In this provocative and passionately argued book, Roger Scruton proposes that the greatest harm and havoc has been wrought on the world by those who have presented themselves as optimists and idealists, whether of the left or of the right. Rejecting such ideals, we should instead seek to replace such irrational - and pernicious - exuberance with a humane pessimism.

Scruton argues that the tragedies and disasters of the history of the European continent have been the consequences of a false optimism and the fallacies that derive from it. In place of these fallacies, Scruton mounts a passionate defence of both civil society and freedom. He shows that the true legacy of European civilisation is not the false idealisms that have almost destroyed it - in the shapes of Nazism, fascism and communism - but the culture of forgiveness and irony which we must now protect from those whom it offends. The Uses of Pessimism is a passionate plea for reason and responsibility, written at a time of profound change.