Scholarly Advice for Dark Times

Some people look to the stock market to read the national mood. Eugene Thacker, a philosopher at the New School, can look to the enrollment numbers in his course on pessimism, which have increased over the past few semesters. “There’s a sense people are having that the world is big, that there are a lot of dark forces,” he said recently. Students come seeking answers. “The conventional models, like protest, get lost.” Thacker is in his forties, with spiky black hair. The other day, he had on a black T-shirt, a black scarf, and black pants, accessorized with a black tote bag.

He began studying pessimism, he explained, because “philosophy begins with disappointment.” A few years ago, he wrote “In the Dust of This Planet,” a book of “horror philosophy” that the creator of the HBO show “True Detective” cited as inspiration; later, Glenn Beck called it part of a liberal plot to “infect” popular culture. Thacker’s new book, out this month, is “Infinite Resignation,” in which he writes that there are two kinds of pessimism: “The end is near” and “Will this never end?” As a work of philosophy, it’s out of the norm: pessimism, which he calls “a beard-stroking way of complaining,” has generally been dismissed by the academy as more bad mood than serious thinking. “People rarely say ‘I’m a pessimist’—they seem to historically be using it in a finger-pointing way,” Thacker said. “And I kind of liked that.”

Thacker was meeting up with a few of his former students at a Williamsburg bookstore. A sign on the front door said, “Come on in,” but the store’s grate was pulled down. “Uh-oh,” said Aaron Newman, who recently completed his master’s degree in liberal studies. It had been raining, and there was still mist in the air. Rachelle Rahmé, another recent graduate, said, “I love this kind of weather.” Soon, the sun peeked out, the shopkeeper arrived, and the group was ushered into a pleasant back yard. Thacker, who is from the Seattle area, told them that he takes comfort in a gloomy sky: “It’s contemplative.”

If Yale’s popular course on happiness is a scholarly way to the good life, Thacker’s might be the opposite. He has considered asking students, as they enter the classroom, “How unhappy are you today?” But he is wary of getting pegged as a guru. “There have been trade philosophy books that have tried to recast pessimism as self-help,” he said. They tend to suggest that it can make you a better realist. “I hate them. But I love to hate them.”

Leila Taylor, a former “goth kid,” said that, at first, “a lot of people interested in the class thought it was about Donald Trump.”

“This is a common thing,” Thacker said with a sigh. “I’m not here to offer you solace on the deplorable political situation. I’m not your therapist.” Instead, he has stacked the syllabus with “the patron saints of pessimism” (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Cioran). The students who stick around are a self-selecting group. “I felt guilty how therapeutic I found the reading,” Newman said.

Taylor agreed. “I was underlining everything like I was some angsty fourteen-year-old girl,” she said. “I relished the idea of luxuriating in misery.” That morning, she had looked over her notes. “And I just saw ‘poodles and flutes.’ ”

“That’s a great title of something,” Thacker replied.

Rahmé chimed in: “Schopenhauer did that every day”—walked his poodle, played his flute.

“An aspect of pessimism is the routine,” Thacker said. As are, he added, both “a sense of holding out hope” and “a sense of futility.” He began working on his new book eight years ago, during the “hope and change” era, and completed it during what seems to many like the end-time. To him, it doesn’t matter which Administration is in charge. “There’s always something to complain about,” he said. “There has always been a one per cent, there’s always been discrimination of people because of their race.” He’s not on social media. “I assume it’s just run by bots,” he said. Including Trump? Thacker nodded. “He’s a bot.”

If pessimism is about futility, what’s the point of writing about it? Thacker’s not sure, but he thinks that there’s something interesting about “undertaking the practice anyway.” He added, “Maybe it means next time around, the only students who get A’s are the ones who don’t turn in a paper.” The alums laughed. Humor can be helpful to pessimists. “I went through a phase of watching a lot of standup comedy,” Thacker said. “I love George Carlin. He takes no political side. Everyone deserves our spite.” ♦

By Betsy Morais

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