By linking the pessimism/optimism controversy as it emerges from the image of man in literature, with the human condition and the role of reason, we bring it upon a philosophical ground. The task of the philosophical investigation of man, his faculties, his resources, and the basic conditions of his existence, is, in fact, to clarify the reasons intrinsic to the human condition for man either to despair about it or to glorify it. Accordingly, the first issue which philosophy is called upon to resolve is the validity of those judgments which reason may consider. More precisely, we have the doubt whether the acceptance of the sovereign rule of reason in matters concerning life and destiny of man is not an unwarranted reductionism.