On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813)
Doctoral dissertation distinguishing four forms of the principle that everything has a reason
Philosophy
Arthur Schopenhauer
1788–1860 · German (born in Danzig)
Post-Kantian philosophy; pessimism
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher famous for his pessimism. Building on Kant, he argued that the world we perceive is mere representation, behind which lies a blind, striving Will that makes life fundamentally suffering; relief comes through art, compassion and ascetic denial of the will. He was among the first Western philosophers to draw seriously on Indian thought.
How to spot them
- ▸The World as Will and Representation; "Will" and "Vorstellung"
- ▸Philosophical pessimism; life as suffering; denial of the will-to-live
- ▸Enmity towards Hegel; influence on Nietzsche, Wagner, Wittgenstein and Thomas Mann
- ▸Upanishads and Buddhism; music as a direct copy of the will; poodles
Key works
On Vision and Colours (1816)
Theory of colour developed after working with Goethe
The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung) (1818)
Masterwork: the world as representation is appearance; its inner essence is blind Will; salvation through art, compassion and renunciation (dated 1819; expanded 2nd ed. 1844)
The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (1841)
Essays on the freedom of the will and on compassion as the basis of morality
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)
Popular essays and aphorisms (including "On the Suffering of the World") that finally made him famous
Key ideas
- The world as representation: the perceived world is appearance structured by the subject's forms (space, time, causality)
- The Will: the thing-in-itself behind all appearances is a single, blind, purposeless striving that manifests in all nature and in human desire
- Pessimism: because desire is endless and satisfaction fleeting, life oscillates between pain and boredom; suffering is the norm
- Aesthetic contemplation offers temporary escape from willing; music is uniquely a direct copy of the Will itself
- Compassion (Mitleid) is the true basis of morality, since at bottom all beings share one Will
- Final release lies in denial of the will-to-live through asceticism, an idea he linked to Buddhism and Hinduism
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Danzig (now Gdańsk); died in Frankfurt am Main, where he lived for almost thirty years
- •His mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, was a successful novelist who ran a literary salon in Weimar attended by Goethe
- •As a Berlin lecturer he scheduled his lectures at the same time as Hegel's and drew very few students
- •Called Hegel a charlatan in his writings
- •Kept a succession of poodles, one of them named Atma (the world-soul)
- •His "porcupine" (hedgehog's dilemma) parable in Parerga and Paralipomena illustrates the difficulty of human intimacy
- •Ordered by a court to pay a seamstress, Caroline Marquet, an annuity after pushing her down stairs
- •Deeply influenced Nietzsche, Wagner, Tolstoy, Freud, Wittgenstein and Thomas Mann
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Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Arthur Schopenhauer