Philosophy of the Modern Era

Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860) occupies a distinctive position among philosophers in many respects. He is a pessimist, while almost all others, in one way or another, lean toward optimism. He is neither entirely academic, like Kant or Hegel, nor wholly detached from academic traditions. He rejects Christianity, favoring the religions of India: Hinduism and Buddhism. A man of considerable culture, he is nearly as interested in art as he is in ethics. Unusually free from nationalism, he is equally well-acquainted with English writers as he is with those of his own country. In his quest for a philosophy to believe in, he often turned more to artists and literary figures than to professional philosophers. He began to ascribe special significance to the concept of will, a characteristic shared by many philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries. However, for him, although will is the metaphysical principle, it is, from an ethical perspective, a source of evil; such a contrast is only possible for a pessimist. He acknowledges three sources for his philosophy: Kant, Plato, and the Upanishads, yet I doubt he owes as much to Plato as he himself believes. His worldview, by its temperament, bears a resemblance to that of the Hellenistic period. Tired and painful, it values peace more than victory, and quietism more than attempts at reform, which Schopenhauer deemed inevitably futile.

His parents belonged to prominent merchant families in the city of Danzig, where he was born. His father was a Voltairean who viewed England as a land of freedom and reason. Like most distinguished citizens of Danzig, his father despised Prussia for its encroachments on the independence of the free city and was so outraged by Danzig's annexation to Prussia in 1793 that he moved to Hamburg, suffering a significant loss in the process. From 1793 to 1797, Schopenhauer lived with his father in Hamburg, and then spent two years in Paris, after which his father was pleased to find that the boy had nearly forgotten the German language. In 1803, Schopenhauer was placed in a boarding school in England, where he developed a loathing for hypocrisy and deceit. Two years later, to please his father, he became a clerk in a Hamburg trading house, but felt repulsed by the business career and passionately yearned for literary and academic pursuits. This opportunity arose with his father's death, which was likely a suicide; Schopenhauer's mother was very eager for her son to abandon commerce and attend university. One might think that this would lead Schopenhauer to love his mother more than his father, yet the reality was quite the opposite: he did not love his mother and retained fond memories of his father.

His mother was a woman with literary aspirations. Two weeks before the Battle of Jena, she settled in Weimar, where she hosted a literary salon, wrote books, and enjoyed friendships with cultural figures. She had little affection for her son but was quick to notice his faults. She warned him against pomposity and false pathos; his mother's flirtations annoyed him. Upon reaching adulthood, he inherited a modest fortune, after which he and his mother gradually found each other increasingly intolerable. There is no doubt that his low opinion of women can be explained, at least in part, by the quarrels with his mother.

Even in Hamburg, he came under the influence of the Romantics, particularly Tieck, Novalis, and Hoffmann, from whom he learned to admire Greece and to harbor disdain for the ancient Hebrew elements in Christianity. Influenced by another Romantic, Friedrich Schlegel, he came to revere Indian philosophy. At the University of Göttingen, where he enrolled in 1809 upon reaching adulthood, he was taught to admire Kant. Two years later, he moved to Berlin, where he primarily engaged in scientific studies; he attended lectures by Fichte but held him in contempt. Amidst the general excitement of the liberation wars, he remained indifferent. In 1819, Schopenhauer became a Privatdozent in Berlin and was audacious enough to schedule his lectures at the same time as Hegel's. However, failing to attract Hegel's audience, he soon abandoned lecturing altogether. Eventually, he settled in Frankfurt and led the life of an old bachelor. He had a poodle named Atma (World Soul) and spent two hours a day walking, smoking a long pipe, reading the London newspaper "The Times," and hiring correspondents to search for evidence of his fame. He held an anti-democratic stance, loathed the revolution of 1848, believed in spiritualism and magic; in his study, he kept a bust of Kant and a bronze Buddha. Schopenhauer endeavored to emulate Kant's lifestyle in every aspect, except for early rising.

His principal work, "The World as Will and Representation," was published at the end of 1818. Schopenhauer attached great importance to it, even going so far as to claim that certain paragraphs of the book were dictated to him by the Holy Spirit. To his immense disappointment, the book did not achieve success. In 1844, he persuaded a publisher to release a second edition, but the recognition he so fervently desired came to him much later.

Schopenhauer's system is an adaptation of Kant's philosophy. However, he emphasized aspects in the "Critique" that were entirely different from those highlighted by Fichte or Hegel. They rejected the "thing-in-itself," thus making knowledge the primary metaphysical principle. Schopenhauer retained the "thing-in-itself" but identified it with will. He argued that what is perceived as my body is, in reality, my will. This perspective, contrary to the majority of Kantians who wished to deny it, represents a development of Kant's philosophy. Kant asserted that the study of the moral law could lead us beyond phenomena and provide knowledge that sensory perception could not yield. He also maintained that the moral law pertains fundamentally to will. For Kant, the distinction between a good and a bad person lies within the world of "things-in-themselves," as well as in the difference in volitional acts. From this, it follows that, according to Kant, volitional acts must belong to the real world, not to the world of phenomena. The phenomenon corresponding to a volitional act is a bodily movement. Thus, according to Schopenhauer, the body is a manifestation, the reality of which is will.

Yet the will that lies beyond phenomena cannot consist of a number of distinct volitional acts. Both space and time, according to Kant (with which Schopenhauer agrees), belong solely to phenomena; the thing-in-itself does not exist in space or time. Therefore, my will, in the sense in which it is real, cannot have a beginning or an end, nor can it consist of various volitional acts, since space and time are the sources of multiplicity—this is the "principle of individuation," using the scholastic phrase preferred by Schopenhauer. My will, therefore, is singular and timeless. Indeed, it must be identified with the will of the entire universe; my "separateness" is an illusion, a product of my subjective apparatus of spatial-temporal perception. What is real is one vast will, manifesting throughout the entirety of the universe, equally in both sentient and insentient nature.

One might expect that Schopenhauer would equate this cosmic will with God and preach a pantheistic doctrine indistinguishable from Spinoza's teaching, where virtue consists in submission to divine will. However, here Schopenhauer's pessimism takes a different turn. The cosmic will is evil; will, in general, is evil and, in any case, is the source of all our endless suffering. Suffering is an essential part of all life, and it increases with each expansion of knowledge. The will has no fixed end that, once achieved, brings satisfaction. Although death will eventually prevail, we pursue our futile goals, "striving to inflate a soap bubble as much as possible, even though we know full well it will burst." Happiness does not exist, for unfulfilled desire brings pain, while attainment only leads to saturation. The instinct drives humans to procreate, which brings new opportunities for suffering and death; this is why shame is associated with sexual acts. Suicide is futile; the doctrine of reincarnation, even if not literally true, nonetheless expresses a truth in the form of myth.

All of this is very lamentable, but there is a way out, and it was revealed in India. The best of myths is that of Nirvana, which Schopenhauer understands as extinction. He agrees that this contradicts the teachings of Christianity, but "what happened in Galilee cannot replace the ancient wisdom of humanity." The cause of suffering lies in the tension of the will: the less we exercise our will, the less we shall suffer. Here, at last, knowledge becomes beneficial, provided it is of a certain kind. The distinction between one person and another is part of the world of appearances; it vanishes when one perceives the world in its true light. For the good person, the veil of Maya (illusion) becomes transparent; they see that all things are one and that the difference between them and another person is merely illusory. They arrive at this understanding through love, which is always compassion, and must feel the pain of others. When the veil of Maya is lifted, one person bears the suffering of the entire world. For the good person, knowledge always humbles all phenomena. Their will turns away from life and denies its own nature. "And in them arises a revulsion against nature, the expression of which is their own phenomenal existence, a revulsion against the essence and inner nature of this world, which, as acknowledged, is full of miseries."

Here, Schopenhauer arrives at a complete agreement, at least in practice, with ascetic mysticism. Eckhart and Angelus Silesius surpass the New Testament. There are indeed some good things in orthodox Christianity, especially, for instance, the doctrine of original sin, preached against "vulgar Pelagianism" by St. Augustine and Luther; but the evangelists are lamentably deficient in metaphysics. Buddhism, says Schopenhauer, is the highest religion; the ethical teachings of Buddhism are widely accepted throughout Asia, except in regions where the "detestable doctrine of Islam" prevails.

The good person will live in perfect austerity, in voluntary poverty, fasting and subjecting themselves to self-mortification. Through all of this, they will achieve the suppression of their individual will. However, they do this not to attain harmony with God, as Western mystics do; they do not seek any positive good. The good they seek is entirely and absolutely negative. "We must dispel the gloomy impressions of that 'nothing' which we discern behind all virtue and holiness as their ultimate goal, and which we fear, as children fear the dark; we should not even evade it, like the Indians, through myths and meaningless words such as all-consuming Brahman or the Buddhists' Nirvana. We understand quite freely that what remains after the complete annihilation of the will is nothing for all those still imbued with will; but conversely, for those in whom the will denies itself, this our very real world with all its suns and Milky Ways is nothing."

Here lies an obscure assumption that saints perceive something positive, which is inaccessible to others, yet there is no hint anywhere as to what this might be, and I think it is a purely rhetorical assumption. The world with all its phenomena, as Schopenhauer states, is only its will. With the renunciation of the will: "… all these phenomena also disappear; the constant tension and infinite attempts—without rest at all degrees of objectivity, through which and in which the world consists—disappear; the diverse forms, which follow one another in succession, all manifestations of the will, and finally the universal forms of this manifestation—time and space, as well as its ultimate fundamental form—subject and object—all vanish. No will, no thought, no world. Before us lies only non-being."

Thus, according to Schopenhauer, the saint's goal is to approach as closely as possible to "non-existence," which, for some unexplained reason, cannot be attained through suicide; we cannot interpret this passage otherwise. It is also not easy to comprehend how such a saint is better than a bitter drunkard; perhaps Schopenhauer believed that moments of sobriety, unfortunately, occur all too often.

Schopenhauer's preaching of humility is neither very consistent nor particularly sincere. The mystics to whom he appeals believed in contemplation, in blissful vision—the deepest of all attainable forms of knowledge; this type of knowledge is the highest good. Since the time of Parmenides, deceptive knowledge of phenomena has been contrasted with another type of knowledge, but not with something entirely different. Christianity teaches us that our inner life consists in the knowledge of God. Yet Schopenhauer asserts nothing of the sort. He agrees that what is generally considered knowledge is merely the veil of Maya; however, when we penetrate through this veil, we see not God, but Satan, the evil all-powerful will, constantly weaving a web of suffering to torment its creatures. Terrified by the vision of the devil, the sage cries out: "Away!" and seeks refuge in non-existence. For the mystics, it would be an affront to think that they believe in this mythology. And the supposition that even without attaining complete non-existence, the sage may still live a life of some value cannot be reconciled with Schopenhauer's pessimism. As long as the sage exists, they exist because they maintain a will, which is evil. They may reduce the amount of evil by weakening their will, but they will never attain any positive good.

His teaching is insincere when judged by the life of Schopenhauer himself. He typically dined heartily in fine restaurants, engaged in numerous trivial love affairs—sensuous but not passionate—and was a remarkably cantankerous and exceedingly stingy person. Once, he was disturbed by an elderly seamstress who was chatting with a friend near the door of his apartment; he forcibly ejected her from the stairs, causing her lifelong injury. By court order, he was compelled to pay her a quarterly pension of 15 thalers for life. When she finally passed away twenty years later, he recorded in his expense book: "Obit anus, abit onus." In his life, it is hard to find anything that speaks of his virtue, save for his love for animals; he even opposed vivisection conducted for the sake of science. In all other respects, he was a complete egoist. It is hard to believe that a man so deeply convinced of the virtue of asceticism and humility never made any attempts to put his convictions into practice.

From a historical perspective, two aspects are significant in Schopenhauer: his pessimism and his doctrine that the will transcends knowledge. His pessimism allowed people to indulge in philosophy without deluding themselves that all evil could be justified. In this respect, his pessimism was beneficial as an antidote. Scientifically, both optimism and pessimism are equally objectionable: optimism assumes or tries to prove that the universe exists to provide us pleasure, while pessimism posits that the universe exists to cause us trouble. Scientifically, there is no evidence to support either view. Faith in pessimism or optimism is a matter of temperament, not reason; however, among Western philosophers, the optimistic temperament is more prevalent. Hence, a representative of the opposing party is useful, as they raise considerations that otherwise would go unnoticed.

More important than pessimism is the teaching on the primacy of will. It is clear that this teaching does not necessarily follow from pessimism (there is no necessary logical connection with pessimism), and those who adhered to this view after Schopenhauer often found in it a foundation for optimism. In one form or another, the doctrine of the primacy of will is supported by many philosophers of modern and contemporary times, particularly Nietzsche, Bergson, James, and Dewey. Moreover, it has gained popularity beyond the circle of professional philosophers. As the significance of will increased, the importance of knowledge diminished. I believe this is the most specific change in the mood of philosophers in our century. It was prepared by Rousseau and Kant, but first proclaimed in pure form by Schopenhauer. Therefore, despite its inconsistency and some superficiality, his philosophy plays a significant role as a stage in historical development.