The pessimistic eudemonologies of Schopenhauer and Freud and their relevance in times of pandemic

Abstract

In this article, we propose to test the relevance of Schopenhauer’s and Freud’s pessimistic eudemonologies, developed, respectively, in Aphorisms for the wisdom of life (1851) and in Civilization and its discontents (1930), asking whether they contribute to the task pointed out by Eduardo Brandão as the most important tophilosophy, in the current times of pandemic crisis, namely, “warning about the pitfalls that threaten humanity”. To do so, we will contextualize the current crisis, based on the analysis of its approach by Brandão, Jorge Viesenteiner and Alexandro Paixão; and after investigating both eudomonologies, we will argue that they help us to free ourselves from the illusion that the future will necessarily be better than the present, so that we do well to focus on resisting the threat of increasingsuffering, which can be done through self-knowledge, enrichment of the being, conscious thought and civilizing integration.