The Meaning of Pessimistic Sentences

This paper was initially published as “Der Sinn pessimistischer Sätze” in Synthese (3 (1938) 5: 223–33) and then much later in the English translation which is reprinted here (“The Meaning of Pessimistic Sentences”, in: Brian McGuinness, Joachim Schulte (eds.), Ethics and the Will. Essays (= Vienna Circle Collection 21), Springer, Dordrecht 1994, 9–17). It is based on a lecture Schächter gave to members of the Vienna Circle in 1937 (see Chap. 8 of Vol. 2) and has much overlap with a section (reprinted as Chap. 8 of Vol. 2) of a book he published in 1978.