The true test of optimism and will

This afternoon, I was not altogether unhappily filling some hours between jobs reading the latest edition of The Economist (September 12th-18th 2020) in the autumn sun when I stumbled across a ‘Bagehot’ sub-heading which, as intended, piqued my interest.

The article about revolutionary conservatism sets its finely tuned sights on today’s conservatives and their penchant for “smashing things up or at least threatening to”, from the BBC and UK civil service to the Brexit deal signed with the EU earlier in the year. I’m neither inclined nor bold enough to get into British politics, especially in these complex times when polemics and pandemics reign, but I would like to amplify the one phrase “Pessimism of the spirit, optimism of the will”.

I recognised that it was a play on something—in The Economist’s inimitable style—but it took some snooping to find the origins of the original phrase, one Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), who famously said: "The challenge of modernity is to live life without illusions and without becoming disillusioned…I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but am an optimist because of will."

What did he mean here? Context is everything. Gramsci has been described by British historian E.J. Hobsbawm as “an extraordinary philosopher, perhaps a genius, probably the most original communist thinker of the 20th century in Western Europe”. Fine accolades today or in times of peace but during Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime of the 1920s, such a brimming intellect spelled danger. Charged with treason and for attempting to “undermine the Italian state”, he was sentenced to 20 years in order to “stop this brain from functioning”.

So when Gramsci wrote about optimism in accounts from his 34-volume, 3000-page ‘Prison Notebooks’ you can’t help but sit up and pay attention, regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum. He lamented that the crisis of his time was an old order dying from “morbid symptoms”, but leaving insufficient sustenance for a new order to be born.

And yet amid mayhem and under extreme conditions, he refused to let go of optimism.

“You must realise that I am far from feeling beaten,” he wrote, adding that “a man ought to be deeply convinced that the source of his own moral force is in himself—his very energy and will, the iron coherence of ends and means—that he never falls into those vulgar, banal moods, pessimism and optimism.”

Whatever the situation, Gramsci said he was able to imagine the worst that could happen in order to summon up all the reserves and willpower to overcome any obstacle. In other words, according to Gary Olson who writes in his 2019 book Pessimism, optimism and the role of intellectuals:

“In terms of optimism of the will, Gramsci means that humans have the capacity to overcome new challenges, to courageously move forward and create a better world in the face of very long odds. We can’t predict the course of history but human agency is paramount and history is made by human will.”

As Gramsci was able to describe a litany of ‘morbid symptoms’ in his time, Olson offers a potent list of his own to describe today’s ills, from endless wars to climate change and ecocide to desperate poverty and populist right-wing politics and what he calls an “empathy deficit disorder of epic proportions”.

Add to Olson’s ills the devastation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, with lives and livelihoods being lost around the world, and governments struggling to find their way (economy vs environment vs health vs society vs liberty vs security…), and you get possibly the truest test of whether the optimism of the will can be wrung out the spirit of pessimism.

It all sounds pretty miserable but for the light that punches its way through the darkness of Gramsci’s stoical version of optimism. As Noam Chomsky, the renowned linguist, historian and social critic, puts it: “Nobody can tell you how right it is to be optimistic. Nothing can be predicted about human affairs…nothing.”

[Roger Raveel, 1952, 'Man seen from behind', as pictured in Groeninge Museum, Bruge]