Arthur Schopenhauer ( SHOH-pən-how-ər; German:
[ˈʔaɐ̯tʊɐ̯ ˈʃoːpm̩ˌhaʊ̯ɐ];
22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was
a German philosopher. He is best known for
his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation
(expanded in 1844), wherein he characterizes
the phenomenal world as the product of a blind
and insatiable metaphysical will. Proceeding
from the transcendental idealism of Immanuel
Kant, Schopenhauer developed an atheistic
metaphysical and ethical system that has been
described as an exemplary manifestation of
philosophical pessimism, rejecting the contemporaneous
post-Kantian philosophies of German idealism.
Schopenhauer was among the first thinkers
in Western philosophy to share and affirm
significant tenets of Eastern philosophy (e.g.,
asceticism, the world-as-appearance), having
initially arrived at similar conclusions as
the result of his own philosophical work.Though
his work failed to garner substantial attention
during his life, Schopenhauer has had a posthumous
impact across various disciplines, including
philosophy, literature, and science. His writing
on aesthetics, morality, and psychology influenced
thinkers and artists throughout the 19th and
20th centuries. Those who cited his influence
include Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner,
Leo Tolstoy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrödinger,
Otto Rank, Gustav Mahler, Joseph Campbell,
Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, Thomas Mann, Émile
Zola, George Bernard Shaw, Jorge Luis Borges
and Samuel Beckett.
== Life ==
=== Early life ===
Schopenhauer was born on 22 February 1788,
in the city of Danzig (then part of the Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth; present day Gdańsk, Poland)
on Heiligegeistgasse (known in the present
day as Św. Ducha 47), the son of Johanna
Schopenhauer (née Trosiener) and Heinrich
Floris Schopenhauer, both descendants of wealthy
German-Dutch patrician families. Both of them
weren't very religious, supported the French
Revolution, were republican, cosmopolitan
and Anglophile. When Danzig became part of
Prussia in 1793, Heinrich moved to Hamburg
- a free city with republican constitution,
protected by Britain and Holland against Prussian
aggression - although his firm continued trading
in Danzig where most of their extended families
remained. Adele, Arthur's only sibling was
born on 12 July 1797.
In 1797 Arthur was sent to Le Havre to live
for two years with the family of his father's
business associate, Grégoire de Blésimaire.
He seemed to enjoy his stay there, learned
to speak French fluently and started a friendship
with Jean Anthime Grégoire de Blésimaire,
his peer, which lasted for a large part of
their lives. As early as 1799, Arthur started
playing the flute. In 1803 he joined his parents
on their long tour of Holland, Britain, France,
Switzerland, Austria and Prussia; it was mostly
a pleasure tour although Heinrich also visited
some of his business associates. Heinrich
gave his son a choice - he could stay at home
and start preparations for university education,
or he could travel with them and then continue
his merchant education. Arthur would later
deeply regret his choice because he found
his merchant training tedious. He spent twelve
weeks of the tour attending a school in Wimbledon
where he was very unhappy and appalled by
very strict but intellectually shallow Anglican
religiosity which he would continue to sharply
criticize later in life despite his general
Anglophilia. He was also under great pressure
from his father who became very critical of
his educational results. In fact Heinrich
Floris became so fussy that even his wife
started to doubt his mental health.In 1805,
Heinrich Floris died by drowning in a canal
by their home in Hamburg. Although it was
possible that his death was accident, his
wife and son believed that it was suicide
because he was very prone to unsociable behavior,
anxiety and depression which became especially
pronounced in his last months of life. Arthur
showed similar moodiness since his youth and
often acknowledged that he inherited it from
his father; there were also several other
instances of serious mental health issues
on his father's side of family. His mother
Johanna was generally described as vivacious
and sociable. Despite the hardships, Schopenhauer
seemed to like his father and later mentioned
him always in a positive light. Heinrich Schopenhauer
left the family with a decent inheritance
that was split in three among Johanna and
the children. Arthur Schopenhauer would be
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.
Arthur endured two long years of drudgery
as a merchant in honor of his dead father,
and because of his own doubts about being
too old to start a life of a scholar. Most
of his prior education was practical merchant
training and he had some trouble with learning
Latin which was a prerequisite for any academic
career. His mother soon moved with his sister
Adele to Weimar—then the centre of German
literature—to enjoy social life among celebrated
writers and artists. Arthur lived in Hamburg
with his friend Jean Anthime who was also
studying to become a merchant.
After quitting his merchant apprenticeship,
with some encouragement from his mother, he
dedicated himself to studies at the Gotha
gymnasium (Gymnasium illustre zu Gotha) in
Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, but he also enjoyed
social life among local nobility spending
large amounts of money which caused concern
to his frugal mother. He left Gymnasium after
writing a satirical poem about one of the
lecturers. Although Arthur claimed that he
left voluntarily, his mother's letter indicates
that he was expelled.
=== Education ===
He moved to Weimar but didn't live with his
mother who even tried to discourage him from
coming by explaining that they wouldn't get
along very well. 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 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,
most celebrated of them being Goethe. Arthur
attended her parties, usually when he knew
that Goethe would be there—though the famous
writer and statesman didn't even seem to notice
the young and unknown student. It is possible
that Goethe kept 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. Schopenhauer was
also captivated by the beautiful Karoline
Jagemann, mistress of Karl August, Grand Duke
of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, 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
didn’t 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 in 1809. There
are no written reasons about why Schopenhauer
chose that university instead of then more
famous University of Jena but Göttingen was
known as a more modern, 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 choose medicine due to his
scientific interests. Among his notable professors
were Bernhard Friedrich Thibaut, Arnold Hermann
Ludwig Heeren, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach,
Friedrich Stromeyer, Heinrich Adolf Schrader,
Johann Tobias Mayer and Konrad Johann Martin
Langenbeck. He studied metaphysics, psychology
and logic under Gottlob Ernst Schulze, the
author of Aenesidemus, who made a strong impression
and advised him to concentrate on Plato and
Immanuel Kant. He decided to switch from medicine
to philosophy around 1810-11 and he left Göttingen
which didn't have a strong philosophy program
(besides Schulze the only other philosophy
professor was Friedrich Bouterwek whom Schopenhauer
disliked). He didn't 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. During his days at Göttingen,
he spent a lot of time studying, but also
continued his flute playing and social life.
His friends included Friedrich Gotthilf Osann,
Karl Witte, Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen,
and William Backhouse Astor Sr..He arrived
to the newly founded University of Berlin
for the winter semester of 1811-12. At the
same time his mother just started her literary
career; she published her first book in 1810,
a biography of her friend Karl Ludwig Fernow,
which was a critical success. Arthur attended
lectures by the prominent post-Kantian philosopher
Johann Gottlieb Fichte but quickly found many
points of disagreement with his Wissenschaftslehre
and he also found his lectures tedious and
hard to understand. 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 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. He learned a lot by self-directed
reading; besides Plato, Kant and Fichte he
also read the works of Schelling, Fries, Jacobi,
Bacon, Locke, and a lot of current scientific
literature. He attended philological courses
by August Böckh and Friedrich August Wolf
and continued his naturalistic interests with
courses by Martin Heinrich Klaproth, Paul
Erman, Johann Elert Bode, Ernst Gottfried
Fischer, Johann Horkel, Friedrich Christian
Rosenthal and Hinrich Lichtenstein (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 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 Conrad Ludwig Müller von
Gerstenbergk, a civil servant fourteen years
younger than her; he considered the relationship
an act of infidelity to his father's memory.
He settled for a while in Rudolstadt hoping
that no army would pass through the small
town. He spent his time in solitude, hiking
in the mountains and the Thuringian forest
and writing his dissertation, On the Fourfold
Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
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 to 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 intentions of remarrying.
But Schopenhauer remained suspicious and often
came in conflict with Gerstenbergk because
he considered him untalented, pretentious,
and nationalistic. His mother 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'[s] reputation." He kept large
portraits of the pair in his office in Leipzig
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, which in many points differed
from his teacher's. Although they remained
polite towards each other, their growing theoretical
disagreements – and especially Schopenhauer's
tactless criticisms and extreme self-confidence
– 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.Another important experience during his
stay in Weimar was his acquaintance with Friedrich
Majer – a historian of religion, orientalist
and disciple of Herder – who introduced
him to the Eastern philosophy. Schopenhauer
was immediately impressed by the Upanishads
and the Buddha and put them at par with Plato
and Kant. He continued his studies by reading
the Bhagavad Gita, an amateurish German journal
Asiatisches Magazin and Asiatick Researches
by The Asiatic Society. Although he loved
Hindu texts he was more interested in Buddhism
which he came to regard as the best religion.
However, his early studies were constrained
by the lack of adequate literature, and were
mostly restricted to Early Buddhism. He also
claimed that he formulated most of his ideas
independently, and only later realized the
similarities with Buddhism.
As the relationship with his mother fell to
a new low he left Weimar and moved to Dresden
in May 1814. 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, Friedrich Laun, Karl Christian
Friedrich Krause 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.
However, his main occupation during his stay
in Dresden was his seminal philosophical work,
The World as Will and Representation, which
he started writing in 1814 and finished in
1818. He was recommended to Friedrich Arnold
Brockhaus by Baron Ferdinand von Biedenfeld,
an acquaintance of his mother. Although the
publisher accepted his manuscript, Schopenhauer
made a poor impression because of his quarrelsome
and fussy attitude and 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 yearlong vacation in Italy. He visited
Venice, Bologna, Florence, Naples and Milan,
travelling alone or accompanied by mostly
English tourists he met. He spent winter months
in Rome where he accidentally met his acquaintance
Karl Witte and engaged in numerous quarrels
with German tourists in Caffe Greco, among
them Johann Friedrich Böhmer who also mentioned
his insulting remarks and unpleasant character.
He enjoyed art, architecture, ancient ruins,
attended plays and operas, 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. 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 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 both with income
and the opportunity to promote his views.
He contacted his friends at universities in
Heidelberg, Göttingen and Berlin and found
Berlin most attractive. He scheduled his lectures
to coincide with those of the famous philosopher
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 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. However, 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 academic failure he continued to
travel extensively, visiting Leipzig, Nuremberg,
Stuttgart, Schaffhausen, Vevey, Milan and
spending eight months in Florence. However,
before he left for his three-year travel,
he had an incident with his Berlin neighbor,
forty-seven-year-old seamstress Caroline Louise
Marquet. The details of the August 1821 incident
are unknown. He claimed that he just pushed
her from his entrance after she rudely refused
to leave, and she purposely fell on the ground
so she could sue him. She claimed that he
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 in order to 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.
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. For a while he
was unsuccessfully courting 17-year-old Flora
Weiss, who was 22 years younger than him.
His unpublished writings from that time show
that he was already very critical of monogamy
but still not advocating polygyny – instead
musing about a polyamorous relationship he
called tetragamy. He had an on and off relationship
with a young dancer Caroline Richter (she
also used 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 already had
numerous lovers and an out-of-wedlock son,
and later gave birth to another son, this
time to an unnamed foreign diplomat. (She
soon had another pregnancy but it was stillborn).
As Schopenhauer was preparing to escape Berlin
in 1831, due to cholera epidemic, he offered
to take her with him on the condition that
she leaves her young son. She refused and
he went alone; in his will he left her a significant
sum of money but insisted that it should not
be in any way spent on her second son.Schopenhauer
claimed that in his last year in Berlin he
had a prophetic dream which urged him to escape
the city. As he arrived in his new home in
Frankfurt he supposedly had another 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. 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 didn’t bring
her much income, and her popularity was waning.
Their correspondence remained reserved, and
Arthur Schopenhauer 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 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 next year. He
sent another essay, On the Basis of Morality,
to the Royal Danish Society for Scientific
Studies but didn’t win the prize despite
being the only contestant. The Society was
appalled that several distinguished contemporary
philosophers were mentioned in a very offensive
manner, claimed that the essay missed the
point and that the arguments were not adequate.
Schopenhauer, who was very self-confident
that he will win, was enraged by this rejection.
He published both essays as The Two Basic
Problems of Ethics and in the preface to the
second edition of this book, in 1860, he was
still pouring insults on Royal Danish Society.
First edition, published in 1841, again failed
to draw attention to his philosophy. 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. The book was again
mostly ignored and few reviews were mixed
or negative.
However, Schopenhauer did start 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 refused
to publish Parerga and Paralipomena believing
that it would be another failure. Though Schopenhauer
later stopped corresponding with him, claiming
that he did not adhere closely enough to his
ideas, Frauenstädt continued to promote Schopehnauer's
work. They renewed their communication in
1859 and Schopenhauer named him heir for his
literary estate. He also became the editor
of the first collected works of Schopenhauer.In
1848 Schopenhauer witnessed 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. Even earlier in life
he 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. 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, which, as the title says, contains
essays that are supplementary to his main
work, and are mostly comprehensible to readers
unfamiliar with his earlier philosophy. 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 didn’t
contain the basic philosophical ideas of his
system. Many academic philosophers considered
him a great stylist and cultural critic but
didn’t take his philosophy seriously. His
early critics liked to point out similarities
of his ideas to those Fichte and Schelling,
or claim that there are numerous contradictions
in his philosophy. Both criticisms enraged
Schopenhauer. However, 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 wasn’t concerned about
harmony and agreement in his propositions
and that some of his ideas shouldn’t be
taken literally but instead as metaphors.Academic
philosophers were also starting to notice
his work. In 1856 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 a first of his four portraits of him
– which Schopenhauer didn’t particularly
like – that 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 his paintings and photographs were
being sold and admirers were visiting the
places where he lived and wrote his works.
People visited Frankfurt's Englischer Hof
to observe him dining. Admirers gave him gifts
and asked for autographs. He complained, however,
that he still felt isolated due to his not
very social nature and the fact that many
of his good friends already died from old
age.
He remained healthy in his 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 was declining since
his youth and he developed problems with rheumatism.
He remained active and lucid, continued his
reading, writing and correspondences until
his death. The numerous notes that he made
during these years, amongst others on aging,
were published posthumously under the title
Senilia. In the spring of 1860 his health
started to decline, 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. His last friend to visit him was
Wilhelm Gwinner and according to him Schopenhauer
was concerned that he won’t be able to finish
his planned additions to Parerga and Paralipomena
but was at peace with dying. He died of pulmonary-respiratory
failure, on 21 September 1860 while sitting
at home on his couch. He was 72.
== Philosophy ==
=== The world as representation ===
Schopenhauer saw his philosophy as a continuation
of that of Kant, and used the results of his
epistemological investigations, that is, transcendental
idealism, as starting point for his own:
My philosophy is founded on that of Kant,
and therefore presupposes a thorough knowledge
of it. Kant's teaching produces in the mind
of everyone who has comprehended it a fundamental
change which is so great that it may be regarded
as an intellectual new-birth. It alone is
able really to remove the inborn realism which
proceeds from the original character of the
intellect, which neither Berkeley nor Malebranche
succeed in doing, for they remain too much
in the universal, while Kant goes into the
particular, and indeed in a way that is quite
unexampled both before and after him, and
which has quite a peculiar, and, we might
say, immediate effect upon the mind in consequence
of which it undergoes a complete undeception,
and forthwith looks at all things in another
light. Only in this way can anyone become
susceptible to the more positive expositions
which I have to give.
Kant had argued the empirical world is merely
a complex of appearances whose existence and
connection occur only in our representations.
Schopenhauer reiterates this in the first
sentence of his main work: "The world is my
representation." We do not draw empirical
laws from nature, but prescribe them to it.Schopenhauer
praises Kant for his distinction between appearance
and the things-in-themselves that appear,
whereas the general consensus in German Idealism
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, as Kant
argued. The inadmissibility of this reasoning
was also acknowledged by Schopenhauer. He
insisted that this distinction was a true
conclusion, drawn from false premises.
=== Theory of perception ===
In November 1813 Goethe invited Schopenhauer
for research 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 Hume's skeptical
assault on causality that motivated the critical
investigations of Critique of Pure Reason.
In it, he gives an elaborate proof to show
that causality is given a priori. After G.E.
Schulze had made it plausible that Kant had
not disproven Hume's skepticism, it was up
to those loyal to the project of Kant to prove
this important matter.
The difference between the approach 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: 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?
The sensations in the hand of a man born blind,
on feeling an object of cubic shape, are quite
uniform and the same on all sides and in every
direction: the edges, it is true, press upon
a smaller portion of his hand, still nothing
at all like a cube is contained in these sensations.
His Understanding, however, draws the immediate
and intuitive conclusion from the resistance
felt, that this resistance must have a cause,
which then presents itself through that conclusion
as a hard body; and through the movements
of his arms in feeling the object, while the
hand's sensation remains unaltered, he constructs
the cubic shape in Space. If the representation
of a cause and of Space, together with their
laws, had not already existed within him,
the image of a cube could never have proceeded
from those successive sensations in his hand.
Causality is therefore not an empirical concept
drawn from objective perceptions, but objective
perception presupposes knowledge of causality.
Hereby Hume's skepticism is disproven.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 turns
the upside down impression; and that adds
depth to make from the planimetrical data
stereometrical perception with distance between
objects.
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, and in the subsequent
editions of Fourfold Root an extensive exposition
is given in § 21.
=== The world as will ===
Schopenhauer developed a system called metaphysical
voluntarism.
The kernel and chief point of my doctrine,
its Metaphysic proper, is this, that what
Kant opposed as thing-in-itself to mere appearance
(called more decidedly by me "representation")
and what he held to be absolutely unknowable,
that this thing-in-itself, I say, this substratum
of all appearances, and therefore of the whole
of Nature, is nothing but what we know directly
and intimately and find within ourselves as
will; that accordingly, this will, far from
being inseparable from, and even a mere result
of, knowledge, differs radically and entirely
from, and is quite independent of, knowledge,
which is secondary and of later origin; and
can consequently subsist and manifest itself
without knowledge: that this will, being the
one and only thing-in-itself, the sole truly
real, primary, metaphysical thing in a world
in which everything else is only appearance,
i.e., mere representation, gives all things,
whatever they may be, the power to exist and
to act; ... is absolutely identical with the
will we find within us and know as intimately
as we can know any thing; that, on the other
hand, knowledge with its substratum, the intellect,
is a merely secondary phenomenon, differing
completely from the will, only accompanying
its higher degrees of objectification and
not essential to it; ... that we are never
able therefore to infer absence of will from
absence of knowledge.
For Schopenhauer, human desire was futile,
illogical, directionless, and, by extension,
so was all human action in the world. Einstein
paraphrased his views as follows: "Man can
indeed do what he wants, but he cannot will
what he wants." In this sense, he adhered
to the Fichtean principle of idealism: "The
world is for a subject." This idealism so
presented, immediately commits it to an ethical
attitude, unlike the purely epistemological
concerns of Descartes and Berkeley. To Schopenhauer,
the Will is a blind force that controls not
only the actions of individual, intelligent
agents, but ultimately all observable phenomena—an
evil to be terminated via mankind's duties:
asceticism and chastity. He is credited with
one of the most famous opening lines of philosophy:
"The world is my representation." Friedrich
Nietzsche was greatly influenced by this idea
of Will, although he eventually rejected it.
=== Art and aesthetics ===
For Schopenhauer, human desiring, "willing",
and craving cause suffering or pain. A temporary
way to escape this pain is through aesthetic
contemplation (a method comparable to Zapffe's
"Sublimation"). Aesthetic contemplation allows
one to escape this pain—albeit temporarily—because
it stops one perceiving the world as mere
presentation. Instead, one no longer perceives
the world as an object of perception (therefore
as subject to the Principle of Sufficient
Grounds; time, space and causality) from which
one is separated; rather one becomes one with
that perception: "one can thus no longer separate
the perceiver from the perception" (The World
as Will and Representation, section 34). From
this immersion with the world one no longer
views oneself as an individual who suffers
in the world due to one's individual will
but, rather, becomes a "subject of cognition"
to a perception that is "Pure, will-less,
timeless" (section 34) where the essence,
"ideas", of the world are shown. Art is the
practical consequence of this brief aesthetic
contemplation as it attempts to depict one's
immersion with the world, thus tries to depict
the essence/pure ideas of the world. Music,
for Schopenhauer, was the purest form of art
because it was the one that depicted the will
itself without it appearing as subject to
the Principle of Sufficient Grounds, therefore
as an individual object. According to Daniel
Albright, "Schopenhauer thought that 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 realist views on mathematics
are evident in his criticism of the 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 intuitive perception.
The Euclidean method of demonstration has
brought forth from its own womb its most striking
parody and caricature in the famous controversy
over the theory of parallels, and in the attempts,
repeated every year, to prove the eleventh
axiom (also known as the fifth postulate).
The axiom asserts, and that indeed through
the indirect criterion of a third intersecting
line, that two lines inclined to each other
(for this is the precise meaning of "less
than two right angles"), if produced far enough,
must meet. Now this truth is supposed to be
too complicated to pass as self-evident, and
therefore needs a proof; but no such proof
can be produced, just because there is nothing
more immediate.
Throughout his writings, Schopenhauer criticized
the logical derivation of philosophies and
mathematics from mere concepts, instead of
from intuitive perceptions.
In fact, it seems to me that the logical method
is in this way reduced to an absurdity. But
it is precisely through the controversies
over this, together with the futile attempts
to demonstrate the directly certain as merely
indirectly certain, that the independence
and clearness of intuitive evidence appear
in contrast with the uselessness and difficulty
of logical proof, a contrast as instructive
as it is amusing. The direct certainty will
not be admitted here, just because it is no
merely logical certainty following from the
concept, and thus resting solely on the relation
of predicate to subject, according to the
principle of contradiction. But that eleventh
axiom regarding parallel lines is a synthetic
proposition a priori, and as such has the
guarantee of pure, not empirical, perception;
this perception is just as immediate and certain
as is the principle of contradiction itself,
from which all proofs originally derive their
certainty. At bottom this holds good of every
geometrical theorem ...
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.
It surprises me that the eighth axiom, "Figures
that coincide with one another are equal to
one another", is not rather attacked. For
"coinciding with one another" is either a
mere tautology, or something quite empirical,
belonging not to pure intuition or perception,
but to external sensuous experience. Thus
it presupposes mobility of the figures, but
matter alone is movable in space. Consequently,
this reference to coincidence with one another
forsakes pure space, the sole element of geometry,
in order to pass over to the material and
empirical.
This follows Kant's reasoning.
=== Ethics ===
The task of ethics is not to prescribe moral
actions that ought to be done, but to investigate
moral actions. Philosophy is always theoretical:
its task to explain what is given.According
to Kant's teaching of transcendental idealism,
space and time are forms of our sensibility
due to which the phenomena appear in multiplicity.
Reality in itself is free from all multiplicity,
not in the sense that an object is one, but
that it is outside the possibility of multiplicity.
From this follows that two individuals, though
they appear as distinct, are in-themselves
not distinct.The appearances are entirely
subordinated to the principle of sufficient
reason. The egoistic individual who focuses
his aims completely on his own interests has
therefore to deal with empirical laws as good
as he can.
What is relevant for ethics are individuals
who can act against their own self-interest.
If we take for example 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
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 the things appear to us,
the egoist is right to assert the 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 sufferings of others is for him not a
cold matter to which he is indifferent, but
he feels connected 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 at 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.Tormenter
and tormented are one. Suffering is the moral
retribution of our attachment to pleasure.
Schopenhauer deemed that this truth was expressed
by Christian dogma of original sin and in
Eastern religions with the 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 using all his force to fight for the happiness
of his individual manifestation, he will abhor
life itself, of which he knows how inseparably
it is connected with suffering. A happy individual
life midst of a world of suffering is for
him like beggar who dreams one night that
he is a king.Those who have experienced this
intuitive knowledge can no longer affirm life,
but will exhibit asceticism and quietism,
meaning that they are no longer sensitive
to motives, are not concerned about their
individual welfare, and accept the evil others
inflict on them without resisting. They welcome
poverty, do not seek nor flee death.Human
life is a ceaseless struggle for satisfaction,
and instead of renewing this contract, the
ascetic breaks it. It matters little whether
these ascetics adhered the dogmata of Christianity
or Dharmic religions, since their way of living
is the result of intuitive knowledge.
The Christian mystic and the teacher of the
Vedanta philosophy agree in this respect also,
they both regard all outward works and religious
exercises as superfluous for him who has attained
to perfection. So much agreement in the case
of such different ages and nations is a practical
proof that what is expressed here is not,
as optimistic dullness likes to assert, an
eccentricity and perversity of the mind, but
an essential side of human nature, which only
appears so rarely because of its excellence.
Schopenhauer referred to asceticism as the
denial of the will to live.
=== Psychology ===
Philosophers have not traditionally been impressed
by the tribulations of sex, but Schopenhauer
addressed it and related concepts forthrightly:
... one ought rather to be surprised that
a thing [sex] which plays throughout so important
a part in human life has hitherto practically
been disregarded by philosophers altogether,
and lies before us as raw and untreated material.
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 indeed 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, guaranteeing
the quality of the human race:
The ultimate aim of all love affairs ... is
more important than all other aims in man's
life; and therefore it is quite worthy of
the profound seriousness with which everyone
pursues it. What is decided by it is nothing
less than the composition of the next generation
...
It has often been argued that Schopenhauer's
thoughts on sexuality foreshadowed the theory
of evolution, a claim which seems to have
been met with satisfaction by Darwin as he
included a quote of the German philosopher
in his Descent of Man after having read such
a claim. This has also been noted about Freud's
concepts of the libido and the unconscious
mind, and evolutionary psychology in general.
=== Political and social thought ===
==== Politics ====
Schopenhauer's politics were, for the most
part, an echo of his system of ethics (the
latter being expressed in Die beiden Grundprobleme
der Ethik, available in English as two separate
books, On the Basis of Morality and On the
Freedom of the Will). Ethics also occupies
about one quarter of his central work, The
World as Will and Representation.
In occasional political comments in his Parerga
and Paralipomena and Manuscript Remains, Schopenhauer
described himself as a proponent of limited
government. What was essential, he thought,
was that the state should "leave each man
free to work out his own salvation," and so
long as government was thus limited, he would
"prefer to be ruled by a lion than one of
[his] fellow rats"—i.e., by a monarch, rather
than a democrat. Schopenhauer shared the view
of Thomas Hobbes on the necessity of the state,
and of state action, to check the destructive
tendencies innate to 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
monarchy as "that which is natural to man"
for "intelligence has always under a monarchical
government a much better chance against its
irreconcilable and ever-present foe, stupidity"
and disparaged republicanism as "unnatural
as it is unfavourable to the higher intellectual
life and the arts and sciences".Schopenhauer,
by his own admission, did not give much thought
to politics, and several times he writes proudly
of how little attention he had 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 did indeed
maintain his aloof 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."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 ancient Hindus and 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 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.
Despite this, he was adamantly against differing
treatment of races, was fervently anti-slavery,
and supported the abolitionist movement in
the United States. He describes the treatment
of "[our] innocent black brothers whom force
and injustice have delivered into [the slave-master's]
devilish clutches" as "belonging to the blackest
pages of mankind's criminal record".Schopenhauer
additionally maintained a marked metaphysical
and political anti-Judaism. Schopenhauer argued
that Christianity constituted a revolt against
what he styled the materialistic basis of
Judaism, exhibiting an Indian-influenced ethics
reflecting the Aryan-Vedic theme of spiritual
self-conquest. He saw this as opposed to what
he held was the ignorant drive toward earthly
utopianism and superficiality of a worldly
"Jewish" spirit:
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.
==== Punishment ====
The State, Schopenhauer claimed, punishes
criminals to prevent future crimes. It does
so by placing "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 ..." He claimed this doctrine
was not original to him. Previously, it appeared
in the writings of Plato, Seneca, Hobbes,
Pufendorf, and Anselm Feuerbach.
==== Views on women ====
In Schopenhauer's 1851 essay On Women, he
expressed his opposition to what he called
"Teutonico-Christian stupidity" of reflexive
unexamined reverence ("abgeschmackten Weiberveneration")
for the female. Schopenhauer wrote that "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 opposition to monogamy.
Indeed, Rodgers and Thompson in Philosophers
Behaving Badly call Schopenhauer "a misogynist
without rival in ... Western philosophy".
He claimed that "woman is by nature meant
to obey". The essay does give some compliments,
however: that "women are decidedly more sober
in their judgment than [men] are", and are
more sympathetic to the suffering of others.
Schopenhauer's writings have influenced many,
from Friedrich Nietzsche to nineteenth-century
feminists. Schopenhauer's 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 sociobiologists
and evolutionary psychologists.When the elderly
Schopenhauer sat for 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."
==== Heredity and eugenics ====
Schopenhauer viewed personality and intellect
as being 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 level of intellect through
his mother, and personal character through
one's 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 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-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 monistic philosophy,
Schopenhauer was very concerned about the
welfare of animals. For him, all individual
animals, including humans, are essentially
the same, being phenomenal manifestations
of the one underlying Will. The word "will"
designated, for him, force, power, impulse,
energy, and desire; it is the closest word
we have that can signify both the real essence
of all external things and also our own direct,
inner experience. Since every living thing
possesses will, then 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.
Compassion for animals is intimately associated
with goodness of character, and it may be
confidently asserted that he who is cruel
to living creatures cannot be a good man.
Nothing leads more definitely to a recognition
of the identity of the essential nature in
animal and human phenomena than a study of
zoology and anatomy.
The assumption that animals are without rights
and the illusion that our treatment of them
has no moral significance is a positively
outrageous example of Western crudity and
barbarity. Universal compassion is the only
guarantee of morality.
In 1841, he praised the establishment, in
London, of the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals, and also the Animals'
Friends Society in Philadelphia. Schopenhauer
even went so far as to protest against the
use of the pronoun "it" in reference to animals
because it led to the 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.He was very attached to his succession
of pet poodles. Schopenhauer criticized Spinoza's
belief that animals are a mere means for the
satisfaction of humans.
==== Views on 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 did
have 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."
=== 
Intellectual interests and affinities ===
==== Indology ====
Schopenhauer read the Latin translation of
the ancient Hindu texts, the Upanishads, which
French writer Anquetil du Perron had translated
from the Persian translation of Prince Dara
Shukoh entitled Sirre-Akbar ("The Great Secret").
He was so impressed by their philosophy that
he called them "the production of the highest
human wisdom", and believed they contained
superhuman concepts. The Upanishads was a
great source of inspiration to Schopenhauer.
Writing about them, he said:
It is the most satisfying and elevating reading
(with the exception of the original text)
which is possible in the world; it has been
the solace of my life and will be the solace
of my death.
The book Oupnekhat (Upanishad) always lay
open on his table, and he invariably studied
it before sleeping at night. 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.Schopenhauer
was first introduced to the 1802 Latin Upanishad
translation through Friedrich Majer. They
met during the winter of 1813–1814 in Weimar
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 a serious study of the Indic
texts, however, until the summer of 1814.
Sansfranski maintains that between 1815 and
1817, Schopenhauer had another important cross-pollination
with Indian thought in Dresden. This was through
his neighbor of two years, Karl Christian
Friedrich Krause. Krause was then a minor
and rather unorthodox philosopher who attempted
to mix his own ideas with that of ancient
Indian wisdom. Krause had also mastered Sanskrit,
unlike Schopenhauer, and the two developed
a professional relationship. It was from Krause
that Schopenhauer learned meditation and received
the closest thing to expert advice concerning
Indian thought.Most noticeable, in the case
of Schopenhauer's work, was the significance
of the Chandogya Upanishad, whose 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. 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, however, while greed and
lust are always unskillful, desire is ethically
variable – it can be skillful, unskillful,
or neutral.For Schopenhauer, will had ontological
primacy over the intellect. In other words,
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 either:
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.However, 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.
Occult historian Joscelyn Godwin (born 1945)
stated, "It was Buddhism that inspired the
philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, and, through
him, attracted Richard Wagner." This Orientalism
reflected the struggle of the German Romantics,
in the words of Leon Poliakov, to "free themselves
from Judeo-Christian fetters". In contradistinction
to Godwin's claim that Buddhism inspired Schopenhauer,
the philosopher himself 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 Nishitani Keiji, however,
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 Dharmic faith
loses more credence when viewed in light of
the fact that Schopenhauer 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, however,
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 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 magick 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; the operas of Mozart, Rossini
and Bellini were especially esteemed. Schopenhauer
considered music the highest art, and played
the flute during his whole life.As a polyglot,
the philosopher knew German, Italian, Spanish,
French, English, Latin and ancient Greek,
and he was an avid reader of poetry and literature.
He particularly revered Goethe, Petrarch,
Calderón and 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 and
the Upanishads. 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 Bruno and Spinoza as unique
philosophers who were 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 his 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 the vagueness and wideness
of the definitions. It is the common preference
of philosophers of abstraction over perception.
Bruno on the other hand, who knew much about
nature and ancient literature, presents 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.
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,
can hardly be overstated. The philosophy of
Kant was the foundation of his own. Schopenhauer
maintained that Kant stands in the same relation
to philosophers such as Berkeley and Plato,
as Copernicus to Hicetas, Philolaus, and Aristarchus:
Kant succeeded in demonstrating what previous
philosophers merely asserted.
In his study room one bust was of Buddha,
the other was of Kant. The bond which Schopenhauer
felt with the philosopher of Königsberg may
be esteemed in a poem he dedicated to Kant:
With my eyes I followed thee into the blue
sky,
And there thy flight dissolved from view.
Alone I stayed in the crowd below,
Thy word and thy book my only solace. —
Schopenhauer dedicated one fifth of his main
work, The World as Will and Representation,
to a criticism of the Kantian philosophy.
=== Post-Kantian school ===
The leading figures of post-Kantian philosophy,
Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, were not respected
by Schopenhauer. He argued that they were
no philosophers at all, who merely sought
to impress the public.
All this explains the painful impression with
which we are seized when, after studying genuine
thinkers, we come to the writings of Fichte
and Schelling, or even to the presumptuously
scribbled nonsense of Hegel, produced as it
was with a boundless, though justified, confidence
in German stupidity. With those genuine thinkers
one always found an honest investigation of
truth and just as honest an attempt to communicate
their ideas to others. Therefore whoever reads
Kant, Locke, Hume, Malebranche, Spinoza, and
Descartes feels elevated and agreeably impressed.
This is produced through communion with a
noble mind which has and awakens ideas and
which thinks and sets one thinking. The reverse
of all this takes place when we read the above-mentioned
three German sophists. An unbiased reader,
opening one of their books and then asking
himself whether this is the tone of a thinker
wanting to instruct or that of a charlatan
wanting to impress, cannot be five minutes
in any doubt; here everything breathes so
much of dishonesty.
Schelling was deemed the most talented of
the three, and Schopenhauer 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
showing off with the thoughts of Kant, instead
of hiding this relation in a cunning manner.Schopenhauer's
favourite subject of attacks was Hegel, whom
he considered unworthy even of Fichte and
Schelling. Whereas Fichte was merely a windbag,
Hegel was a "stupid and clumsy charlatan".
Karl Popper agreed with this distinction.
== Influence ==
Schopenhauer had a large posthumous effect
and remained the most influential German philosopher
until the First World War. His philosophy
was a starting point for a new generation
of philosophers, which consisted of Julius
Bahnsen, Paul Deussen, Lazar von Hellenbach,
Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, Ernst Otto
Lindner, Philipp Mainländer, Friedrich Nietzsche,
Olga Plümacher and Agnes Talbert. 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 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,
Volkelt, Solovyov and Weininger.
Schopenhauer was well read amongst physicists,
most notably Einstein, Schrödinger, Wolfgang
Pauli, and 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: Faraday, 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
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
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!" See also Influence of Schopenhauer
on Tristan und Isolde.
Under the influence of Schopenhauer Leo Tolstoy
became convinced that the truth of all religions
lies in self-renunciation. When he read his
philosophy he 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 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, Afanasy Fet,
J.-K. Huysmans and George Santayana.Sergei
Prokofiev, although initially reluctant to
engage with works noted for their pessimism,
became fascinated with Schopenhauer after
reading Aphorisms on the Wisdom of LifeI in
Parerga and ParalipomenaI. "With his truths
Schopenhauer gave me a spiritual world and
an awareness of happiness."Friedrich Nietzsche
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.
As a teenager, Ludwig Wittgenstein adopted
Schopenhauer's epistemological idealism. However,
after his study of the philosophy of mathematics,
he rejected epistemological transcendental
idealism for Gottlob Frege's conceptual realism.
In later years, Wittgenstein was highly dismissive
of Schopenhauer, describing him as an ultimately
shallow thinker: "Schopenhauer has quite a
crude mind ... where real depth starts, his
comes to an end." His friend Bertrand Russell
had a low opinion on the philosopher, and
attacked him in his famous History of Western
Philosophy for hypocritically praising asceticism
yet not acting upon it.On the opposite isle
of Russell on the foundations of mathematics,
the Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer incorporated
the ideas of Kant and Schopenhauer in intuitionism,
where mathematics is considered 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.
== Selected bibliography ==
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason (Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes
vom zureichenden Grunde), 1813
On Vision and Colors (Ueber das Sehn und die
Farben), 1816 ISBN 978-0-85496-988-3
Theory of Colors (Theoria colorum), 1830.
The World as Will and Representation (alternatively
translated in English as The World as Will
and Idea; original German is Die Welt als
Wille und Vorstellung): vol. 1818/1819, vol.
2, 1844
Vol. 1 Dover edition 1966, ISBN 978-0-486-21761-1
Vol. 2 Dover edition 1966, ISBN 978-0-486-21762-8
Peter Smith Publisher hardcover set 1969,
ISBN 978-0-8446-2885-1
Everyman Paperback combined abridged edition
(290 pp.) ISBN 978-0-460-87505-9
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 ISBN 978-0-85496-999-9
On the Freedom of the Will (Ueber die Freiheit
des menschlichen Willens), 1839 ISBN 978-0-631-14552-3
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, 1851; English translation
by E. F. J. Payne, Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1974, 2 volumes:
Printings:
1974 Hardcover, by ISBN
Vols. 1 and 2, ISBN 978-0-19-519813-3,
Vol. 1, ISBN
Vol. 2, ISBN 978-0-19-824527-8,
1974/1980 Paperback, Vol. 1, ISBN 978-0-19-824634-3,
Vol. 2, ISBN 978-0-19-824635-0,
2001 Paperback, Vol. 1, ISBN 978-0-19-924220-7,
Vol. 2, ISBN 978-0-19-924221-4
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: ISBN 978-0-14-044227-4
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., ISBN 978-0-85496-539-7
=== Online ===
Works by Arthur Schopenhauer at Project Gutenberg
Illustrated version of the "Art of Being Right"
and links to logic and sophisms used by the
stratagems.
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
in SchopenhauerSource
Essays of Schopenhauer
== See also ==
Eye of a needle
God in Buddhism
Massacre of the Innocents (Guido Reni)
Misotheism
Mortal coil
Nihilism
Post-Schopenhauerian pessimism
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Sources ===
== Further reading ==
=== Biographies ===
Cartwright, David. Schopenhauer: A Biography,
Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-521-82598-6
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, Schopenhauer (Bermann-Fischer,
1938)
Matthews, Jack, Schopenhauer's Will: Das Testament,
Nine Point Publishing, 2015. ISBN 978-0985827885.
A recent creative biography by philosophical
novelist Jack Matthews.
Rüdiger Safranski, Schopenhauer und die wilden
Jahre der Philosophie – Eine Biographie,
hard cover Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1987,
ISBN 978-3-446-14490-3, pocket edition Fischer:
ISBN 978-3-596-14299-6.
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 ===
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.
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.
Copleston, Frederick, Schopenhauer: Philosopher
of Pessimism, 1946 (reprinted London: Search
Press, 1975).
Gardiner, Patrick, 1963. Schopenhauer. Penguin
Books.
--------, Schopenhauer: A Very Short introduction.
Janaway, Christopher, 2003. Self and World
in Schopenhauer's Philosophy. Oxford University
Press. ISBN 978-0-19-825003-6
Magee, Bryan, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer,
Oxford University Press (1988, reprint 1997).
ISBN 978-0-19-823722-8
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.
Zimmern, Helen, Arthur Schopenhauer, his Life
and Philosophy, London, Longman, and Co.,
1876.
=== Articles ===
Abelson, Peter (1993). "Schopenhauer and Buddhism".
Philosophy East 
and West. 43 (2): 255–78. doi:10.2307/1399616.
JSTOR 1399616.
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.
Moges, Awet, 2006, "Schopenhauer's Philosophy."
Galileian Library.
Sangharakshita, 2004, "Schopenhauer and aesthetic
appreciation."
Young, Christopher; Brook, Andrew (1994).
"Schopenhauer and Freud". International Journal
of Psychoanalysis. 75: 101–18. PMID 8005756.
Oxenford's "Iconoclasm in German Philosophy,"
(See p. 388)
== External links ==
Works by Arthur Schopenhauer at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Arthur Schopenhauer at Internet
Archive
Works by Arthur Schopenhauer at LibriVox (public
domain audiobooks)
Wicks, Robert. "Arthur Schopenhauer". In Zalta,
Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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
Timeline of German Philosophers
A Quick Introduction to Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer at Find a Grave
Ross, Kelley L., 1998, "Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788–1860)." Two short essays, on Schopenhauer's
life and work, and on his dim view of academia.
