ARTHUR SCHOPENHAU

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L I F E & W O R K S

He was born in Danzig in 1788 and died in Frankfurt am Main in 1860. His father was a wealthy businessman and his mother an intelligent, cultured novelist. After and introduction into the business world, he studied philosophy in Gottingen and Berlin. His doctoral dissertation was his book, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

L I F E & W O R K S

In 1818, he finished his major work, The World as Will and Representation, which did not receive much notice. After 1820, he was Privatdo zent (private tutor) in Berlin, but he had scarcely any students in his classes, which were announced at the same time as Hegel's.

L I F E & W O R K S

When the cholera epidemic struck Berlin in 1831, Schopenhauer fled the city and settled for good in Frankfurt, thus he escaped the epidemic, which killed Hegel. Schopenhauer's later books were more successful. On will in Nature, The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, and Parerga and Paralipomena.

L I F E & W O R K S

Throughout his life, Schopenhauer was bitterly hostile to the post-Kantian idealist philosophers, especially Hegel, whom he disparaged, sometimes with wit, but often with little justification and poor insight. His failure to achieve success and fame as a professor and writer accentuated the biting and aggressive pessimism that characterizes the philosophy.

L I F E & W O R K S

Schopenhauer was keenly interested in art, music, and literature. He was an admirer and translator of Baltasar Gracian, whose sententious and aphoristic style appealed to him. The strongest influences on Schopenhauer were Plato, Kant, the post-Kantian idealists - even though he disagreed with them - and on the other hand, Indian thought and Buddhism.

L I F E & W O R K S

Ever since the last years of Schopenhauer's life, and particularly since his death, his thought has been felt more in the realms of literature, theosophy, and the like, than in the realm of philosophy itself.

THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION

The title of Schopenhauer’s masterwork contains the central thesis of his philosophy. The world is a “phenomenon,” a representation or idea ; Schopenhauer makes no distinction between a phenomenon and an appearance; he says that the two are identical. The world as we know it is an appearance or deception.

THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION

Space, time and causality are the forms which change this world into a world of objects; they order and arrange the sensations. The Kantian roots in this theory are evident.

THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION

However, there is an aspect of the world, which we do not apprehend as pure phenomenon; this is the ego, which is apprehended in a more profound and direct manner. On the one hand, the ego can be perceived as something free, and this is called the will. In the deepest level, man apprehends himself as the will to live.

THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION

Every object in the world manifests itself as a longing or will to be; this is as true with respect to organic things and in the realm of consciousness. Thus, reality is will. However, inasmuch as desire presupposes insatiability, the will is constant pain. Pleasure, which can only be transitory, consists of a cessation of pain; fundamentally, life consists of pain.

THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION

Thus, Schopenhauer’s philosophy is rigorously pessimistic. The never-quenched will to live is an evil; and, therefore, the world and man’s life are also evils.