only quality.
It reminded me a bit of Schopenhauers diatribes against his favourite enemy Hegel,

I do not agree with everything Scruton says in his book he should, for instance, have been a lot more critical on Enoch Powell , and I also doubt whether the fallacies he describes at work are really, as he surmises, relicts of our tribal past Id rather see them as bad side effects of Enlightenment as such, but on the whole, Scruton has written a very convincing and also entertaining book.
It is very deplorable that this intelligent and erudite man is fighting with cancer at the moment, and I sincerely hope that his reasonable voice will not be silenced too soon.


I would have liked to add some quotations to my summary but when reading the book, I was so hooked by its argument that I could not muster enough selfdiscipline to excerpt passages I found quoteworthy.
Their number was legion, though,

I am sorry to say that Roger Scruton died on Sunday,th January, aged, after half a years battle with cancer.


“If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms.
”
.