Optimism and pessimism are both sentimental dispositions toward history

Evidence

And then the optimistic concept of becoming proves as elusive on the ideal as on the real plane… It is well known that Croce denied any value as a thinker to Leopardi, maintaining that pessimism and optimism are sentimental and not philosophical attitudes. But the pessimist could observe that, for its part, the idealist conception of Becoming is a matter of optimism and sentiment, since pessimism and optimism (if not animated by any faith in the Transcendent) conceive of History in the same way: as the flow of a river that has no mouth and then they place the emphasis either on the word ‘river’ or on the words ‘that has no mouth’ according to their state of mind. One side says: there is no mouth, but, as in a harmonious river, there is the continuity of the waves and the survival, in a developed form, of yesterday in today … And on the other side: there is the continuity of a river, but there is no river mouth … In brief, let us not forget that optimism is sentiment, no less than pessimism. It remains the fact that every philosophy cannot but form its attitudes sentimentally, ‘as pessimism or as optimism’, etc. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1282

Categorization

• XREF: The river-with-no-mouth image of progressive history echoes other critiques of teleology in the toolkit, incl. critiques of inevitable ‘progress’ frameworks. — connects to: Pessimism about historical transition masks a lack of will to live. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 89

Related

• Pessimism about historical transition masks a lack of will to live. (similarity 0.81)