Kidd, Ian James: Philosophical Pessimism and the Heterogeneity of Suffering

_The Journal of Ethics_. forthcomingThis paper explores the relationship between suffering and pessimism in its philosophical forms. I argue that the heterogeneity of both of those concepts means that there are no simple relations between them. One can trace several distinct relationships between (forms of) suffering and (varieties of) philosophical pessimism. Suffering can be evidence for one’s pessimistic judgments, or feature among the bad-making features of human life, but also be a conseque