ABSTRACT
As with theology, one does not have to be a philosopher or believe philosophy useful to subscribe to DR or make one’s DR worldview explicit. One of the fiercest of such statements, for example, is that made by the horror writer Thomas Ligotti (2010), and many novelists and poets with no philosophical training espouse similar DR views. The Italian poet Leopardi wrote about investigating l’acerbo vero (the bitter truth) in his philosophical poems. Peter Heinegg, an ex-priest, offers one of the most concise yet comprehensive accounts of DR, pitched as pessimism, in Heinegg (2005). Beckett once claimed (not altogether honestly) that he did not read philosophy because he did not understand it. However, some philosophers have been or are explicit DRs (in my sense of the term) and most DR themes raise enormous metaphysical questions, moral issues and topics found in existentialism, philosophy of mind and mental health. ‘Concerning life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is no good ’, pronounced Nietzsche (1971), a sentiment echoed by Benatar (2016). In some cases philosophy rightly challenges the sweeping and unsupported statements of DR, and in many instances DR finds philosophy part of the problem in its over-cognitivisation, obsessive attention to detail and general obfuscation. For all its intellectual weightiness and sheer pomp, philosophy may find posterity judging it to have been a monumentally misdirected effort.
