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    Schopenhauer
    Schopenhauer
    Schopenhauer
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    Schopenhauer

    By Margrieta Beer

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    About this ebook

    "Schopenhauer" by Margrieta Beer is a book that surrounds the tales, life, and work of the pessimistic philosopher, Schopenhauer. Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher best known for his 1818 work, The World as Will and Representation, which characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind noumenal will. This book serves as a bio and description of the man who influenced modern-contemporary philosophy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGood Press
    Release dateMay 19, 2021
    ISBN4057664575579
    Schopenhauer

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      Book preview

      Schopenhauer - Margrieta Beer

      Margrieta Beer

      Schopenhauer

      Published by Good Press, 2022

      goodpress@okpublishing.info

      EAN 4057664575579

      Table of Contents

      INTRODUCTION

      CHAPTER I

      CHAPTER II

      CHAPTER III

      CHAPTER IV

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      INDEX

      INTRODUCTION

      Table of Contents

      Schopenhauer differs from most other philosophers in that he has influenced not only the development of the history of thought, the course along which modern philosophy has proceeded, but in that his views have been welcomed as an inspiration, accepted almost in the spirit of a religious faith by workers in quite other departments of life.

      No philosopher has so directly touched and influenced the great art movements of modern times. It is now nearly one hundred years since the publication of his greatest work, and his philosophy is a more potent and vitalising force to-day than in his own lifetime. It has been a source of inspiration to artists and has directly stimulated their creative activity, probably more than any other abstract system has ever done.

      Poetry has always been influenced subtly by philosophy. Spenser and Shelley are imbued through and through with the doctrines of Plato. Goethe wrote some of his finest work under the spell of Spinoza, and some of Wordsworth's deepest experiences were interpreted to him through the ideas of Kant. It is to all artists, but especially to musicians, that Schopenhauer makes his most intimate appeal. For in his system music plays a strangely important part, above and apart from all the other arts. In analysing its spiritual character, he endows it with mystic significance. One famous instance of this influence is that of Wagner. His acquaintance with Schopenhauer's philosophy marked a turning-point in his artistic life. It gave a tremendous stimulus to his musical productivity, and while under its influence he composed his greatest works.

      Schopenhauer's system expresses, according to his own statement, only a single thought, viewed in different aspects. He considers it from the metaphysical, æsthetic, and ethical points of view. This fundamental thought, which lies at the root of his entire philosophy, is concerned with the significance of the will. The will alone gives the key to the understanding of man's existence. Every force in nature is to be regarded as will, and the inner reality of the universe is to be found only in will.

      While it is especially to those who are concerned with the problems arising out of the function and significance of art that Schopenhauer offers such fruitful and fascinating suggestions, the other aspects of his system offer solutions in the sphere of ethics and metaphysics of almost equally vital importance. His insistence on the significance of instinct and intuition in all the lower and higher forms of life is of great importance in the history of philosophy. It is an aspect of the subject which until later times had been strangely neglected. This prominence which is given to instinct and intuition, is connected directly with his philosophy of the will.

      Schopenhauer, unlike most philosophers, has always been read and appreciated by the general reader and student of life, as distinguished from the specialised student of philosophy. His fundamental attitude towards philosophy explains this to a great extent. Notwithstanding his marked leaning towards mysticism, he brought philosophy down to earth, and into relation with, the actual facts of life. He exchanged abstractions for realities. Philosophy had always been far too much concerned, he maintained, with abstract conceptions, and the philosopher had tended too exclusively to be a mere man of books and learning. The true philosopher, on the contrary, should be a guide to fine living as well as to high thinking.

      Philosophy should express the real life of things. But the deepest things in life are not known by way of the intellect, but are lived and felt. The profoundest truths of life we know intuitively and directly, with a deeper certainty than the understanding can give.

      That Schopenhauer has a wider public than have most philosophers is due partly to his style. He writes in language so singularly clear and lucid, that it can be followed easily by the general reader, not specially trained in a technical philosophical vocabulary. Of all German philosophers he is the greatest from a literary point of view. The true philosopher, he writes, will always seek after light and clearness, and will endeavour to resemble a Swiss lake, which through its peacefulness is able to unite great depth with great clearness, the depth revealing itself precisely by the clearness, rather than a turbid, impetuous mountain torrent. Philosophers have not always given much heed to this counsel of perfection. Obscurity of expression is merely the cloak in which men seek to hide their poverty of thought and triteness of mind. Everyone, says Schopenhauer, who possesses a beautiful and rich mind will always express himself in the most natural, direct, and simple way, concerned to communicate his thoughts to others and thus relieve the loneliness that he must feel in such a world as this.

      Schopenhauer is a temperamental pessimist. In words of glowing and passionate eloquence he sets out to prove that all life is essentially sorrow. From his earliest days he had been abnormally sensitive to the misery that lies beneath the surface of life. Pain is essential to life and cannot be evaded. If it can find entrance in no other form, then it comes in the sad, grey garments of tedium and ennui.

      The purest joy in life is that which lifts us out of our daily existence, and transforms us into disinterested spectators of it. This divine release from the common ways of men can only be found through art. But even this release, which is accessible only to the few, increases the capacity for suffering.

      The final and only permanent solution of life is to be found in the life of the saint. True morality passes through virtue, which is rooted in sympathy, into asceticism. Art gives a marvellous consolation in life, but renunciation and self-surrender offer a complete release from the terrors and evils of existence. The veil of Mâyâ—the web of illusion—is lifted from man's eyes. He now shudders at the pleasures which recognise the assertion of life, and attains to the state of voluntary renunciation, resignation, and true indifference. Buddhism, Schopenhauer maintained, comes nearest of all religions to expressing this truth. It is here that he shows how profoundly Indian philosophy and religion had influenced him.

      Throughout his life Schopenhauer was aggressively hostile towards all contemporary philosophers. To some extent, no doubt, his own failure to obtain academic recognition embittered him. But partly his attitude may be explained by the complete difference of method between them. Schopenhauer cares nothing at all about method. To Hegel and his contemporaries method was all-important. The historical method was the pathway which was followed with most enthusiasm at the time. It is especially for the historical method that Schopenhauer has the frankest contempt. Hegel and others were attempting to interpret present reality through history, seeking to show that through the slow process of history, unfolding itself in time, are revealed the organic principles which underlie the whole of life. Schopenhauer attaches practically no value to history as a highroad for philosophical inquiry. This way, he says, lie merely the dry bones of archæology and antiquarianism. To examine things historically is to look along a horizontal line. To think philosophically is to look along a vertical line. The latter is the rational and the more profound point of view. What history narrates is in fact only the long, heavy, and confused dream of humanity. It is our inmost consciousness which is the real concern of the philosopher. The true philosophy of history, he says, "consists in the insight into the causes of all these endless changes and their confusion. We have always before us the same even, unchanging nature, which to-day acts in the same way as yesterday. Thus it ought to recognise the identical in all events, in ancient as in modern times, in the East

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