But is it true?

The human hope in God, in Providence, in Karma, or in whatever it is, is that it will all be all right in the end.

The unbroken circle. Universalism. Karma leading everyone home.

That we are not abandoned, that nothing is lost, that no one is broken forever beyond salvation or repair.

And who could plausibly deny that such a thing, or such things, could be true, even absent any particularly convincing picture of what it or they might actually be like?

But are they?

Or is any of them?

Somehow?

A defense of optimism

Not Leibnitz's extravagance but the far more limited claim that "the good in this state of existence preponderates over the bad."

Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, 1839, chapter 6.

Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, was published in 1819.

Schopenhauer made an extravagant case that human life, at least, was for each and every one of us a losing game, on hedonist terms.

Historically, most hedonists, though not all - Google Hegesias, "the death persuader" - , have agreed with Epicurus and Henry Sidgwick against Schopenhauer that life is generally and for most of us, for a good while, at least, choiceworthy.

It has been speculated Hegesias was influenced by Buddhism.

About Schopenhauer there is no need for speculation.

(And a very amusing attack on aristocracy in the same chapter.)