The existence of extraterrestrial life is one of the oldest unresolved puzzles in the history of human thought. As such, it is also in the focus of the contemporary research of the Universe. From a philosophically interesting perspective, this question has been raised by the Nobel Laurate Enrico Fermi, alluding to a perplexing lack of evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life. Therefore, it is the so-called Fermi’s Paradox that is in focus of the present thesis which is conceptualized as a discussion between Optimists, according to which life and intelligence are common occurrences in the Universe, and Pessimists or advocates of The Uniqueness Hypothesis, who consider life, especially intelligent life, as rare and possibly unique occurrences in the Universe. In the present thesis, the arguments and conclusions of the Optimists are exposed to a critical examination and it is shown that they are grounded in an anthropocentric view of the Universe. The author therefore opts for a pessimistic interpretation of the Fermi paradox and concludes that the life in the Universe is an event whose development up to the phase of intelligence is extremely unlikely. In the defense of the skeptical attitude towards extraterrestrial intelligence the author makes use of both speculative and empirical (evolutionary) argument