Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher. He is most famous for his work The World as Will and Representation. He is commonly known for having espoused a sort of philosophical pessimism that saw life as being essentially evil, futile, and full of suffering. However, upon closer inspection, in accordance with Eastern thought, especially Buddhist, he saw salvation, deliverance, or escape from suffering in aesthetic contemplation, sympathy for others, and ascetic living. His ideas profoundly influenced the fields of philosophy, psychology, and literature.

Common Misconceptions

Schopenhauer never wrote and published a single line about any topic that he thought might be superfluous.

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Many are put off Schopenhauer by descriptions of him as an obstinate and arrogant man, who did not lead the ascetic life that he glorified in his work. The idea that he made resignation into a command to virtue is inaccurate, as he was merely trying to explain asceticism in terms of metaphysics. He does refer to the asceticism as a state of "inner peace and cheerfulness", but he also clearly states that he was not trying to recommend the denial of the will above the affirmation of the will. Furthermore, the call to asceticism was supposed to come to select individuals as knowledge all of a sudden, rather than being a virtue that can be taught. "In general," he wrote, "it is a strange demand on a moralist that he should commend no other virtue than that which he himself possesses." (The World as Will and Representation, Vol.I, § 68)

Related Topics:
Metaphysics - The World as Will and Representation

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Nietzsche seems to have made this misinterpretation and many gain a distorted view of Schopenhauer from reading Nietzsche. The following sentence from The Twilight of the Idols is often quoted:

Related Topics:
Nietzsche - The Twilight of the Idols

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• He has interpreted art, heroism, genius, beauty, great sympathy, knowledge, the will to truth, and tragedy, in turn, as consequences of "negation" or of the "will's" need to negate

Schopenhauer did see all these things as means to a more peaceful and enlightened way of life, but none of them were "denial of the will-to-live". Only asceticism is referred to in that way. Nietzsche also claimed that Schopenhauer did not recognise that suffering had a redemptive quality, yet his recognition of this seems blatantly clear in part 4 of The World as Will and Representation.

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Also, his identification of the Will with the Kantian "thing-in-itself" has been misunderstood. Kant defined things-in-themselves as being beyond comprehension and that no-one could know the inner nature of a material thing. It is often thought that Schopenhauer denied this, but he did not. What he did assert was that one could know things about the thing-in-itself. For example, you can know that the will is a striving force, that it is endless, that it causes suffering, that it will produce boredom if unoccupied, etc. However, he did not say that you could directly know the will. In addition, it has sometimes been criticised that he never defined the will, but he explained that it could not be fully defined.

Related Topics:
Will - Kant

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