Optimism

How can philosophy promise happiness through knowledge when the knowledge it provides shows us mostly how senseless and often horrible human life and society is? Is optimism ineluctably detached from reality? The paper examines the challenge of the optimistic outlook, first adumbrated by Plato, complexified by Epicurus, reaching its apogee in the eighteenth century, most famously with Voltaire’s derision of the view and his ironic reframing of optimism as a form of gardening. Stephen Gaukroger’s books are amongst other things, also contributions to the philosophical complexity of optimism.