Arthur Schopenhauer
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Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
. He is best known for his 1818 work ''
The World as Will and Representation ''The World as Will and Representation'' (''WWR''; german: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ''WWV''), sometimes translated as ''The World as Will and Idea'', is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first editio ...
'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the
phenomenal A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...
world as the product of a blind
noumenal In philosophy, a noumenon (, ; ; noumena) is a posited object or an event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception. The term ''noumenon'' is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term ''phenomenon'', which ...
will. Building on the
transcendental idealism Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781). By ''transcendental'' (a term that dese ...
of
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
(1724–1804), Schopenhauer developed an
atheistic Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...
metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of
German idealism German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...
. He was among the first thinkers in
Western philosophy Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word ' ...
to share and affirm significant tenets of
Indian philosophy Indian philosophy refers to philosophical traditions of the Indian subcontinent. A traditional Hindu classification divides āstika and nāstika schools of philosophy, depending on one of three alternate criteria: whether it believes the Veda ...
, such as asceticism, denial of the
self The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhood ...
, and the notion of the world-as-appearance. His work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of
philosophical pessimism Philosophical pessimism is a family of philosophical views that assign a negative value to life or existence. Philosophical pessimists commonly argue that the world contains an empirical prevalence of pains over pleasures, that existence is onto ...
. Though his work failed to garner substantial attention during his lifetime, Schopenhauer had a posthumous impact across various disciplines, including
philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
,
literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
, and
science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
. His writing on
aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
,
morality Morality () is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong). Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of cond ...
, and
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
have influenced many thinkers and artists. Those who have cited his influence include philosophers
Emil Cioran Emil Mihai Cioran (, ; 8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher, aphorist and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms. ...
,
Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
Addressed in: Cate, Curtis. Friedrich Nietzsche. Chapter 7. and
Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...
,Culture & Value, p. 24, 1933–34 scientists
Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theo ...
and
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
, psychoanalysts
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
and
Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
, writers
Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
,
Herman Melville Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American people, American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his bes ...
,
Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...
,
Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include ''Demian'', ''Steppenwolf (novel), Steppenwolf'', ''Siddhartha (novel), Siddhartha'', and ''The Glass Bead Game'', ...
,
Machado de Assis Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (), often known by his surnames as Machado de Assis, ''Machado,'' or ''Bruxo do Cosme Velho''Vainfas, p. 505. (21 June 1839 – 29 September 1908), was a pioneer Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short sto ...
,
Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...
, Marcel ProustShapshay, Sandra, "Schopenhauer's Aesthetics", ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/schopenhauer-aesthetics Retrieved on 19 March 2021. and
Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...
, and composers
Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
, Johannes Brahms,
Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
and Gustav Mahler.


Life


Early life

Arthur Schopenhauer was born on 22 February 1788, in Danzig (then part of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, was a bi-confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Crown of the Kingdom of ...
; present-day
Gdańsk Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...
,
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
) on Heiligegeistgasse (present day Św. Ducha 47), the son of
Johanna Schopenhauer Johanna Schopenhauer (née Trosiener; 9 July 1766 – 17 April 1838) was mother of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. She was the first German woman to publish books without a pseudonym, an influential literary salon host, and in the 182 ...
(née Trosiener; 1766–1838) and Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer (1747–1805), both descendants of wealthy German-Dutch
patrician Patrician may refer to: * Patrician (ancient Rome), the original aristocratic families of ancient Rome, and a synonym for "aristocratic" in modern English usage * Patrician (post-Roman Europe), the governing elites of cities in parts of medieval ...
families. While they came from a Protestant background, neither of them was very religious; both supported the
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
, and were republicans, cosmopolitans and Anglophiles. Cartwright (2010). p. 9 When Danzig became part of
Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...
in 1793, Heinrich moved to
Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...
—a free city with a republican constitution. His firm continued trading in Danzig where most of their extended families remained.
Adele Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (, ; born 5 May 1988), professionally known by the mononym Adele, is an English singer and songwriter. After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a reco ...
, Arthur's only sibling, was born on 12 July 1797. In 1797, Arthur was sent to
Le Havre Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very cl ...
to live with the family of his father's business associate, Grégoire de Blésimaire. He seemed to enjoy his two-year stay there, learning to speak French and fostering a life-long friendship with Jean Anthime Grégoire de Blésimaire. As early as 1799, Arthur started playing the flute. In 1803, he accompanied his parents on a European tour of
Holland Holland is a geographical regionG. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, ''Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I'', Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105 and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th c ...
, Britain,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
,
Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
,
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
and
Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...
. Viewed as primarily a pleasure tour, Heinrich used the opportunity to visit some of his business associates abroad. Heinrich offered Arthur a choice: he could stay at home and start preparations for university, or he could travel with them and continue his merchant education. Arthur chose to travel with them. He deeply regretted his choice later because the merchant training was very tedious. He spent twelve weeks of the tour attending school in
Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * ...
, where he was disillusioned by strict and intellectually shallow
Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
religiosity. He continued to sharply criticize Anglican religiosity later in life despite his general Anglophilia. He was also under pressure from his father, who became very critical of his educational results. In 1805, Heinrich drowned in a canal near their home in Hamburg. Although it was possible that his death was accidental, his wife and son believed that it was suicide. He was prone to
anxiety Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
and depression; each becoming more pronounced later in his life. Heinrich had become so fussy, even his wife started to doubt his mental health. Cartwright (2010). p. 43 "There was, in the father's life, some dark and vague source of fear which later made him hurl himself to his death from the attic of his house in Hamburg." Arthur showed similar moodiness during his youth and often acknowledged that he inherited it from his father. There were other instances of serious mental health history on his father's side of the family. Despite his hardship, Schopenhauer liked his father and later referred to him in a positive light. Heinrich Schopenhauer left the family with a significant inheritance that was split in three among Johanna and the children. Arthur Schopenhauer was entitled to control of his part when he reached the age of majority. He invested it conservatively in government bonds and earned annual interest that was more than double the salary of a university professor. After quitting his merchant apprenticeship, with some encouragement from his mother, he dedicated himself to studies at the
Ernestine Gymnasium, Gotha The Ernestine Gymnasium (Latin name: Ernestinum, used in German) is a humanistic and modern gymnasium in Gotha, Germany, the successor of the Illustrious Gymnasium (''Gymnasium illustre''), founded in 1524, which in 1853 was merged with the rec ...
, in
Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg () was a duchy ruled by the Ernestine branch of the House of Wettin in today's Thuringia, Germany. The extinction of the line in 1825 led to a major re-organisation of the Thuringian states. History In 1640 the sons of the l ...
. While there, he also enjoyed social life among the local nobility, spending large amounts of money, which deeply concerned his frugal mother. He left the Gymnasium after writing a satirical poem about one of the schoolmasters. Although Arthur claimed that he left voluntarily, his mother's letter indicates that he may have been expelled.Cartwright (2010). p. 129 Arthur spent two years as a merchant in honor of his dead father. During this time, he had doubts about being able to start a new life as a scholar. Most of his prior education was as a practical merchant and he had trouble learning Latin; a prerequisite for an academic career. His mother moved away, with her daughter Adele, to
Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...
—then the centre of
German literature German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy a ...
—to enjoy social life among writers and artists. Arthur and his mother did not part on good terms. In one letter, she wrote: "You are unbearable and burdensome, and very hard to live with; all your good qualities are overshadowed by your conceit, and made useless to the world simply because you cannot restrain your propensity to pick holes in other people." His mother, Johanna, was generally described as vivacious and sociable. She died 24 years later. Some of Arthur's negative opinions about women may be rooted in his troubled relationship with his mother. Arthur moved to Hamburg to live with his friend Jean Anthime, who was also studying to become a merchant.


Education

He moved to Weimar but did not live with his mother, who even tried to discourage him from coming by explaining that they would not get along very well.Cartwright (2010). p. 131 Their relationship deteriorated even further due to their temperamental differences. He accused his mother of being financially irresponsible, flirtatious and seeking to remarry, which he considered an insult to his father's memory. His mother, while professing her love to him, criticized him sharply for being moody, tactless, and argumentative, and urged him to improve his behavior so that he would not alienate people. Arthur concentrated on his studies, which were now going very well, and he also enjoyed the usual social life such as balls, parties and theater. By that time Johanna's famous salon was well established among local intellectuals and dignitaries, the most celebrated of them being
Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
. Arthur attended her parties, usually when he knew that Goethe would be there—although the famous writer and statesman seemed not even to notice the young and unknown student. It is possible that Goethe kept a distance because Johanna warned him about her son's depressive and combative nature, or because Goethe was then on bad terms with Arthur's language instructor and roommate,
Franz Passow Franz Ludwig Carl Friedrich Passow (20 September 1786 – 11 March 1833) was a German classical scholar and lexicographer. Biography He was born at Ludwigslust in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In 1807 he was appointed to the professorship of ...
. Schopenhauer was also captivated by the beautiful
Karoline Jagemann Baroness Karoline Jagemann von Heygendorff (25 January 1777, in Weimar – 10 July 1848, in Dresden) was a major German tragedienne and singer. Her great roles included Elizabeth in '' Mary Stuart'' (1800) and Beatrice in ''The Bride of Messina ...
, mistress of
Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach Karl August, sometimes anglicised as Charles Augustus (3 September 1757 – 14 June 1828), was the sovereign Duke of Saxe-Weimar and of Saxe-Eisenach (in personal union) from 1758, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach from its creation (as a political un ...
, and he wrote to her his only known love poem. Despite his later celebration of asceticism and negative views of sexuality, Schopenhauer occasionally had sexual affairs—usually with women of lower social status, such as servants, actresses, and sometimes even paid prostitutes. In a letter to his friend Anthime he claims that such affairs continued even in his mature age and admits that he had two out-of-wedlock daughters (born in 1819 and 1836), both of whom died in infancy. In their youthful correspondence Arthur and Anthime were somewhat boastful and competitive about their sexual exploits—but Schopenhauer seemed aware that women usually did not find him very charming or physically attractive, and his desires often remained unfulfilled. He left Weimar to become a student at the
University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
in 1809. There are no written reasons about why Schopenhauer chose that university instead of the then more famous
University of Jena The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (german: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The un ...
, but Göttingen was known as more modern and scientifically oriented, with less attention given to theology. Law or medicine were usual choices for young men of Schopenhauer's status who also needed career and income; he chose
medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...
due to his scientific interests. Among his notable professors were Bernhard Friedrich Thibaut,
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren (25 October 1760, Arbergen6 March 1842, Göttingen) was a German historian. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History. Biography Heeren was born on 25 October 1760 in Arbergen near Bremen, a small village ...
,
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He is considered to be a main founder of zoology and anthropology as comparative, scientific disciplines. He ...
,
Friedrich Stromeyer Prof Friedrich Stromeyer FRS(For) FRSE (2 August 1776 – 18 August 1835) was a German chemist. He was the discoverer of cadmium. From 1982 a Friedrich Stromeyer Prize has been awarded for chemical achievement in Germany. Life He was born in ...
,
Heinrich Adolf Schrader Heinrich Adolf Schrader (1 January 1767 in Alfeld near Hildesheim – 22 October 1836 in Göttingen) was a German botanist and mycologist. He studied medicine early in life. He named the Australian plant genus '' Hakea'' in 1797. In 1795 he ...
,
Johann Tobias Mayer Johann Tobias Mayer (5 May 1752 – 30 November 1830) was a German physicist. He was mainly well known for his mathematics and natural science textbooks. ''Anfangsgründe der Naturlehre zum Behuf der Vorlesungen über die Experimental-Physik'', ...
and Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck. He studied
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
,
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
under
Gottlob Ernst Schulze Gottlob Ernst Schulze (; 23 August 1761 – 14 January 1833) was a German philosopher, born in Heldrungen (modern-day Thuringia, Germany). He was the grandfather of the pioneering biochemist Ernst Schulze. Biography Schulze was a professor at ...
, the author of '' Aenesidemus'', who made a strong impression and advised him to concentrate on
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
and
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
. He decided to switch from medicine to philosophy around 1810–11 and he left Göttingen, which did not have a strong philosophy program: besides Schulze, the only other philosophy professor was
Friedrich Bouterwek Friedrich Ludewig Bouterwek (15 April 1766 – 9 August 1828) was Germany, German philosopher and critic, born to a mining director at Oker (Goslar), Oker, Electorate of Saxony; today a district of Goslar in Lower Saxony. Life Bouterwek studied l ...
, whom Schopenhauer disliked. He did not regret his medicinal and scientific studies; he claimed that they were necessary for a philosopher, and even in Berlin he attended more lectures in sciences than in philosophy.Cartwright (2010). p. 170 During his days at Göttingen, he spent considerable time studying, but also continued his flute playing and social life. His friends included
Friedrich Gotthilf Osann Friedrich Gotthilf Osann (August 22, 1794, in Weimar – 30 November 1858, in Giessen) was a German classical philologist. He was a brother to physician Emil Osann (1787–1842) and chemist Gottfried Osann (1796–1866). He received h ...
,
Karl Witte Johann Heinrich Friedrich Karl Witte (July 1, 1800 in Lochau (now part of Schkopau) – March 6, 1883 in Halle (Saale), Halle) was a German jurist and scholar of Dante Alighieri. Biography Karl Witte was the son of pastor Karl Heinrich Gottfried ...
,
Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen Christian Charles or Karl Josias von Bunsen (25 August 1791 – 28 November 1860), also known as , was a German diplomat and scholar. Life Early life Bunsen was born at Korbach, an old town in the German principality of Waldeck. His fa ...
, and William Backhouse Astor Sr. He arrived at the newly founded
University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...
for the winter semester of 1811–12. At the same time, his mother had just begun her literary career; she published her first book in 1810, a biography of her friend
Karl Ludwig Fernow Karl Ludwig Fernow (19 November 1763 – 4 December 1808) was a German art critic and archaeologist. Early life Fernow was born in Pomerania, the son of a servant in the household of the lord of Blumenhagen. At the age of twelve he became cle ...
, which was a critical success. Arthur attended lectures by the prominent
post-Kantian German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionar ...
philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, but quickly found many points of disagreement with his ; he also found Fichte's lectures tedious and hard to understand.Cartwright (2010). p. 159 He later mentioned Fichte only in critical, negative terms—seeing his philosophy as a lower-quality version of Kant's and considering it useful only because Fichte's poor arguments unintentionally highlighted some failings of Kantianism. He also attended the lectures of the famous Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, whom he also quickly came to dislike. His notes and comments on Schleiermacher's lectures show that Schopenhauer was becoming very critical of religion and moving towards
atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...
. He learned by self-directed reading; besides Plato, Kant and Fichte he also read the works of
Schelling Schelling is a surname. Notable persons with that name include: * Caroline Schelling (1763–1809), German intellectual * Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), German philosopher * Felix Emanuel Schelling (1858–1945), American educato ...
,
Fries French fries (North American English), chips (British English), finger chips ( Indian English), french-fried potatoes, or simply fries, are '' batonnet'' or ''allumette''-cut deep-fried potatoes of disputed origin from Belgium and France. Th ...
,
Jacobi Jacobi may refer to: * People with the surname Jacobi (surname), Jacobi Mathematics: * Jacobi sum, a type of character sum * Jacobi method, a method for determining the solutions of a diagonally dominant system of linear equations * Jacobi eigenva ...
, Bacon, Locke, and much current scientific literature. He attended philological courses by August Böckh and
Friedrich August Wolf Friedrich August Wolf (; 15 February 1759 – 8 August 1824) was a German classicist and is considered the founder of modern philology. Biography He was born in Hainrode, near Nordhausen. His father was the village schoolmaster and organi ...
and continued his naturalistic interests with courses by
Martin Heinrich Klaproth Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1 December 1743 – 1 January 1817) was a German chemist. He trained and worked for much of his life as an apothecary, moving in later life to the university. His shop became the second-largest apothecary in Berlin, and ...
,
Paul Erman Paul Erman (29 February 1764 – 11 October 1851) was a German physicist from Berlin, Brandenburg and a Huguenot of the fourth generation. He was the son of the historian Jean Pierre Erman (1735–1814), author of ''Histoire des réfugiés'' ...
,
Johann Elert Bode Johann Elert Bode (; 19 January 1747 – 23 November 1826) was a German astronomer known for his reformulation and popularisation of the Titius–Bode law. Bode determined the orbit of Uranus and suggested the planet's name. Life and career B ...
, Ernst Gottfried Fischer,
Johann Horkel Johann Horkel (8 September 1769 in Burg auf Fehmarn – 15 November 1846 in Berlin) was a German physician and botanist. From 1787 he studied medicine at the University of Halle, where in 1802 he was named an associate professor. From 1804 to ...
, Friedrich Christian Rosenthal and
Hinrich Lichtenstein Martin Hinrich Carl Lichtenstein (10 January 1780 – 2 September 1857) was a German physician, explorer, botanist and zoologist. Biography Born in Hamburg, Lichtenstein was the son of Anton August Heinrich Lichtenstein. He studied medicine ...
(Lichtenstein was also a friend whom he met at one of his mother's parties in Weimar).


Early work

Schopenhauer left Berlin in a rush in 1813, fearing that the city could be attacked and that he could be pressed into military service as Prussia had just joined the war against France. He returned to Weimar but left after less than a month, disgusted by the fact that his mother was now living with her supposed lover, Georg Friedrich Konrad Ludwig Müller von Gerstenbergk (1778–1838), a civil servant twelve years younger than her; he considered the relationship an act of infidelity to his father's memory. He settled for a while in
Rudolstadt Rudolstadt is a town in the German federal state Thuringia, with the Thuringian Forest to the southwest, and to Jena and Weimar to the north. The former capital of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, the town is built along the River Saale inside a wide v ...
, hoping that no army would pass through the small town. He spent his time in solitude,
hiking Hiking is a long, vigorous walk, usually on trails or footpaths in the countryside. Walking for pleasure developed in Europe during the eighteenth century.AMATO, JOSEPH A. "Mind over Foot: Romantic Walking and Rambling." In ''On Foot: A Histor ...
in the mountains and the
Thuringian forest The Thuringian Forest (''Thüringer Wald'' in German), is a mountain range in the southern parts of the German state of Thuringia, running northwest to southeast. Skirting from its southerly source in foothills to a gorge on its north-west side i ...
and writing his dissertation, ''
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason ''On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason'' (german: Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde) is an elaboration on the classical Principle of Sufficient Reason, written by German philosopher Arthur Schope ...
''. He completed his dissertation at about the same time as the French army was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig. He became irritated by the arrival of soldiers in the town and accepted his mother's invitation to visit her in Weimar. She tried to convince him that her relationship with Gerstenbergk was platonic and that she had no intention of remarrying. But Schopenhauer remained suspicious and often came in conflict with Gerstenbergk because he considered him untalented, pretentious, and
nationalistic Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: T ...
. His mother had just published her second book, ''Reminiscences of a Journey in the Years 1803, 1804, and 1805'', a description of their family tour of Europe, which quickly became a hit. She found his dissertation incomprehensible and said it was unlikely that anyone would ever buy a copy. In a fit of temper Arthur told her that people would read his work long after the "rubbish" she wrote was totally forgotten. In fact, although they considered her novels of dubious quality, the Brockhaus publishing firm held her in high esteem because they consistently sold well. Hans Brockhaus (1888–1965) later claimed that his predecessors "saw nothing in this manuscript, but wanted to please one of our best-selling authors by publishing her son's work. We published more and more of her son Arthur's work and today nobody remembers Johanna, but her son's works are in steady demand and contribute to Brockhaus' reputation." He kept large portraits of the pair in his office in
Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
for the edification of his new editors. Also contrary to his mother's prediction, Schopenhauer's dissertation made an impression on Goethe, to whom he sent it as a gift. Although it is doubtful that Goethe agreed with Schopenhauer's philosophical positions, he was impressed by his intellect and extensive scientific education. Their subsequent meetings and correspondence were a great honor to a young philosopher, who was finally acknowledged by his intellectual hero. They mostly discussed Goethe's newly published (and somewhat lukewarmly received) work on color theory. Schopenhauer soon started writing his own treatise on the subject, ''
On Vision and Colors ''On Vision and Colors'' (originally translated as ''On Vision and Colours''; german: Ueber das Sehn und die Farben) is a treatise by Arthur Schopenhauer that was published in May 1816 when the author was 28 years old. Schopenhauer had extensive d ...
'', which in many points differed from his teacher's. Although they remained polite towards each other, their growing theoretical disagreements—and especially Schopenhauer's extreme self-confidence and tactless criticisms—soon made Goethe become distant again and after 1816 their correspondence became less frequent. Schopenhauer later admitted that he was greatly hurt by this rejection, but he continued to praise Goethe, and considered his color theory a great introduction to his own.Cartwright (2010). p. 265 Another important experience during his stay in Weimar was his acquaintance with Friedrich Majer—a
historian of religion A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...
, orientalist and disciple of Herder—who introduced him to Eastern philosophy (see also
Indology Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the History of India, history and Culture of India, cultures, Languages of South Asia, languages, and Indian literature, literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a ...
). Schopenhauer was immediately impressed by the ''
Upanishads The Upanishads (; sa, उपनिषद् ) are late Vedic Sanskrit texts that supplied the basis of later Hindu philosophy.Wendy Doniger (1990), ''Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism'', 1st Edition, University of Chicago Press, , ...
'' (he called them "the production of the highest human wisdom", and believed that they contained superhuman concepts) and the
Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was ...
, and put them on a par with Plato and Kant.Cartwright (2010). p. 272 He continued his studies by reading the ''
Bhagavad Gita The Bhagavad Gita (; sa, श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता, lit=The Song by God, translit=śrīmadbhagavadgītā;), often referred to as the Gita (), is a 700- verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic ''Mahabharata'' (c ...
'', an amateurish German journal ''Asiatisches Magazin'' and ''Asiatick Researches'' by
the Asiatic Society The Asiatic Society is a government of India organisation founded during the Company rule in India to enhance and further the cause of "Oriental research", in this case, research into India and the surrounding regions. It was founded by the p ...
. Schopenhauer held a profound respect for
Indian philosophy Indian philosophy refers to philosophical traditions of the Indian subcontinent. A traditional Hindu classification divides āstika and nāstika schools of philosophy, depending on one of three alternate criteria: whether it believes the Veda ...
; although he loved Hindu texts, he never revered a Buddhist text but regarded
Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
as the most distinguished religion. His studies on Hindu and Buddhist texts were constrained by the lack of adequate literature, and the latter were mostly restricted to
Theravada Buddhism ''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...
. He also claimed that he formulated most of his ideas independently, and only later realized the similarities with Buddhism. Schopenhauer read the Latin translation and praised the Upanishads in his main work, ''
The World as Will and Representation ''The World as Will and Representation'' (''WWR''; german: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ''WWV''), sometimes translated as ''The World as Will and Idea'', is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first editio ...
'' (1819), as well as in his ''
Parerga and Paralipomena ''Parerga and Paralipomena'' (Greek for "Appendices" and "Omissions", respectively; german: Parerga und Paralipomena) is a collection of philosophical reflections by Arthur Schopenhauer published in 1851. The selection was compiled not as a summa ...
'' (1851), and commented,
In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death.
As the relationship with his mother fell to a new low, in May 1814 he left Weimar and moved to
Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...
. He continued his philosophical studies, enjoyed the cultural life, socialized with intellectuals and engaged in sexual affairs. His friends in Dresden were
Johann Gottlob von Quandt Johann Gottlob von Quandt (9 April 1787 – 19 June 1859) was a German artist, art scholar, and collector. Biography Von Quandt was born in Leipzig. He had met and corresponded with Goethe. Some of his own works are exhibited in the Tower of ...
,
Friedrich Laun Friedrich August Schulze (1 June 1770 – 4 September 1849) was a German novelist, who wrote under the pen name Friedrich Laun. Schulze was born in Dresden. His first novel, '' Der Mann, auf Freiersfüssen'' (1801), was favorably received. He wro ...
,
Karl Christian Friedrich Krause Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (; 6 May 1781 – 27 September 1832) was a German philosopher whose doctrines became known as Krausism. Krausism, when considered in its totality as a complete, stand-alone philosophical system, had only a small f ...
and Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl, a young painter who made a romanticized portrait of him in which he improved some of Schopenhauer's unattractive physical features. His criticisms of local artists occasionally caused public quarrels when he ran into them in public. Schopenhauer's main occupation during his stay in Dresden was his seminal philosophical work, ''
The World as Will and Representation ''The World as Will and Representation'' (''WWR''; german: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ''WWV''), sometimes translated as ''The World as Will and Idea'', is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first editio ...
'', which he started writing in 1814 and finished in 1818. He was recommended to the publisher
Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus (4 May 1772 – 20 August 1823) was a German encyclopedia publisher and editor, famed for publishing the '' Conversations-Lexikon'', which is now published as the Brockhaus encyclopedia. Biography Brockhaus was educ ...
by Baron Ferdinand von Biedenfeld, an acquaintance of his mother. Although Brockhaus accepted his manuscript, Schopenhauer made a poor impression because of his quarrelsome and fussy attitude, as well as very poor sales of the book after it was published in December 1818. In September 1818, while waiting for his book to be published and conveniently escaping an affair with a maid that caused an unwanted pregnancy, Schopenhauer left Dresden for a year-long vacation in
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
. He visited
Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400  ...
,
Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...
,
Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
,
Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
and Milan, travelling alone or accompanied by mostly English tourists he met. He spent the winter months in Rome, where he accidentally met his acquaintance
Karl Witte Johann Heinrich Friedrich Karl Witte (July 1, 1800 in Lochau (now part of Schkopau) – March 6, 1883 in Halle (Saale), Halle) was a German jurist and scholar of Dante Alighieri. Biography Karl Witte was the son of pastor Karl Heinrich Gottfried ...
and engaged in numerous quarrels with German tourists in the Antico Caffè Greco, Caffè Greco, among them Johann Friedrich Böhmer, who also mentioned his insulting remarks and unpleasant character. He enjoyed art, architecture, and ancient ruins, attended plays and operas, and continued his philosophical contemplation and love affairs. One of his affairs supposedly became serious, and for a while he contemplated marriage to a rich Italian noblewoman—but, despite his mentioning this several times, no details are known and it may have been Schopenhauer exaggerating. He corresponded regularly with his sister Adele and became close to her as her relationship with Johanna and Gerstenbergk also deteriorated. She informed him about their financial troubles as the banking house of A. L. Muhl in Danzig—in which her mother invested their whole savings and Arthur a third of his—was near bankruptcy. Arthur offered to share his assets, but his mother refused and became further enraged by his insulting comments.Cartwright (2010). p. 352 The women managed to receive only thirty percent of their savings while Arthur, using his business knowledge, took a suspicious and aggressive stance towards the banker and eventually received his part in full. The affair additionally worsened the relationships among all three members of the Schopenhauer family. He shortened his stay in Italy because of the trouble with Muhl and returned to Dresden. Disturbed by the financial risk and the lack of responses to his book he decided to take an academic position since it provided him with both income and an opportunity to promote his views. He contacted his friends at universities in Heidelberg, Göttingen and Berlin and found Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin most attractive. He scheduled his lectures to coincide with those of the famous philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, G. W. F. Hegel, whom Schopenhauer described as a "clumsy charlatan". He was especially appalled by Hegel's supposedly poor knowledge of natural sciences and tried to engage him in a quarrel about it already at his test lecture in March 1820. Hegel was also facing political suspicions at the time, when many progressive professors were Carlsbad Decrees, fired, while Schopenhauer carefully mentioned in his application that he had no interest in politics. Despite their differences and the arrogant request to schedule lectures at the same time as his own, Hegel still voted to accept Schopenhauer to the university. Only five students turned up to Schopenhauer's lectures, and he dropped out of academia. A late essay, "On University Philosophy", expressed his resentment towards the work conducted in academies.


Later life

After his tenure in academia, he continued to travel extensively, visiting
Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Schaffhausen, Vevey, Milan and spending eight months in Florence. Before he left for his three-year travel, Schopenhauer had an incident with his Berlin neighbor, 47-year-old seamstress Caroline Louise Marquet. The details of the August 1821 incident are unknown. He claimed that he had just pushed her from his entrance after she had rudely refused to leave, and that she had purposely fallen to the ground so that she could sue him. She claimed that he had attacked her so violently that she had become paralyzed on her right side and unable to work. She immediately sued him, and the process lasted until May 1827, when a court found Schopenhauer guilty and forced him to pay her an annual pension until her death in 1842. Schopenhauer enjoyed Italy, where he studied art and socialized with Italian and English nobles. It was his last visit to the country. He left for Munich and stayed there for a year, mostly recuperating from various health issues, some of them possibly caused by venereal diseases (the treatment his doctor used suggests syphilis). He contacted publishers, offering to translate Hume into German and Kant into English, but his proposals were declined. Returning to Berlin, he began to study Spanish so he could read some of his favorite authors in their original language. He liked Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Miguel de Cervantes, and especially Baltasar Gracián. He also made failed attempts to publish his translations of their works. A few attempts to revive his lectures—again scheduled at the same time as Hegel's—also failed, as did his inquiries about relocating to other universities. During his Berlin years, Schopenhauer occasionally mentioned his desire to marry and have a family.Cartwright (2010). p. 404 For a while he was unsuccessfully courting 17-year-old Flora Weiss, who was 22 years younger than himself. His unpublished writings from that time show that he was already very critical of monogamy but still not advocating polygyny—instead musing about a Polyamory, polyamorous relationship that he called "tetragamy". He had an on-and-off relationship with a young dancer, Caroline Medon, Caroline Richter (she also used the surname Medon after one of her ex-lovers). They met when he was 33 and she was 19 and working at the Berlin Opera. She had already had numerous lovers and a son out of wedlock, and later gave birth to another son, this time to an unnamed foreign diplomat (she soon had another pregnancy but the child was stillborn). As Schopenhauer was preparing to escape from Berlin in 1831, due to a cholera epidemic, he offered to take her with him on the condition that she left her young son behind. She refused and he went alone; in his will he left her a significant sum of money, but insisted that it should not be spent in any way on her second son. Schopenhauer claimed that, in his last year in Berlin, he had a wikt:premonition, prophetic dream that urged him to escape from the city.Cartwright (2010). p. 436 As he arrived in his new home in Frankfurt, he supposedly had another Supernatural, supernatural experience, an apparition of his dead father and his mother, who was still alive. This experience led him to spend some time investigating paranormal phenomena and Magic (supernatural), magic. He was quite critical of the available studies and claimed that they were mostly ignorant or fraudulent, but he did believe that there are authentic cases of such phenomena and tried to explain them through his metaphysics as manifestations of the will. Upon his arrival in Frankfurt, he experienced a period of depression and declining health. He renewed his correspondence with his mother, and she seemed concerned that he might commit suicide like his father. By now Johanna and Adele were living very modestly. Johanna's writing did not bring her much income, and her popularity was waning. Their correspondence remained reserved, and Arthur seemed undisturbed by her death in 1838. His relationship with his sister grew closer and he corresponded with her until she died in 1849. In July 1832 Schopenhauer left Frankfurt for Mannheim but returned in July 1833 to remain there for the rest of his life, except for a few short journeys. He lived alone except for a succession of pet poodles named Ātman (Hinduism), Atman and Butz. In 1836, he published ''On the Will in Nature''. In 1836, he sent his essay "On the Freedom of the Will" to the contest of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and won the prize for the following year. He sent another essay, "On the Basis of Morality", to the Royal Danish Society for Scientific Studies, but did not win the prize despite being the only contestant. The Society was appalled that several distinguished contemporary philosophers were mentioned in a very offensive manner, and claimed that the essay missed the point of the set topic and that the arguments were inadequate. Schopenhauer, who had been very confident that he would win, was enraged by this rejection. He published both essays as ''The Two Basic Problems of Ethics''. The first edition, published in 1841, again failed to draw attention to his philosophy. In the preface to the second edition, in 1860, he was still pouring insults on the Royal Danish Society. Two years later, after some negotiations, he managed to convince his publisher, Brockhaus, to print the second, updated edition of ''The World as Will and Representation''. That book was again mostly ignored and the few reviews were mixed or negative. Schopenhauer began to attract some followers, mostly outside academia, among practical professionals (several of them were lawyers) who pursued private philosophical studies. He jokingly referred to them as "evangelists" and "apostles". One of the most active early followers was Julius Frauenstädt, who wrote numerous articles promoting Schopenhauer's philosophy. He was also instrumental in finding another publisher after Brockhaus declined to publish ''Parerga and Paralipomena'', believing that it would be another failure.Cartwright (2010). p. 506 Though Schopenhauer later stopped corresponding with him, claiming that he did not adhere closely enough to his ideas, Frauenstädt continued to promote Schopenhauer's work. They renewed their communication in 1859 and Schopenhauer named him heir for his literary estate. Frauenstädt also became the editor of the first collected works of Schopenhauer. In 1848, Schopenhauer witnessed German revolutions of 1848–49, violent upheaval in Frankfurt after General Hans Adolf Erdmann von Auerswald and Prince Felix Lichnowsky were murdered. He became worried for his own safety and property.Cartwright (2010). p. 514 Even earlier in life he had had such worries and kept a sword and loaded pistols near his bed to defend himself from thieves. He gave a friendly welcome to Austrian soldiers who wanted to shoot revolutionaries from his window and as they were leaving he gave one of the officers his opera glasses to help him monitor rebels. The rebellion passed without any loss to Schopenhauer and he later praised Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz for restoring order.Cartwright (2010). p. 515 He even modified his will, leaving a large part of his property to a Prussian fund that helped soldiers who became invalids while fighting rebellion in 1848 or the families of soldiers who died in battle. As Young Hegelians were advocating change and progress, Schopenhauer claimed that misery is natural for humans and that, even if some utopian society were established, people would still fight each other out of boredom, or would starve due to overpopulation. In 1851, Schopenhauer published ''
Parerga and Paralipomena ''Parerga and Paralipomena'' (Greek for "Appendices" and "Omissions", respectively; german: Parerga und Paralipomena) is a collection of philosophical reflections by Arthur Schopenhauer published in 1851. The selection was compiled not as a summa ...
'', which contains essays that are supplementary to his main work. It was his first successful, widely read book, partly due to the work of his disciples who wrote praising reviews. The essays that proved most popular were the ones that actually did not contain the basic philosophical ideas of his system.Cartwright (2010). p. 539 Many academic philosophers considered him a great stylist and cultural critic but did not take his philosophy seriously. His early critics liked to point out similarities of his ideas to those Fichte and Schelling,Cartwright (2010). pp. 381–386 or to claim that there were numerous contradictions in his philosophy. Both criticisms enraged Schopenhauer. He was becoming less interested in intellectual fights, but encouraged his disciples to do so. His private notes and correspondence show that he acknowledged some of the criticisms regarding contradictions, inconsistencies, and vagueness in his philosophy, but claimed that he was not concerned about harmony and agreement in his propositions and that some of his ideas should not be taken literally but instead as metaphors. Academic philosophers were also starting to notice his work. In 1856, the University of Leipzig sponsored an essay contest about Schopenhauer's philosophy, which was won by Rudolf Seydel's very critical essay. Schopenhauer's friend Jules Lunteschütz made the first of his four portraits of him—which Schopenhauer did not particularly like—which was soon sold to a wealthy landowner, Carl Ferdinand Wiesike, who built a house to display it. Schopenhauer seemed flattered and amused by this, and would claim that it was his first chapel. As his fame increased, copies of paintings and photographs of him were being sold and admirers were visiting the places where he had lived and written his works. People visited Frankfurt's ''Englischer Hof'' to observe him dining. Admirers gave him gifts and asked for autographs. He complained that he still felt isolated due to his not very social nature and the fact that many of his good friends had already died from old age. He remained healthy in his own old age, which he attributed to regular walks no matter the weather and always getting enough sleep. He had a great appetite and could read without glasses, but his Hearing loss, hearing had been declining since his youth and he developed problems with rheumatism.Cartwright (2010). p. 545 He remained active and lucid, continued his reading, writing and correspondence until his death. The numerous notes that he made during these years, amongst others on aging, were published Posthumous publication, posthumously under the title ''Senilia''. In the spring of 1860 his health began to decline, and he experienced shortness of breath and heart palpitations; in September he suffered inflammation of the lungs and, although he was starting to recover, he remained very weak. The last friend to visit him was Wilhelm Gwinner; according to him, Schopenhauer was concerned that he would not be able to finish his planned additions to ''Parerga and Paralipomena'' but was at peace with dying. He died of Respiratory failure, pulmonary-respiratory failure on 21 September 1860 while sitting at home on his couch. He died at the age of 72 and had a funeral conducted by a Lutheran minister.


Philosophy


The world as representation

Schopenhauer saw his philosophy as an extension of Kant's, and used the results of Kantian epistemological investigation (
transcendental idealism Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781). By ''transcendental'' (a term that dese ...
) as starting point for his own. Kant had argued that the Empirical evidence, empirical world is merely a complex of appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our mental representations. Schopenhauer did not deny that the external world existed empirically but followed Kant in claiming that our knowledge and experience of the world is always indirect. Schopenhauer reiterates this in the first sentence of his main work: "The world is my representation (''Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung'')". Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. In Book One of ''The World as Will and Representation'', Schopenhauer considers the world from this angle—that is, insofar as it is representation.


Theory of perception

In November 1813
Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
invited Schopenhauer to help him on his Theory of Colours. Although Schopenhauer considered colour theory a minor matter, he accepted the invitation out of admiration for Goethe. Nevertheless, these investigations led him to his most important discovery in epistemology: finding a demonstration for the ''a priori'' nature of causality. Kant openly admitted that it was David Hume, Hume's skeptical assault on causality that motivated the critical investigations in his ''Critique of Pure Reason'' and gave an elaborate proof to show that causality is ''a priori''. After Gottlob Ernst Schulze, G. E. Schulze had made it plausible that Kant had not disproven Hume's skepticism, it was up to those loyal to Kant's project to prove this important matter. The difference between the approaches of Kant and Schopenhauer was this: Kant simply declared that the empirical content of perception is "given" to us from outside, an expression with which Schopenhauer often expressed his dissatisfaction. He, on the other hand, was occupied with the questions: how do we get this empirical content of perception; how is it possible to comprehend subjective sensations "limited to my skin" as the objective perception of things that lie "outside" of me? Causality is therefore not an empirical concept drawn from objective perceptions, as Hume had maintained; instead, as Kant had said, objective perception presupposes knowledge of causality. By this intellectual operation, comprehending every effect in our sensory organs as having an external cause, the external world arises. With vision, finding the cause is essentially simplified due to light acting in straight lines. We are seldom conscious of the process that interprets the double sensation in both eyes as coming from one object, that inverts the impressions on the retinas, and that uses the change in the apparent position of an object relative to more distant objects provided by binocular vision to perceive depth and distance. Schopenhauer stresses the importance of the intellectual nature of perception; the senses furnish the raw material by which the intellect produces the world as representation. He set out his theory of perception for the first time in ''
On Vision and Colors ''On Vision and Colors'' (originally translated as ''On Vision and Colours''; german: Ueber das Sehn und die Farben) is a treatise by Arthur Schopenhauer that was published in May 1816 when the author was 28 years old. Schopenhauer had extensive d ...
'', and, in the subsequent editions of ''Fourfold Root'', an extensive exposition is given in § 21.


The world as will

In Book Two of ''The World as Will and Representation'', Schopenhauer considers what the world is beyond the aspect of it that appears to us—that is, the aspect of the world beyond representation, the world considered "thing-in-itself, in-itself" or "noumena", its inner essence. The very being in-itself of all things, Schopenhauer argues, is will (''Wille''). The empirical world that appears to us as representation has plurality and is ordered in a spatio-temporal framework. The world as thing in-itself must exist outside the subjective forms of space and time. Although the world manifests itself to our experience as a multiplicity of objects (the "objectivation" of the will), each element of this multiplicity has the same blind essence striving towards existence and life. Human rationality is merely a secondary phenomenon that does not distinguish humanity from the rest of nature at the fundamental, essential level. The advanced cognitive abilities of human beings, Schopenhauer argues, serve the ends of willing—an illogical, directionless, ceaseless striving that condemns the human individual to a life of suffering unredeemed by any final purpose. Schopenhauer's philosophy of the will as the essential reality behind the world as representation is often called Voluntarism (philosophy), metaphysical voluntarism. For Schopenhauer, understanding the world as will leads to ethical concerns (see the #Ethics, ethics section below for further detail), which he explores in the Fourth Book of ''The World as Will and Representation'' and again in his two prize essays on ethics, ''On the Freedom of the Will'' and ''On the Basis of Morality''. No individual human actions are free, Schopenhauer argues, because they are events in the world of appearance and thus are subject to the principle of sufficient reason: a person's actions are a necessary consequence of motives and the given character of the individual human. Necessity extends to the actions of human beings just as it does to every other appearance, and thus we cannot speak of freedom of individual willing. Albert Einstein quoted the Schopenhauerian idea that "a man can ''do'' as he will, but not ''will'' as he will." Yet the will as thing in-itself is free, as it exists beyond the realm of representation and thus is not constrained by any of the forms of necessity that are part of the principle of sufficient reason. According to Schopenhauer, salvation from our miserable existence can come through the will's being "tranquillized" by the metaphysical insight that reveals individuality to be merely an illusion. The saint or 'great soul' intuitively "recognizes the whole, comprehends its essence, and finds that it is constantly passing away, caught up in vain strivings, inner conflict, and perpetual suffering". The negation of the will, in other words, stems from the insight that the world in-itself (free from the forms of space and time) is one. Asceticism, Ascetic practices, Schopenhauer remarks, are used to aid the will's "self-abolition", which brings about a blissful, redemptive "will-less" state of emptiness that is free from striving or suffering.


Art and aesthetics

For Schopenhauer, human "willing"—desiring, craving, etc.—is at the root of suffering. A temporary way to escape this pain is through aesthetic contemplation. Here one moves away from ordinary cognizance of individual things to cognizance of eternal Platonic ''Ideas''—in other words, cognizance that is free from the service of will. In aesthetic contemplation, one no longer perceives an object of perception as something from which one is separated; rather "it is as if the object alone existed without anyone perceiving it, and one can thus no longer separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one, the entirety of consciousness entirely filled and occupied by a single perceptual image". Subject and object are no longer distinguishable, and the ''Idea'' comes to the fore. From this aesthetic immersion, one is no longer an individual who suffers as a result of servitude to one's individual will but, rather, becomes a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of cognition". The pure, will-less subject of cognition is cognizant only of Ideas, not individual things: this is a kind of cognition that is unconcerned with relations between objects according to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (time, space, cause and effect) and instead involves complete absorption in the object. Art is the practical consequence of this brief aesthetic contemplation, since it attempts to depict the essence/pure Ideas of the world. Music, for Schopenhauer, is the purest form of art because it is the one that depicts the will itself without it appearing as subject to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, therefore as an individual object. According to Daniel Albright, "Schopenhauer thought that philosophy of music, music was the only art that did not merely copy ideas, but actually embodied the will itself". He deemed music a timeless, universal language comprehended everywhere, that can imbue global enthusiasm, if in possession of a significant melody.


Mathematics

Schopenhauer's Mathematical realism, realist views on mathematics are evident in his criticism of contemporaneous attempts to prove the parallel postulate in Euclidean geometry. Writing shortly before the discovery of hyperbolic geometry demonstrated the logical independence of the axiom—and long before the general theory of relativity revealed that it does not necessarily express a property of physical space—Schopenhauer criticized mathematicians for trying to use indirect concepts to prove what he held was directly evident from intuition, intuitive perception. Throughout his writings, Schopenhauer criticized the logical derivation of philosophies and mathematics from mere concepts, instead of from intuitive perceptions. Although Schopenhauer could see no justification for trying to prove Euclid's parallel postulate, he did see a reason for examining another of Euclid's axioms. This follows Immanuel Kant, Kant's reasoning.


Ethics

Schopenhauer asserts that the task of ethics is not to prescribe moral actions that ought to be done, but to investigate moral actions. As such, he states that philosophy is always theoretical: its task to explain what is given. According to Kant's transcendental idealism, space and time are forms of our sensibility in which phenomena appear in multiplicity. Reality thing-in-itself, in itself is free from multiplicity, not in the sense that an object is one, but that it is outside the ''possibility'' of multiplicity. Two individuals, though they appear distinct, are in-themselves not distinct. Appearances are entirely subordinated to the principle of sufficient reason. The egoistic individual who focuses his aims on his own interests has to deal with empirical laws as well as he can. What is relevant for ethics are individuals who can act against their own self-interest. If we take a man who suffers when he sees his fellow men living in poverty and consequently uses a significant part of his income to support ''their'' needs instead of his ''own'' pleasures, then the simplest way to describe this is that he makes ''less distinction between himself'' and others than is usually made. Regarding how things ''appear'' to us, the egoist asserts a gap between two individuals, but the altruist experiences the sufferings of others as his own. In the same way a compassionate man cannot hurt animals, though they appear as distinct from himself. What motivates the altruist is compassion. The suffering of others is for him not a cold matter to which he is indifferent, but he feels connectiveness to all beings. Compassion is thus the basis of morality.


Eternal justice

Schopenhauer calls the principle through which multiplicity appears the ''principium individuationis''. When we behold nature we see that it is a cruel battle for existence. Individual manifestations of the will can maintain themselves only at the expense of others—the will, as the only thing that exists, has no other option but to devour itself to experience pleasure. This is a fundamental characteristic of the will, and cannot be circumvented. Unlike temporal or human justice, which requires time to repay an evil deed and "has its seat in the state, as requiting and punishing", eternal justice "rules not the state but the world, is not dependent upon human institutions, is not subject to chance and deception, is not uncertain, wavering, and erring, but infallible, fixed, and sure".''The World as Will and Idea'' Vol. 1 § 63 Eternal justice is not retributive, because retribution requires time. There are no delays or reprieves. Instead, punishment is tied to the offence, "to the point where the two become one. ... Tormenter and tormented are one. The [Tormenter] errs in that he believes he is not a partaker in the suffering; the [tormented], in that he believes he is not a partaker in the guilt." Suffering is the moral outcome of our attachment to pleasure. Schopenhauer deemed that this truth was expressed by the Christian dogma of original sin and, in Eastern religions, by the Reincarnation, dogma of rebirth.


Quietism

He who sees through the ''principium individuationis'' and comprehends suffering ''in general'' as his own will see suffering everywhere and, instead of fighting for the happiness of his individual manifestation, will abhor life itself since he knows that it is inseparably connected with suffering. For him, a happy individual life in a world of suffering is like a beggar who dreams one night that he is a king. Those who have experienced this intuitive knowledge cannot affirm life, but exhibit asceticism and quietism, meaning that they are no longer sensitive to motives, are not concerned about their individual welfare, and accept without resistance the evil that others inflict on them. They welcome poverty and neither seek nor flee death. Schopenhauer referred to asceticism as the denial of the will to live. Human life is a ceaseless struggle for satisfaction and, instead of continuing their struggle, ascetics break it. It does not matter if these ascetics adhere to the dogmata of Christianity or to Dharmic faith, Dharmic religions, since their way of living is the result of intuitive knowledge.


Psychology

Philosophers have not traditionally been impressed by the necessity of sex, but Schopenhauer addressed sex and related concepts forthrightly: He named a force within man that he felt took invariable precedence over reason: the Will to Live or Will to Life (''Wille zum Leben''), defined as an inherent drive within human beings, and all creatures, to stay alive; a force that inveigles us into reproducing. Schopenhauer refused to conceive of love as either trifling or accidental, but rather understood it as an immensely powerful force that lay unseen within man's psyche (psychology), psyche, guaranteeing the quality of the human race: It has often been argued that Schopenhauer's thoughts on sexuality foreshadowed the evolution, theory of evolution, a claim met with satisfaction by Charles Darwin, Darwin as he included a quotation from Schopenhauer in his ''The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Descent of Man''. This has also been noted about Sigmund Freud, Freud's concepts of the libido and the unconscious mind, and evolutionary psychology in general.


Political and social thought


Politics

Schopenhauer's politics were an echo of his system of ethics, which he elucidated in detail in his ''Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik'' (the two essays ''On the Freedom of the Will'' and ''On the Basis of Morality''). In occasional political comments in his ''
Parerga and Paralipomena ''Parerga and Paralipomena'' (Greek for "Appendices" and "Omissions", respectively; german: Parerga und Paralipomena) is a collection of philosophical reflections by Arthur Schopenhauer published in 1851. The selection was compiled not as a summa ...
'' and ''Manuscript Remains'', Schopenhauer described himself as a proponent of limited government. Schopenhauer shared the view of Thomas Hobbes on the necessity of the state and state action to check the innate destructive tendencies of our species. He also defended the independence of the legislative, judicial and executive branches of power, and a monarch as an impartial element able to practise justice (in a practical and everyday sense, not a cosmological one). He declared that monarchy is "natural to man in almost the same way as it is to bees and ants, to cranes in flight, to wandering elephants, to wolves in a pack in search of prey, and to other animals".''Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2'', "On Jurisprudence and Politics," §127, trans. Payne (p. 254). Intellect in monarchies, he writes, always has "much better chances against stupidity, its implacable and ever-present foe, than it has in republics; but this is a great advantage." On the other hand, Schopenhauer disparaged republicanism as being "as unnatural to man as it is unfavorable to higher intellectual life and thus to the arts and sciences". By his own admission, Schopenhauer did not give much thought to politics, and several times he wrote proudly of how little attention he paid "to political affairs of [his] day". In a life that spanned several revolutions in French and German government, and a few continent-shaking wars, he maintained his position of "minding not the times but the eternities". He wrote many disparaging remarks about Germany and the Germans. A typical example is: "For a German it is even good to have somewhat lengthy words in his mouth, for he thinks slowly, and they give him time to reflect."


Punishment

The State, Schopenhauer claimed, punishes criminals to prevent future crimes. It places "beside every possible motive for committing a wrong a more powerful motive for leaving it undone, in the inescapable punishment. Accordingly, the criminal code is as complete a register as possible of counter-motives to all criminal actions that can possibly be imagined ..."Schopenhauer, ''
The World as Will and Representation ''The World as Will and Representation'' (''WWR''; german: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ''WWV''), sometimes translated as ''The World as Will and Idea'', is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first editio ...
'', Vol. I, § 62.
He claimed that this doctrine was not original to him but had appeared in the writings of
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, Seneca the Younger, Seneca, Thomas Hobbes, Hobbes, Samuel von Pufendorf, Pufendorf, and Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, Anselm Feuerbach.


Races and religions

Schopenhauer attributed civilizational primacy to the northern "white races" due to their sensitivity and creativity (except for the ancient Egyptians and Hindus, whom he saw as equal):
The highest civilization and culture, apart from the History of Hinduism, ancient Hindus and Ancient Egypt, Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmans, the Inca Empire, Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilization.
Schopenhauer was fervently Abolitionism, opposed to slavery. Speaking of the treatment of slaves in the Slavery in the United States, slave-holding states of the United States, he condemned "those devils in human form, those bigoted, church-going, strict sabbath-observing scoundrels, especially the Anglican parsons among them" for how they "treat their innocent black brothers who through violence and injustice have fallen into their devil's claws". The slave-holding states of North America, Schopenhauer writes, are a "disgrace to the whole of humanity". In his ''Metaphysics of Sexual Love'', Schopenhauer wrote:
Further, the consideration as to the complexion is very decided. Blondes prefer dark persons, or brunettes; but the latter seldom prefer the former. The reason is, that fair hair and blue eyes are in themselves a variation from the type, almost an abnormity, analogous to white mice, or at least to grey horses. In no part of the world, not even in the vicinity of the pole, are they indigenous, except in Europe, and are clearly of Scandinavian origin. I may here express my opinion in passing that the white colour of the skin is not natural to man, but that by nature he has a black or brown skin, like our forefathers the Hindus; that consequently a white man has never originally sprung from the womb of nature, and that thus there is no such thing as a white race, much as this is talked of, but every white man is a faded or bleached one. Forced into the strange world, where he only exists like an exotic plant, and like this requires in winter the hothouse, in the course of thousands of years man became white. The gipsies, an Indian race which immigrated only about four centuries ago, show the transition from the complexion of the Hindu to our own. Therefore in sexual love nature strives to return to dark hair and brown eyes as the primitive type; but the white colour of the skin has become a second nature, though not so that the brown of the Hindu repels us. Finally, each one also seeks in the particular parts of the body the corrective of his own defects and aberrations, and does so the more decidedly the more important the part is.
Schopenhauer also maintained a marked metaphysical and political anti-Judaism. He argued that Christianity constituted a revolt against what he styled the materialistic basis of Judaism, exhibiting an Indian-influenced ethics reflecting the Aryan-Vedas, Vedic theme of spiritual self-conquest. He saw this as opposed to the ignorant drive toward earthly utopianism and superficiality of a worldly "Jewish" spirit:
[Judaism] is, therefore, the crudest and poorest of all religions and consists merely in an absurd and revolting theism. It amounts to this that the Kyrios, ''κύριος'' ['Lord'], who has created the world, desires to be worshipped and adored; and so above all he is jealous, is envious of his colleagues, of all the other gods; if sacrifices are made to them he is furious and his Jews have a bad time ... It is most deplorable that this religion has become the basis of the prevailing religion of Europe; for it is a religion without any metaphysical tendency. While all other religions endeavor to explain to the people by symbols the metaphysical significance of life, the religion of the Jews is entirely immanent and furnishes nothing but a mere war-cry in the struggle with other nations.


Women

In his 1851 essay "On Women", Schopenhauer expressed opposition to what he called "Teutonico-Christian stupidity" of "reflexive, unexamined reverence for the female (''abgeschmackten Weiberveneration'')". He wrote: "Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted." He opined that women are deficient in artistic faculties and sense of justice, and expressed his opposition to monogamy. He claimed that "woman is by nature meant to obey". The essay does give some compliments: "women are decidedly more sober in their judgment than [men] are", and are more sympathetic to the suffering of others. Schopenhauer's writings influenced many, from
Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
to nineteenth-century feminists. His biology, biological analysis of the difference between the sexes, and their separate roles in the struggle for survival and reproduction, anticipates some of the claims that were later ventured by sociobiology, sociobiologists and evolutionary psychology, evolutionary psychologists. When the elderly Schopenhauer sat for Arthur Schopenhauer (sculpture), a sculpture portrait by the Prussian sculptor Elisabet Ney in 1859, he was much impressed by the young woman's wit and independence, as well as by her skill as a visual artist. After his time with Ney, he told Richard Wagner's friend Malwida von Meysenbug: "I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man."


Pederasty

In the third, expanded edition of ''The World as Will and Representation'' (1859), Schopenhauer added an appendix to his chapter on the ''Metaphysics of Sexual Love''. He wrote that pederasty has the benefit of preventing ill-begotten children. Concerning this, he stated that "the vice we are considering appears to work directly against the aims and ends of nature, and that in a matter that is all important and of the greatest concern to her it must in fact serve these very aims, although only indirectly, as a means for preventing greater evils". Schopenhauer ends the appendix with the statement that "by expounding these paradoxical ideas, I wanted to grant to the professors of philosophy a small favour. I have done so by giving them the opportunity of slandering me by saying that I defend and commend pederasty."


Heredity and eugenics

Schopenhauer viewed personality and intellect as inherited. He quotes Horace's saying, "From the brave and good are the brave descended" (''Odes'', iv, 4, 29) and Shakespeare's line from ''Cymbeline'', "Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base" (IV, 2) to reinforce his hereditarian argument. Mechanistically, Schopenhauer believed that a person inherits his intellect through his mother, and personal character through the father. This belief in heritability of traits informed Schopenhauer's view of love—placing it at the highest level of importance. For Schopenhauer the "final aim of all love intrigues, be they comic or tragic, is really of more importance than all other ends in human life. What it all turns upon is nothing less than the composition of the next generation. ... It is not the weal or woe of any one individual, but that of the human race to come, which is here at stake." This view of the importance for the species of whom we choose to love was reflected in his views on eugenics or good breeding. Here Schopenhauer wrote:
With our knowledge of the complete unalterability both of character and of mental faculties, we are led to the view that a real and thorough improvement of the human race might be reached not so much from outside as from within, not so much by theory and instruction as rather by the path of generation. Plato had something of the kind in mind when, in the fifth book of his ''Republic'', he explained his plan for increasing and improving his warrior caste. If we could castrate all criminals, scoundrels and stick all stupid geese in a convent, and give men of noble character a whole harem, and procure men, and indeed thorough men, for all girls of intellect and understanding, then a generation would soon arise which would produce a better age than that of Pericles.
In another context, Schopenhauer reiterated his eugenic thesis: "If you want Utopian plans, I would say: the only solution to the problem is the despotism of the wise and noble members of a genuine aristocracy, a genuine nobility, achieved by mating the most magnanimous men with the cleverest and most gifted women. This proposal constitutes my Utopia and my Platonic Republic." Analysts (e.g., Keith Ansell-Pearson) have suggested that Schopenhauer's anti-egalitarianism, egalitarianist sentiment and his support for eugenics influenced the neo-aristocratic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, who initially considered Schopenhauer his mentor.


Animal welfare

As a consequence of his Monism, monistic philosophy, Schopenhauer was very concerned about animal welfare. For him, all individual animals, including humans, are essentially phenomenal manifestations of the one underlying Will. For him the word "will" designates force, power, impulse, energy, and desire; it is the closest word we have that can signify both the essence of all external things and our own direct, inner experience. Since every living thing possesses will, humans and animals are fundamentally the same and can recognize themselves in each other. For this reason, he claimed that a good person would have sympathy for animals, who are our fellow sufferers. In 1841, he praised the establishment in London of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in Philadelphia of the Animals' Friends Society. Schopenhauer went so far as to protest using the pronoun "it" in reference to animals because that led to treatment of them as though they were inanimate things. To reinforce his points, Schopenhauer referred to anecdotal reports of the look in the eyes of a monkey who had been shot and also the grief of a baby elephant whose mother had been killed by a hunter. Schopenhauer was very attached to his succession of pet poodles. He criticized Baruch Spinoza, Spinoza's belief that animals are a mere means for the satisfaction of humans.


Intellectual interests and affinities


Indology

Schopenhauer read the Latin translation of the Hindu texts, ancient Hindu texts, the ''
Upanishads The Upanishads (; sa, उपनिषद् ) are late Vedic Sanskrit texts that supplied the basis of later Hindu philosophy.Wendy Doniger (1990), ''Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism'', 1st Edition, University of Chicago Press, , ...
'', translated by French writer Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, Anquetil du Perron from the Persian translation of Prince Dara Shukoh entitled ''Sirre-Akbar'' ("The Great Secret"). He was so impressed by its Indian philosophy, philosophy that he called it "the production of the highest human wisdom", and believed it contained superhuman concepts. Schopenhauer considered India as "the land of the most ancient and most pristine wisdom, the place from which Europeans could trace their descent and the tradition by which they had been influenced in so many decisive ways", and regarded the ''Upanishads'' as "the most profitable and elevating reading which [...] is possible in the world. It has been the solace of my life, and will be the solace of my death." Schopenhauer was first introduced to Anquetil du Perron's translation by Friedrich Majer in 1814. They met during the winter of 1813–1814 in
Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...
at the home of Schopenhauer's mother, according to the biographer Safranski. Majer was a follower of Herder, and an early Indologist. Schopenhauer did not begin serious study of the Indic texts until the summer of 1814. Safranski maintains that, between 1815 and 1817, Schopenhauer had another important cross-pollination with Indian thought in
Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...
. This was through his neighbor of two years,
Karl Christian Friedrich Krause Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (; 6 May 1781 – 27 September 1832) was a German philosopher whose doctrines became known as Krausism. Krausism, when considered in its totality as a complete, stand-alone philosophical system, had only a small f ...
. Krause was then a minor and rather unorthodox philosopher who attempted to mix his own ideas with ancient Indian wisdom. Krause had also mastered Sanskrit, unlike Schopenhauer, and they developed a professional relationship. It was from Krause that Schopenhauer learned meditation and received the closest thing to expert advice concerning Indian thought. The book ''Oupnekhat'' (Upanishad) always lay open on his table, and he invariably studied it before going to bed. He called the opening up of Sanskrit literature "the greatest gift of our century", and predicted that the philosophy and knowledge of the Upanishads would become the cherished faith of the West. Most noticeable, in the case of Schopenhauer's work, was the significance of the ''Chandogya Upanishad'', whose Mahāvākyas, Mahāvākya, Tat Tvam Asi, is mentioned throughout ''The World as Will and Representation''.


Buddhism

Schopenhauer noted a correspondence between his doctrines and the Four Noble Truths of
Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
. Similarities centered on the principles that life involves suffering, that suffering is caused by desire (taṇhā), and that the extinction of desire leads to liberation. Thus three of the four "truths of the Buddha" correspond to Schopenhauer's doctrine of the will. In Buddhism, while greed and lust are always unskillful, desire is ethically variable – it can be skillful, unskillful, or neutral.David Burton, "Buddhism, Knowledge and Liberation: A Philosophical Study." Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2004, p. 22. For Schopenhauer, will had ontology, ontological primacy over the intellect; desire is prior to thought. Schopenhauer felt this was similar to notions of puruṣārtha or goals of life in Vedānta Hinduism. In Schopenhauer's philosophy, denial of the will is attained by: * personal experience of an extremely great suffering that leads to loss of the will to live; or * knowledge of the essential nature of life in the world through observation of the suffering of other people. Buddhist nirvāṇa is not equivalent to the condition that Schopenhauer described as denial of the will. Nirvāṇa is not the extinguishing of the ''person'' as some Western scholars have thought, but only the "extinguishing" (the literal meaning of nirvana) of the flames of greed, hatred, and delusion that assail a person's character. Schopenhauer made the following statement in his discussion of religions:
If I wished to take the results of my philosophy as the standard of truth, I should have to concede to Buddhism pre-eminence over the others. In any case, it must be a pleasure to me to see my doctrine in such close agreement with a religion that the majority of men on earth hold as their own, for this numbers far more followers than any other. And this agreement must be yet the more pleasing to me, inasmuch as ''in my philosophizing I have certainly not been under its influence'' [emphasis added]. For up till 1818, when my work appeared, there was to be found in Europe only a very few accounts of Buddhism.
Buddhist philosopher Keiji Nishitani sought to distance Buddhism from Schopenhauer. While Schopenhauer's philosophy may sound rather mystical in such a summary, his methodology was resolutely empirical, rather than speculative or transcendental:
Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.
Also note:
This actual world of what is knowable, in which we are and which is in us, remains both the material and the limit of our consideration.
The argument that Buddhism affected Schopenhauer's philosophy more than any other Dharma, Dharmic faith loses credence since he did not begin a serious study of Buddhism until after the publication of ''The World as Will and Representation'' in 1818. Scholars have started to revise earlier views about Schopenhauer's discovery of Buddhism. Proof of early interest and influence appears in Schopenhauer's 1815–16 notes (transcribed and translated by Urs App) about Buddhism. They are included in a recent case study that traces Schopenhauer's interest in Buddhism and documents its influence. Other scholarly work questions how similar Schopenhauer's philosophy actually is to Buddhism.


Magic and occultism

Some traditions in Western esotericism and parapsychology interested Schopenhauer and influenced his philosophical theories. He praised animal magnetism as evidence for the reality of magic in his ''On the Will in Nature'', and went so far as to accept the division of magic into Left-hand path and right-hand path, left-hand and right-hand magic, although he doubted the existence of demons. Schopenhauer grounded magic in the Will and claimed all forms of magical transformation depended on the human Will, not on ritual. This theory notably parallels Aleister Crowley's system of magic and its emphasis on human will. Given the importance of the Will to Schopenhauer's overarching system, this amounts to "suggesting his whole philosophical system had magical powers." Schopenhauer rejected the theory of disenchantment and claimed philosophy should synthesize itself with magic, which he believed amount to "practical metaphysics." Neoplatonism, including the traditions of Plotinus and to a lesser extent Marsilio Ficino, has also been cited as an influence on Schopenhauer.


Interests

Schopenhauer had a wide range of interests, from science and opera to occultism and literature. In his student years, Schopenhauer went more often to lectures in the sciences than philosophy. He kept a strong interest as his personal library contained near to 200 books of scientific literature at his death, and his works refer to scientific titles not found in the library. Many evenings were spent in the theatre, opera and ballet; Schopenhauer especially liked the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart, Gioachino Rossini, Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, Bellini. Schopenhauer considered music the highest art, and played the flute during his whole life. As a polyglot, he knew German language, German, Italian language, Italian, Spanish language, Spanish, French language, French, English, Latin and ancient Greek, and was an avid reader of poetry and literature. He particularly revered
Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
, Petrarch, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Calderón and William Shakespeare, Shakespeare.
If Goethe had not been sent into the world simultaneously with Kant in order to counterbalance him, so to speak, in the spirit of the age, the latter would have been haunted like a nightmare many an aspiring mind and would have oppressed it with great affliction. But now the two have an infinitely wholesome effect from opposite directions and will probably raise the German spirit to a height surpassing even that of antiquity.
In philosophy, his most important influences were, according to himself, Kant,
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
and the
Upanishads The Upanishads (; sa, उपनिषद् ) are late Vedic Sanskrit texts that supplied the basis of later Hindu philosophy.Wendy Doniger (1990), ''Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism'', 1st Edition, University of Chicago Press, , ...
. Concerning the Upanishads and Vedas, he writes in ''The World as Will and Representation'':
If the reader has also received the benefit of the Vedas, the access to which by means of the Upanishads is in my eyes the greatest privilege which this still young century (1818) may claim before all previous centuries, if then the reader, I say, has received his initiation in primeval Indian wisdom, and received it with an open heart, he will be prepared in the very best way for hearing what I have to tell him. It will not sound to him strange, as to many others, much less disagreeable; for I might, if it did not sound conceited, contend that every one of the detached statements which constitute the Upanishads, may be deduced as a necessary result from the fundamental thoughts which I have to enunciate, though those deductions themselves are by no means to be found there.


Thoughts on other philosophers


Giordano Bruno and Spinoza

Schopenhauer saw Giordano Bruno, Bruno and Baruch Spinoza, Spinoza as philosophers not bound to their age or nation. "Both were fulfilled by the thought, that as manifold the appearances of the world may be, it is still ''one'' being, that appears in all of them. ... Consequently, there is no place for God as creator of the world in their philosophy, but God is the world itself." Schopenhauer expressed regret that Spinoza stuck for the presentation of his philosophy with the concepts of scholasticism and Cartesian philosophy, and tried to use geometrical proofs that do not hold because of vague and overly broad definitions. Bruno on the other hand, who knew much about nature and ancient literature, presented his ideas with Italian vividness, and is amongst philosophers the only one who comes near Plato's poetic and dramatic power of exposition. Schopenhauer noted that their philosophies do not provide any ethics, and it is therefore very remarkable that Spinoza called his main work ''Ethics (Spinoza book), Ethics''. In fact, it could be considered complete from the standpoint of life-affirmation, if one completely ignores morality and self-denial. It is yet even more remarkable that Schopenhauer mentions Spinoza as an example of the denial of the will, if one uses the French biography by Jean Maximilien Lucas as the key to ''Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione''.


Immanuel Kant

The importance of Kant for Schopenhauer, in philosophy as well as on a personal level, cannot be overstated. Kant's philosophy was the foundation of Schopenhauer's, and he had high praise for the Critique of Pure Reason#Transcendental Aesthetic, Transcendental Aesthetic section of Kant's ''Critique of Pure Reason''. Schopenhauer maintained that Kant stands in the same relation to philosophers such as Berkeley and
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, as Copernicus to Hicetas, Philolaus, and Aristarchus of Samos, Aristarchus: Kant succeeded in demonstrating what previous philosophers merely asserted. Schopenhauer writes about Kant's influence on his work in the preface to the second edition of ''The World as Will and Representation'': In his study room, one bust was of Gautama Buddha, Buddha, the other was of Kant. The bond which Schopenhauer felt with the philosopher of Königsberg is demonstrated in an unfinished poem he dedicated to Kant (included in volume 2 of the ''Parerga''): Schopenhauer dedicated one fifth of his main work, ''The World as Will and Representation'', to a detailed Critique of the Kantian philosophy, criticism of the Kantian philosophy. Schopenhauer praised Kant for his distinction between appearance and the thing-in-itself, whereas the general consensus in
German idealism German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...
was that this was the weakest spot of Kant's theory, since, according to Kant, causality can find application on objects of experience only, and consequently, things-in-themselves cannot be the cause of appearances. The inadmissibility of this reasoning was also acknowledged by Schopenhauer. He insisted that this was a true conclusion, drawn from false premises.


Post-Kantian school

The leading figures of German idealism, post-Kantian philosophy— Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, F. W. J. Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, G. W. F. Hegel—were not respected by Schopenhauer. He argued that they were not philosophers at all, for they lacked "the first requirement of a philosopher, namely a seriousness and honesty of inquiry." Rather, they were merely sophists who, excelling in the art of beguiling the public, pursued their own selfish interests (such as professional advancement within the university system). Diatribes against the vacuity, dishonesty, pomposity, and self-interest of these contemporaries are to be found throughout Schopenhauer's published writings. The following passage is an example: Schopenhauer deemed Schelling the most talented of the three and wrote that he would recommend his "elucidatory paraphrase of the highly important doctrine of Kant" concerning the intelligible character, if he had been honest enough to admit he was parroting Kant, instead of hiding this relation in a cunning manner. Schopenhauer reserved his most unqualified damning condemnation for Hegel, whom he considered less worthy than Fichte or Schelling. Whereas Fichte was merely a windbag (''Windbeutel''), Hegel was a "commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive, and ignorant charlatan." The philosophers Karl Popper and Mario Bunge agreed with this distinction. Hegel, Schopenhauer wrote in the preface to his ''Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics'', not only "performed no service to philosophy, but he has had a detrimental influence on philosophy, and thereby on German literature in general, really a downright stupefying, or we could even say a pestilential influence, which it is therefore the duty of everyone capable of thinking for himself and judging for himself to counteract in the most express terms at every opportunity."


Influence and legacy

Schopenhauer remained the most influential German philosopher until the First World War. His philosophy was a starting point for a new generation of philosophers including Julius Bahnsen, Paul Deussen, Lazar von Hellenbach, Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, Ernst Otto Lindner, Philipp Mainländer,
Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
, Olga Plümacher and Agnes Taubert. His legacy shaped the intellectual debate, and forced movements that were utterly opposed to him, neo-Kantianism and positivism, to address issues they would otherwise have completely ignored, and in doing so he changed them markedly. The French writer Guy de Maupassant, Maupassant commented that "to-day even those who execrate him seem to carry in their own souls particles of his thought". Other philosophers of the 19th century who cited his influence include Hans Vaihinger, Johannes Volkelt, Volkelt, Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher), Solovyov and Otto Weininger, Weininger. Schopenhauer was well read by physicists, most notably Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, and Ettore Majorana, Majorana. Einstein described Schopenhauer's thoughts as a "continual consolation" and called him a genius. In his Berlin study three figures hung on the wall: Michael Faraday, Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Maxwell, Schopenhauer. Konrad Wachsmann recalled: "He often sat with one of the well-worn Schopenhauer volumes, and as he sat there, he seemed so pleased, as if he were engaged with a serene and cheerful work." When
Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theo ...
discovered Schopenhauer ("the greatest savant of the West") he considered switching his study of physics to philosophy. He maintained the idealistic views during the rest of his life. Wolfgang Pauli accepted the main tenet of Schopenhauer's metaphysics, that the thing-in-itself is will. But most of all Schopenhauer is famous for his influence on artists.
Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
became one of the earliest and most famous adherents of the Schopenhauerian philosophy. The admiration was not mutual, and Schopenhauer proclaimed: "I remain faithful to Rossini and Mozart!" So he has been philosopher nicknames, nicknamed "the artist's philosopher". See also Tristan und Isolde#Influence of Schopenhauer on Tristan und Isolde, Influence of Schopenhauer on ''Tristan und Isolde''. Under the influence of Schopenhauer,
Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
became convinced that the truth of all religions lies in self-renunciation. When he read Schopenhauer's philosophy, Tolstoy exclaimed "at present I am convinced that Schopenhauer is the greatest genius among men. ... It is the whole world in an incomparably beautiful and clear reflection." He said that what he has written in ''War and Peace'' is also said by Schopenhauer in ''The World as Will and Representation''.
Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...
remarked that the reason he had never attempted to write a systematic account of his world view, despite his penchant for philosophy and metaphysics in particular, was because Schopenhauer had already written it for him. Other figures in literature who were strongly influenced by Schopenhauer were
Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...
, Thomas Hardy, Afanasy Fet, Joris-Karl Huysmans, J.-K. Huysmans and George Santayana. In Herman Melville's final years, while he wrote ''Billy Budd'', he read Schopenhauer's essays and marked them heavily. Scholar Brian Yothers notes that Melville "marked numerous misanthropic and even suicidal remarks, suggesting an attraction to the most extreme sorts of solitude, but he also made note of Schopenhauer's reflection on the moral ambiguities of genius." Schopenhauer's attraction to and discussions of both Eastern and Western religions in conjunction with each other made an impression on Melville in his final years. Sergei Prokofiev, although initially reluctant to engage with works noted for their pessimism, became fascinated with Schopenhauer after reading ''Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life'' in ''Parerga and Paralipomena''. "With his truths Schopenhauer gave me a spiritual world and an awareness of happiness."
Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading ''The World as Will and Representation'' and admitted that he was one of the few philosophers that he respected, dedicating to him his essay "Schopenhauer als Erzieher" one of his ''Untimely Meditations''. Early in his career,
Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...
adopted Schopenhauer's epistemological idealism, and some traits of Schopenhauer's influence (particularly Schopenhauerian transcendentalism) can be observed in the ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''. Later on, Wittgenstein rejected epistemological
transcendental idealism Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781). By ''transcendental'' (a term that dese ...
for Gottlob Frege's conceptual Metaphysical realism, realism. In later years, Wittgenstein became highly dismissive of Schopenhauer, describing him as an ultimately shallow thinker. His friend Bertrand Russell had a low opinion on the philosopher, and even came to attack him in his History of Western Philosophy (Russell), ''History of Western Philosophy'' for hypocritically praising asceticism yet not acting upon it. Opposite to Russell on the foundations of mathematics, the Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer incorporated Kant's and Schopenhauer's ideas in the philosophical school of intuitionism, where mathematics is considered as a purely mental activity instead of an analytic activity wherein objective properties of reality are revealed. Brouwer was also influenced by Schopenhauer's metaphysics, and wrote an essay on mysticism. Schopenhauer's philosophy has made its way into a novel, ''The Schopenhauer Cure'', by American existential psychiatrist and emeritus professor of psychiatry Irvin Yalom. Schopenhauer's philosophy, and the discussions on
philosophical pessimism Philosophical pessimism is a family of philosophical views that assign a negative value to life or existence. Philosophical pessimists commonly argue that the world contains an empirical prevalence of pains over pleasures, that existence is onto ...
it has engendered, has been the focus of contemporary thinkers such as David Benatar, Thomas Ligotti, and Eugene Thacker. Their work also served as an inspiration for the popular HBO TV series ''True Detective'' as well as ''Life Is Beautiful''.


Selected bibliography

* ''
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason ''On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason'' (german: Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde) is an elaboration on the classical Principle of Sufficient Reason, written by German philosopher Arthur Schope ...
(Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde''), 1813 * ''
On Vision and Colors ''On Vision and Colors'' (originally translated as ''On Vision and Colours''; german: Ueber das Sehn und die Farben) is a treatise by Arthur Schopenhauer that was published in May 1816 when the author was 28 years old. Schopenhauer had extensive d ...
'' (''Ueber das Sehn und die Farben''), 1816 * ''Theory of Colors (Theoria colorum physiologica)'', 1830. * ''
The World as Will and Representation ''The World as Will and Representation'' (''WWR''; german: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ''WWV''), sometimes translated as ''The World as Will and Idea'', is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first editio ...
'' (alternatively translated in English as ''The World as Will and Idea''; original German is ''Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung''): vol. 1, 1818–1819, vol. 2, 1844 ** Vol. 1 Dover edition 1966, ** Vol. 2 Dover edition 1966, ** Peter Smith Publisher hardcover set 1969, ** Everyman Paperback combined abridged edition (290 pp.) * ''The Art of Being Right (Eristische Dialektik: Die Kunst, Recht zu Behalten)'', 1831 * ''On the Will in Nature (Ueber den Willen in der Natur)'', 1836 * ''On the Freedom of the Will (Ueber die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens''), 1839 * ''On the Basis of Morality (Ueber die Grundlage der Moral)'', 1840 * ''The Two Basic Problems of Ethics: On the Freedom of the Will, On the Basis of Morality (Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik: Ueber die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens, Ueber das Fundament der Moral''), 1841. * ''
Parerga and Paralipomena ''Parerga and Paralipomena'' (Greek for "Appendices" and "Omissions", respectively; german: Parerga und Paralipomena) is a collection of philosophical reflections by Arthur Schopenhauer published in 1851. The selection was compiled not as a summa ...
'' (2 vols., 1851) – Reprint: (Oxford: Clarendon Press) (2 vols., 1974) (English translation by E. F. J. PayneEric Francis Jules Payne (17 February 1895 – 12 January 1983)) ** Printings: *** 1974 Hardcover, by ISBN **** Vols. 1 and 2, , **** Vol. 1, ISBN **** Vol. 2, , *** 1974–1980 Paperback, Vol. 1, , Vol. 2, , *** 2001 Paperback, Vol. 1, , Vol. 2, ** ''Essays and Aphorisms'', being excerpts from Volume 2 of ''Parerga und Paralipomena'', selected and translated by R. J. Hollingdale, with Introduction by R J Hollingdale, Penguin Classics, 1970, Paperback 1973: * ''An Enquiry concerning Ghost-seeing, and what is connected therewith (Versuch über das Geistersehn und was damit zusammenhangt)'', 1851 * Arthur Schopenhauer, ''Manuscript Remains'', Volume II, Berg Publishers Ltd.,


Online

* *
The Art Of Controversy (Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten)
'. (bilingual) [''The Art of Being Right''] *
Studies in Pessimism
' – audiobook from LibriVox * ''The World as Will and Idea'' at Internet Archive: **
Volume I
' **
Volume II
' **
Volume III
' * ''On the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason'' and ''On the will in nature.'' Two essays: *
Internet Archive.
Translated by Mrs. Karl Hillebrand (1903). *
Cornell University Library Historical Monographs Collection.
Reprinted by Cornell University Library Digital Collections
Facsimile edition of Schopenhauer's manuscripts
i
SchopenhauerSource
*
Essays of Schopenhauer
'


See also

* Antinatalism * Existential nihilism * Eye of a needle * God in Buddhism * Massacre of the Innocents (Reni), ''Massacre of the Innocents'' (Guido Reni) * Misotheism * Mortal coil * Nihilism * Post-Schopenhauerian pessimism


References


Sources

* Albright, Daniel (2004) ''Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources''. University of Chicago Press. * Frederick C. Beiser, Beiser, Frederick C., ''Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). * * * Hannan, Barbara, ''The Riddle of the World: A Reconsideration of Schopenhauer's Philosophy'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). * Bryan Magee, Magee, Bryan, ''Confessions of a Philosopher'', Random House, 1998, . Chapters 20, 21. * Rüdiger Safranski, Safranski, Rüdiger (1990) ''Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy''. Harvard University Press, ; orig. German ''Schopenhauer und Die wilden Jahre der Philosophie'', Carl Hanser Verlag (1987) *
Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...
editor, ''The Living Thoughts of Schopenhauer'', Longmans Green & Co., 1939


Further reading


Biographies

* Frederick Copleston, ''Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher of pessimism'' (Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1946) * O. F. Damm, ''Arthur Schopenhauer – eine Biographie'' (Reclam, 1912) * Kuno Fischer, ''Arthur Schopenhauer'' (Heidelberg: Winter, 1893); revised as ''Schopenhauers Leben, Werke und Lehre'' (Heidelberg: Winter, 1898). * Eduard Grisebach, ''Schopenhauer – Geschichte seines Lebens'' (Berlin: Hofmann, 1876). * D. W. Hamlyn, ''Schopenhauer'', London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (1980, 1985) * Heinrich Hasse, ''Schopenhauer''. (Reinhardt, 1926) * Arthur Hübscher, ''Arthur Schopenhauer – Ein Lebensbild'' (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1938). *
Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...
, ''Schopenhauer'' (Bermann-Fischer, 1938) * Jack Matthews (author), Matthews, Jack, ''Schopenhauer's Will: Das Testament'', Nine Point Publishing, 2015. . A recent creative biography by philosophical novelist Jack Matthews (author), Jack Matthews. * Rüdiger Safranski, ''Schopenhauer und die wilden Jahre der Philosophie – Eine Biographie'', hard cover Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1987, , pocket edition Fischer: . * Rüdiger Safranski, ''Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy'', trans. Ewald Osers (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989) * Walther Schneider, ''Schopenhauer – Eine Biographie'' (Vienna: Bermann-Fischer, 1937). * William Wallace, ''Life of Arthur Schopenhauer'' (London: Scott, 1890; repr., St. Clair Shores, Mich.: Scholarly Press, 1970) * Helen Zimmern,
Arthur Schopenhauer: His Life and His Philosophy
' (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1876)


Other books

* Urs App, App, Urs
Arthur Schopenhauer and China. ''Sino-Platonic Papers'' Nr. 200 (April 2010)
(PDF, 8.7 Mb PDF, 164 p.). Contains extensive appendixes with transcriptions and English translations of Schopenhauer's early notes about Buddhism and Indian philosophy. * --------, ''Schopenhauers Kompass. Die Geburt einer Philosophie.'' UniversityMedia, Rorschach/ Kyoto 2011, * Atwell, John. ''Schopenhauer on the Character of the World, The Metaphysics of Will''. * --------, ''Schopenhauer, The Human Character''. * Edwards, Anthony. ''An Evolutionary Epistemological Critique of Schopenhauer's Metaphysics''. 123 Books, 2011. * Frederick Copleston, Copleston, Frederick, ''Schopenhauer: Philosopher of Pessimism'', 1946 (reprinted London: Search Press, 1975). * Patrick Gardiner, Gardiner, Patrick, 1963. ''Schopenhauer''. Penguin Books. * --------, ''Schopenhauer: A Very Short introduction''. * Janaway, Christopher, 2003. ''Self and World in Schopenhauer's Philosophy''. Oxford University Press. * Bryan Magee, Magee, Bryan, ''The Philosophy of Schopenhauer'', Oxford University Press (1988, reprint 1997). * Neymeyr, Barbara, 1996 (reprint 2011): Ästhetische Autonomie als Abnormität. Kritische Analysen zu Schopenhauers Ästhetik im Horizont seiner Willensmetaphysik. (= Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie. Band 42). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1996, . (reprint 2011, De Gruyter Berlin / Boston). * Mannion, Gerard, "Schopenhauer, Religion and Morality – The Humble Path to Ethics", Ashgate Press, New Critical Thinking in Philosophy Series, 2003, 314pp. * Trottier, Danick. ''L’influence de la philosophie schopenhauerienne dans la vie et l’oeuvre de Richard Wagner; et, Qu’est-ce qui séduit, obsède, magnétise le philosophe dans l’art des sons? deux études en esthétique musicale'', Université du Québec à Montréal, Département de musique, 2000. * Helen Zimmern, Zimmern, Helen, ''s:Arthur Schopenhauer, his Life and Philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer, his Life and Philosophy'', London, Longman, Longman, and Co., 1876. * Bernardo Kastrup, Kastrup, Bernardo. ''Decoding Schopenhauer‘s Metaphysics - The key to understanding how it solves the hard problem of consciousness and the paradoxes of quantum mechanics.'' Winchester/Washington, iff Books, 2020. * Alain de Botton, de Botton, Alain: ''The Consolations of Philosophy''. Hamish Hamilton, London 2000, (Chapter: ''Consolation for a Broken Heart'').


Fiction

* :de:Christoph_Poschenrieder, Poschenrieder, Christoph: ''Die Welt ist im Kopf.'' Diogenes, Zürich 2010, (The novel accompanies Schopenhauer on a trip to Italy). * Irvin D. Yalom, Yalom, Irvin D.: ''The Schopenhauer Cure.'' HarperCollins, New York City 2005, (The novel switches between the current events happening around a therapy group and the psychobiography of Arthur Schopenhauer). * :de:Christian_Kortmann, Kortmann, Christian: ''Happy Hour Schopenhauer. Roman einer Bibliotherapie.'' Turia + Kant, Wien + Berlin 2022, (In the novel, Schopenhauer lives in the 21st century and comments on current events in original quotations).


Articles

* * Jiménez, Camilo, 2006,
Tagebuch eines Ehrgeizigen: Arthur Schopenhauers Studienjahre in Berlin
" ''Avinus Magazin'' (in German). * Luchte, James, 2009,
The Body of Sublime Knowledge: The Aesthetic Phenomenology of Arthur Schopenhauer
" ''Heythrop Journal'', Volume 50, Number 2, pp. 228–242. * Mazard, Eisel, 2005,
Schopenhauer and the Empirical Critique of Idealism in the History of Ideas.
On Schopenhauer's (debated) place in the history of European philosophy and his relation to his predecessors. * Sangharakshita, 2004,
Schopenhauer and aesthetic appreciation.
*
Oxenford's "Iconoclasm in German Philosophy," (See p. 388)
* Eugene Thacker, Thacker, Eugene, 2020. "A Philosophy in Ruins, An Unquiet Void." Introduction to Arthur Schopenhauer, ''On the Suffering of the World''. Repeater Books.


External links

* * * * *
Arthur Schopenhauer
' an article by Mary Troxell in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2011
Schopenhauersource: Reproductions of Schopenhauer's manuscripts

Kant's philosophy as rectified by Schopenhauer


* [http://ljhammond.com/classics/cl1.htm#scho A Quick Introduction to Schopenhauer] * Ross, Kelley L., 1998,
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860).
Two short essays, on Schopenhauer's life and work, and on his dim view of academia. {{DEFAULTSORT:Schopenhauer, Arthur Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788 births 1860 deaths 19th-century atheists 19th-century essayists 19th-century German male writers 19th-century German non-fiction writers 19th-century German philosophers 19th-century German writers 19th-century philosophers Aesthetics Animal rights scholars Anti-natalists Aphorists Atheist philosophers Burials at Frankfurt Main Cemetery Continental philosophers Critical theorists Critics of Christianity Critics of Judaism Critics of religions Cultural critics Epistemologists German atheist writers German Buddhists German scholars of Buddhism German ethicists German eugenicists German flautists German logicians German male essayists German male non-fiction writers German monarchists German people of Dutch descent German philologists Humboldt University of Berlin faculty Idealists Kantian philosophers Logicians Metaphilosophers Metaphysicians Monism Moral philosophers Ontologists Phenomenologists Philosophers of art Philosophers of culture Philosophers of education Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of literature Philosophers of logic Philosophers of love Philosophers of mind Philosophers of pessimism Philosophers of psychology Philosophers of religion Philosophers of science Philosophy writers Political philosophers Simple living advocates German social commentators Social critics Social philosophers Theorists on Western civilization University of Göttingen alumni Writers from Gdańsk