So opined Adam Cohen recently in the "International Herald Tribune", and so, too, according to a recent book by Joshua Foa Dienstag, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, "Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit "(Princeton University Press, 2006). In his defense of pessimism as an appropriate and realistic philosophy, Dienstag points to the usual suspects: Arthur Schopenhauer, of course, the great 19th-century pessimist; but also Friedrich Nietzsche, and Albert Camus and the modern movement called existentialism. In this article, the author is disturbed by the continued reference to existentialism as a pessimistic, negative philosophy. Existentialism is said to be all about "the death of God," the meaninglessness of human life, and the anxiety those provoke. So, it is in the face of such anxiety that one needs the courage to make meanings, to be oneself. Furthermore, the author states that people hear so much about "the burden of responsibility" that they forget the basic lesson of existentialism: that responsibilities enhance rather than encumber their existence. Thus, he states that existentialism is not a philosophy that allows people to feel sorry for themselves in the midst of their malaise. It is a philosophy with which they can come to grips with these terrible times and actually change them.