From the internet...the philosophy of arthur schopenhauer...classic philosophers...
The Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.
II.
III.
IV. Life and Works
The World as Will and Idea
Pessimism
Applications of His Doctrine to Man
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I. Life and Works
Arthur Schopenhauer (picture) was born in Danzig in 1788, the son of a wealthy merchant. He had been educated for the business world by his father, but as soon as his father died Schopenhauer turned to the study of philosophy. He traveled extensively in Holland, England, France, Switzerland and Italy. He obtained his doctor's degree at Jena in 1813. A few years later he began to lecture at Berlin, but his attempts to stem the tide of Hegel's popularity there were unsuccessful.
He left the University and traveled again in Italy. In 1833 he retired to Frankfort on the Main, where he spent the remainder of his life writing his books in learned retirement. Always hostile to Idealism and particularly toward Hegelianism, he died in 1860, when Hegel's philosophy was already in its decline.
Schopenhauer's masterpiece of philosophical writing is The World as Will and Idea, which was published for the first time in 1818, although dated 1819. He also published Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics.
II. The World as Will and Idea
Schopenhauer was an anti-Hegelian who returned to Kant with the intention of determining the nature of the "thing in itself" by analyzing experience. But Schopenhauer was a son of Idealism; consequently he conceived reality monistically. For him the world was a phenomenal representation.
Kant began with experience and remained there, declaring that it is impossible to attain knowledge of the thing in itself. Schopenhauer also began with experience, but he believed that it is possible to pass beyond experience and to know the thing in itself. According to him, if we were merely rational beings, endowed with sense and intellect but devoid of volition, we would never be able to answer the question: "What is the external cause of our representations?" The world would be for us a dream, a mere representation, a mysterious signal devoid of meaning. But each one of us is also a body, and the corporeal life reveals itself as tendency, effort, activity, or in a word, as will. Will, therefore, is our reality.
Now, because of the monistic concept of Schopenhauer, the reality which we are (will) must be extended to all things in nature. Thus the entire reality is will. The primordial will is a blind unreasoning impulse to self-preservation. In other words, primordial reality is the will to live. The blind impulse to life is the cause impelling the will to display itself in a multiplicity of natural beings, with the purpose of becoming conscious. Hence this impulse makes its appearance in natural bodies in the form of mechanical forces -- in plants as vegetative life, in animals as instinct. Finally, by constructing the brain, the will attains consciousness in man. Once consciousness is attained, knowledge appears as the representation of the world.
Schopenhauer reduces all Kantian cognitive forms to time, space and mechanical causality. The will, in so far as it is universal, is beyond all these determinations of time and space and is lacking in any other determination. When it objectivates itself, it determines itself in a series of phenomena which exist in space and time and are connected with one another by mechanical causality.
III. Pessimism
If reality is the blind will to live, and the world is the objectivation of such a blind will, life is painful misery. Schopenhauer makes a broad and acute analysis of all the various branches of existence, only to conclude that life is essentially pain and that it is a mistake to persevere in the will to live. According to him, everywhere in the world everything is desire, because all -- everywhere -- is will. To desire signifies suffering distress on account of the lack of what is desired. If the desire is not satisfied, the distress remains and increases; if it is satisfied, satiety and annoyance follow, and this in turn causes new desires and new distresses.
The will finds thousands of pretexts for perpetuating this unsatisfied hunger of the will to live. These pretexts only perpetuate the misery of life.
One such pretext and deceit is love. The will of the species masks itself under the pleasures of love with the purpose of perpetuating the desire for life in others. In so doing, it satisfies its own will to live.
Another pretext and deceit is egoism, which impels us to increase the pains of others in the hope of gaining some advantage in our own miserable life.
Still another deceit and illusion is progress which, in actuating itself, only makes more acute the sense of distress.
The Sacred Writer, in Schopenhauer's interpretation, says that increasing knowledge is only to increase distress. (Ref. Ecclesiastes 1:14, 18: I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a chase after wind...For in much wisdom there is sorrow and he who stores up knowledge stores up grief.)
The whole world is miserable because of the universal blind will to live. Man can avoid his share of misery by suppressing the will to live.
Schopenhauer's philosophy is the antithesis of that of Hegel. In Hegel, reality and rationality coincide. Struggle and injustice are nullified and are justified in the higher synthesis; and, finally, progress and history entirely justify evil in its extreme manifestations of war and national calamities. In Schopenhauer, on the contrary, reality is blind and therefore essentially irrational and evil. Love, progress, history do not justify and annul misery; they are deceits and illusions behind which the blind, unconscious will masks itself, for this will is never satisfied with living and suffering. The systems of Hegel and Schopenhauer represent different atheistic conceptions of the world and of life.
IV. Applications of His Doctrine to Man
In such an irrational world, however, there exists a morality which is necessarily ascetic and nullifying. In a pessimistic morality there is no glorification of life, but nullification and destruction of the will to live. Indeed, if the root of all evils is the will to live, there is no other escape, no other remedy than to suppress this will. The steps which make possible the suppression of the instinct to life are three: aesthetics, ethics, ascetics. Schopenhauer is inspired by Neo-Platonism in this regard.
Aesthetics is the activity of man, absorbed in contemplation of the idea of beauty, untroubled by any desire and, consequently, by any evil. Wrapped up in aesthetic contemplation, he is not longer a slave of the will. But aesthetics is not sufficient, for the joy which it gives is possible only for intellectuals, and even in such persons it is of short duration. Hence it is necessary to ascend to the second grade, ethics.
Ethics makes man able to acknowledge that in addition to himself there are other men endowed with an essence like his own. Hence he is forced by ethics to suppress his egoism which, because of the desire for life, is the root of every evil. The fundamental characteristic of ethics is compassion. Man is immoral when he increases the misery of another or when he remains indifferent to another's suffering. On the contrary, he is moral when he feels the distress of those who are his fellow men, and tries to mitigate their pain. Thus he feels that he is one with all men, as in truth he is, by reason of the unity of the Universal Will from which everyone proceeds. But even ethics does not succeed in completely eradicating the insidious source of all evils, and hence it is necessary to ascend still further, to the third grade, ascetics.
Asceticism consists in the constant action of nullifying the will itself. Art suspends will; ethics mortifies it; ascetics nullifies it. Only the great penitents and saints have reached this stage. Schopenhauer, by a complete misunderstanding of spiritual life, believed the penitents and saints of the Church to be absolutely indifferent and detached from all that surrounds them, mentally dead to all things, while materially they continue to live.
The moral teaching of Schopenhauer, culminating in his asceticism, the nullifier of life, is completely opposed to Hegel's morality, which glorifies life. Both, however, are atheistic on account of the immanentist prejudice which vitiates them.
In The Radical Academy
Books by and about Arthur Schopenhauer
Essay: Will and Idea, by Arthur Schopenhauer
Elsewhere On the Internet
More about Arthur Schopenhauer
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DGB...Editorial Comments on Schopenhauer's Philosophy (Part 1)
Schopenhauer is the type of philosopher who you either love, hate, or perhaps some strong feelings of both... It is hard to be noncommittal or philosophically sleepy when it comes to Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer wakes us all up philosophically with the shaking jaws of a rottweiller or pitbull...even as we may hate him and/or his philosophy, we can't ignore him, we have to deal with him...I look into Schopenhauer's eyes and I see perhaps at least a part of the darker side of me -- and indeed, the darker side of all mankind. Schopenhauer is partly an idealist -- having assimilated significant elements of Plato and Kant into his own philosophy, but beyond this, the associative connection between Plato and Kant on the one side, and Schopenhauer on the other side, is about as similar as night and day.
Schopenhauer is arguably the 'greatest pessimist' in the history of Western Philosophy. You have to go back to the Sophists, Stoics and Cynics in Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy to find something similar. Or maybe Thomas Hobbes. I think the closest philosopher in spirit to Schopenhauer is Hobbes although there is nothing in his usual biography to suggest that Schopenhauer was ever influenced by Hobbes. He didn't need it. There were far more than enough 'negative influences' in Schopenhauer's young life -- a marital charade between his mom and dad, his dad seemingly having committing suicide by jumping off the warehouse of what at least used to be his thriving, lucrative business, the pain and misery and war horror caused by Napoleon rampaging across Europe, his mom seemingly becoming more interested in developing her own life, her own love life, and her own writing career, while more or less 'shuffling her teenage-adult son to the side'...and not being too happy when her son 'spat back venomous poison' at her and her variety of different lovers...
Oh, yes, in Schopenhauer's world -- 'life was grand'! He needed some strong philosophical realism and Buddhist-like idealism/medicine to compensate for the 'ugliness, pain, misery, narcissism, hedonism, and egotism that made up the life that Schopenhauer both lived -- and saw around him. Schopenhauer wrote what he felt...and then sought to compensate for...
I don't often dab in astrology but from time to time I do. This is one time. My dear Arthur Schopenhauer here is a fellow Pisces...born Feb 22nd, 1788, about 10 days and 167 years before me...As much as I might dislike his nastiness and his profound pessimism, still I have to look deeper for some underlying dark similarities...
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The Fishes
Febuary 20 to March 20
Traditional
Pisces Traits
Imaginative and sensitive
Compassionate and kind
Selfless and unworldly
Intuitive and sympathetic
On the dark side....
Escapist and idealistic
Secretive and vague
Weak-willed and easily led
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The Pisces Personality
The two fish represent one swiming up towards the direction of spirituality and the other swiming down to temptation. You are at the end of an evolutionary cycle, which explains a lot about what you are and how you express yourself. More
The Pisces Personality, The Sign of the Fish Feb 19th to Mar 20th
Strengths
Romance, Nurturing, Artistic, High Spiritual Strength, Psychic, Sentimental, Devoted, Receptive to New Ideas, Sacrifice.
Areas to Evolve
Low Self Esteem, Guilty Feelings, Isolation, Passive, Too in Love with Love, Dependent, Battles with Subconscious, Introverted, Unfocused, Complaining, Procrastination, Easily Hurt.
Pisces Blessings
Pisces is the last of the twelve signs of the zodiac and as a result, the universe blessed you with a little bit of all the signs in your personality. In some cases, such as psychic ability and intuition, you were a given a little bit of everyone's talent making you have the most. As the twelfth sign, it is said your soul is at the end of a spiritual journey.
Your greatest gift, your psychic ability, is also the one you are least like to rely on. Having picked up some of everything along the way can leave you often feeling confused, either in the realm of emotions or logic. Your decision making can be a little bit off at times, especially when it comes to romantic relationships. Some Pisces early in life develop an inability to organize their talents and turn towards an attitude of self-sacrifice or do things out of obligation.
Pisces are traditional romantics and obsessive daydreamers. Highly creative, you are in love with love and connect to this energy in real life or through fantasy. Either way, they will have their loving experiences.
Pisces can be nearly impossible to read or gauge. Over time, you develop these "life masks" you will wear for different occasions. You choose your words carefully and limit the amount you let out. Like the two fish swimming in circles that represent your sign, you live in two worlds, the one with other people and the one inside your soul.
Challenges for the Pisces Soul
The universal law of Yin-Yang provides you with something of value in exchange for what may seem like carrying a little baggage from all the other signs. The great value is your sixth sense. You have a little piece of everyone else inside you for a reason. No, not to make you crazy, but to give you spiritual insights none of the other signs have.
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Under construction...
DGB...Editorial Comments on Schopenhauer's Philosophy (Part 2)
I love the title of Schopenhauer's most famous book: 'The World as Will and Representation' (1818). I would love to take the title of this book -- and completely re-write it, completely revise it -- like Schopenhauer did with Kant. Kant (perhaps combined with Plato) was Schopenhauer's main philosophical mentor (or main two philosophical mentors). Plato was an epistemological dualist (the Ideal World of Forms vs. The Imperfect World of Phenomena). Kant was an epistemological dualist (the 'Phenomenal World' of our own experiences vs. 'The Noumenal World' of 'The Thing-In-Itself' beyond the world of our senses and experiences...)
Schopenhauer, by contrast, was an epistemological and an ontological monist -- or at least partly, or at least he tried to be.
For Schopenhauer, all in the universe is 'blind will' -- meaning also 'nasty will' -- based on the will to live and survive -- assumedly for Schopenhauer at the expense of any and all we need to walk over, manipulate, intimidate, circumvent, overpower... to continue our will to live and survive.
So much for love, care, and compassion....out the window in Schopenhauer's philosophy...all bogus sophism and pretentiousness
Nice world we live in, Mr. Schopenhauer! How pleased I am to meet you! Do you have anything nice to say about this world? Do you have anything nice to offer this world?
Or were you just a living, walking, breathing, biting prototype of the world you described around you -- in your own image?
Or is there more to Schopenhauer's 'very unpretty, nasty philosophy' than simply self-projection?
An article from the internet I just read a few minutes ago certainly gives some credence to a part of human experience, existence, and behavior that just cannot be overlooked. Nietzsche and Freud certainly did not overlook what Schopenhauer was writing and philosophizing about. It was certainly a stark, concrete contrast to Hegel's idealistic abstractionism....
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From the internet...
Freddie Mac's acting CFO found dead at his Virginia home
April 22nd, 2009.
WASHINGTON - David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer of mortgage giant Freddie Mac, was found dead at his home Wednesday morning in what police said was an apparent suicide.
Mary Ann Jennings, director of public information for the Fairfax County, Va., Police Department, said Kellermann was found dead in his Reston, Va., home. The 41-year-old Kellermann has been Freddie Mac's CFO since September.
Jennings said that a crime scene crew and homicide detectives were investigating the death, but that there didn't appear to be any sign of foul play.
McLean-based Freddie Mac has been criticized heavily for reckless business practices that some argue contributed to the housing and financial crisis. Freddic Mac is a government-controlled company that owns or guarantees about 13 million home loans. CEO David Moffett resigned last month.
Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) and sibling company Fannie Mae, which together own or back more than half of the home mortgages in the country, have been hobbled by skyrocketing loan defaults and have received about $60 billion in combined federal aid.
Kellermann was named acting chief financial officer in September 2008, after the resignation of Anthony Piszel, who stepped down after the September 2008 government takeover.
Before taking that job, Kellerman served as senior vice-president, corporate controller and principal accounting officer. He was with Freddie Mac for more than 16 years.
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Welcome to the world of Schopenhauer. A rosy, idealistic picture it is not.
Schopenhauer's World became Nietzsche's 'Birth of Tragedy' before Nietzsche walked at least partly away from both Schopenhauer and Hegel. Nietzsche didn't like Schopenhauer's philosophy of 'trying to escape from the brutality and misery of life'. For Nietzsche, the aim of life was to embrace life in all its complexities and paradoxes and tragedies -- not to run from life and seek to escape it. Schopenhauer was a philosopher who tried to escape from his 'Narcissistic-Dionysian Style of Living' by engaging or not engaging in something else.
Schopenhauer did this by encouraging people to: 1. 'find and/or lose themselves' in the arts'; 2. 'to practise ethics if and/or when you can' (obviously this strategy didn't work well for Schopenhauer); and 3. to take up a 'Buddhist-like approach to living -- by simply (or not so simply) 'not wanting', 'not desiring'...If you don't want or desire, then you can't feel pain and hurt for your unfulfilled, squashed, and/or betrayed desires and wants...
Keep your expectations low to non-existent -- and you will not be emotionally crushed.
Thus spoke Schopenhauer as Zarathrusta...
Hey, there is some wisdom behind what he is saying. It's coming from a person who should know -- diappointed and probably angry at his dad for controlling and abandoning him, disappointed and definitely angry at his mother for more or less the same thing...even as she still lived and more or less ignored him....Mindly, I could at least partly see why she didn't want to have anything to do with him. Her son was cruel and nasty! But at the same time, I am sure that the young Arthur learned a lot of his personal narcissism, dionysianism, hedonism, and egotism -- from his mother truly -- his loving, nurturing, encouraging mother...As she did her coctail parties, entertained her guests, did her writing...and played out her fascade as a mother...
Welcome to the world of Schopenhauer!
Ouch! I think I can see a little more of my own narcissistic, dionysian, hedonistic, egotistic self and world in the world described Schopenhauer. Not that bad a world to be sure -- more good things in my world to be sure -- but still -- I cannot ignore the similarities.
A man too absorbed in his own ideas and his own dionsyian and apollonian narcissism to engage other people properly with the full attention, compassion, and respect they deserve.
Was that Schophenhauer?
Or is that me?
Sometimes -- often? always? -- who and/or what we most dislike, says as much about ourselves as it does about the who or the what it is we don't like...
Enough for today....
-- dgb, April 22nd, 2209.
-- David Gordon Bain
