Tonality of reality

The universe is governed by a rational and benevolent providence: all that happens conduces to the good of the whole, and what seems an evil is but a trial or an appearance. This trust in the divine order of the world is a metaphysical optimism, far from any tragic vision of an indifferent cosmos.

On Providence, I-II (nothing evil can befall a good man)

Despite the slaughter-bench of history, the world is at bottom rational and ordered toward the good: evil and suffering are moments that the whole sublates and reconciles. The reconciliation (Versöhnung) of spirit with actuality, not resignation to the tragic, is the last word of the system.

Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Preface · Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Lectures)

The Taoist universe is fundamentally benign and trustworthy for whoever attunes to it: the dao 道 (the Way) nourishes all things without possessing them, and the spontaneous order of the world provides of itself once humans stop thwarting it. Evil and disorder spring from human forcing, not from a flaw in the cosmos: there is here a deep trust in the order of things.

Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 34, 51 · Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 73

The universe, infinite in atoms and worlds, is neither hostile nor tragic: once the fears of the gods and of death are dispelled, nature offers all that is needed for happiness, the good being easy to attain. This therapeutic optimism, where happiness is within everyone's reach, sets aside the tragic vision without lapsing into a benevolent providence.

Letter to Menoeceus, 122 and 133 (accessible happiness, the sage and fate) · Principal Doctrines, XXVII-XXVIII (friendship and confidence)

The world is not ruled by a benevolent providence: "heaven and earth are not benevolent, they treat the ten thousand beings as straw dogs," with the indifference of an impersonal process. Yet this impersonal course is not tragic: whoever accords with it finds peace, and the alternation of opposites ensures no extreme lasts. It is a serene, unillusioned tonality rather than a metaphysical optimism.

Dao De Jing, ch. 5 · Dao De Jing, ch. 2 and 58

The universe infinite in atoms and worlds is neither good nor evil, nor made for us: indifferent, it offers neither a consoling providence nor a tragic hostility. Once the fears of the gods and of death are dispelled, nature suffices for happiness, the good being easy to attain. Yet this therapeutic optimism keeps company with an acute sense of the world's fragility, itself doomed to come undone, which holds back any cosmic enthusiasm: a sober optimism, without the tragic but without providence.

On the Nature of Things, II, 1090-1174 (nature without gods; the declining world)

The providential world is fundamentally good and ordered, which places Marcus on the side of metaphysical optimism: all that happens befits the whole. But his unceasing contemplation of vanity, flux and oblivion lends that order a melancholy hue which holds the position well short of a Leibniz's serene optimism.

Meditations, II, 3 · Meditations, IV, 23 · Meditations, IV, 32

The world is not tragic for the Epicurean: nature, rightly understood, supplies all that happiness requires, for what is necessary is easy to obtain and what is hard is not necessary. Without a benevolent providence, the universe nonetheless remains hospitable, which warrants a measured optimism about the possibility of a serene life.

Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, XV and XXI · Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, book V

The world is not ruled by a benevolent providence and has no meaning given in advance: it is an impersonal flux of transformations without design. Yet this course is in no way tragic for Zhuangzi: whoever accords with it finds in it a causeless joy and a freedom of play, for death itself is but a turn of the wheel. The tonality is serene and carefree rather than optimistic or tragic, which leans slightly toward a happy welcome of the real.

Zhuangzi, ch. 18 (Perfect Happiness) · Zhuangzi, ch. 6 (The Great Source as Teacher)

Existence is contingent and without justification: being-in-itself is de trop (superfluous), gratuitous, and consciousness arises in a world that promises it nothing. The human condition is marked by anguish, abandonment and despair, and by the failure of every craving for the absolute (man is a useless passion). This tragic tone of finitude leans clearly toward tragic thought, without however reaching a defeatist pessimism, since freedom remains a foothold.

Being and Nothingness, conclusion (man is a useless passion) · Nausea (contingency, being superfluous)

The human condition is fundamentally ambiguous: we are at once freedom and facticity, subject and thing, consciousness and a body doomed to death, with no reconciliation possible in a guaranteed harmony. Beauvoir assumes this tension as a tragic given of existence, to be lived lucidly rather than fled, yet without lapsing into despair.

The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), the ambiguity of the human condition

The existentialist view of reality is contingent, gratuitous, without rational guarantee: nausea before brute existence and the anguish of freedom give the movement a tragic tonality, close to the sense of the absurd. It remains tempered, however, by confidence in commitment and action.

Nausea · Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety