Abstract
While sociology was born and could only be born in an atmosphere of optimism, where a belief existed that the future could and would be better, today it must exist in an atmosphere of increasing pessimism, an atmosphere of negation which has long since seriously weakened the idea of progress. This more recent attitude has come out of the disillusionment suffered particularly in Europe in the last four or five decades; Europe is generally regarded as the seat of modern pessimism. Today, however, one hears more than rumblings of disillusionment from the United States. The titles of the books of our century are an indication of the rising pessimism. Some of these titles would have provoked laughter, derision and serious doubts of sanity in the last century with its optimistic sureness of man’s great superiority and infinite capabilities. This century, however, has brought to the book market: Untergang des Abendlandes (Spengler, 1918–1922), La Rebelión de las Masas (Ortega y Gasset, 1930), The Crisis of Our Age (Sorokin, 1941), De Zelfmoord der Menschheid (W. H. Teupken, 1945), Time of Delirium (Hermann Rauschning, 1946), Studies in a Dying Culture (Christopher Caudwell, 1948) and Civilization on Trial (Toynbee, 1949).
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References
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Pessimism comes from the latin pessimus, worst, the superlative of pejor, worse; optimism comes from the latin optimus, the best.
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Bailey, R.B. (1958). Forms of Pessimism. In: Sociology Faces Pessimism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0859-9_2
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