Essays and Aphorisms

This book is a classic. I love it and cart it around everywhere- so much so that my wife took to calling me `Schopey,' soon after we married. Oh what a kidder... The text in question is basically an abbreviated form of "Parerga and Paralipomena," a collection of, you guessed it, essays and aphorisms that Arthur published towards the end of his life. In fact, he owed much of his early popularity to these little bits of brain, blood and bile- they paved the way for the interest in his earlier, more thorough and more intimidating work- `The World as Will and Representation,' his central text. Intense, brooding, and enthrallingly lucid (a trait much lacking in philosophy in general and German philosophy in particular), these little pensees and barbs will provide you with much enjoyment, quotes, quips and boundless food for thought. If you are at all the kind of person who enjoys reading, or if you are buying books with such a person in mind (and if you weren't I don't see how you would have ended up here) I cannot say enough good things about this tiny volume! Whether or not you agree with Schopenhauer's central philosophic themes, his high-jacking/hybridization of Kantian metaphysics and Eastern Vedic/Buddhist Scripture, his pessimistic misanthropy, his irrational and intuitive bent, his (huge) influence on psychology and psychoanalysis, his dismissal of Judeo-Christian religion, or his overbearing arrogance- he is not a thinker to be dismissed lightly. I disagree with him on practically everything important (as did Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy notwithstanding), except his scathing misanthropy and his views on opera (page 163- he loathed it by the way, as a philistine piling up of styles, an `unmusical invention for unmusical minds...'), but so what? His views, maxims and opinions are straightforwardly put with all the deceptive elegance of a minor key Chopin Nocturne. A refreshing break from the tireless jargon-juggling of contemporary, pomo, academic charlatans... And the man was brilliant. The kind of brilliance that engenders humility in readers and makes young, would-be philosophers reconsider their choice of profession. You cannot help but enter into dialogue with this man. And hey- All you young, winsome, despairing, romantically-inclined teenagers- take note! This guy was the real deal, it takes serious cajones to spit in the face of the Enlightenment and proclaim to the progress-minded 19th C. that, "Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of existence, then our existence must have no object whatever," (which is the first sentence in this nice little book) and then back that statement up with serious argumentation. And as a literary influence Schopenhauer is in a league entirely of his own. Thomas Mann is unthinkable without him (well, and Nietzcsche). Borges once opined that the only thinkers he thought accurately depicted the world were Schopenhauer and Berkeley. Finally, The introduction by Hollingdale is .. superb. It is

Insighful ideas written in lucid language (very rare for a philosopher) with thoughts on existence, suicide, women, religion, politics, ethics, aesthetics, psychology, and other sundry ideas. Scopenhauer's ideas are a reflection of the post-Kantian era. The Zeitgeist of spiritual nihilism, which is nothing more than greater minds expressing the religious tendency. Scopenhauer seems like one who finds very little value in the world but he doesn't reverberate the nihilist slogan, "Since all is false, everyhing is permitted." He at once preaches to us that the world is inherently meaningless and that all movement is the result of an obscure force he calls "Will," and yet he proscribes compasion and empathy, as can be exemplified by his outrage over slavery and his sensitivity to animals. While it's easier to tear down walls then to build them up, I nevertheless have a few problems with his ontological presuppositions. Scopenhauer writes that his "ethics is ... actually in the spirit of the New Testament.." obviously appreciating it's ascetic nature yet in his dialogue on religion, he castigates Christianity and surprisingly exalts the Greeks (who affirmed life and did not practice an official religion ), exemplifying the superiority of their metaphysics to that of Christian metaphysics. He does this by comparing the periods in which these two systems reigned over their respective societies. The result of the Greek outlook was "the fairest unfolding of humanity, a spelndid state structure, wise laws, a carefully balanced legal administration, rationally regulated freedom, all the arts, together with poetry and philosophy, at their peark, creating works which after thousands of years still stand as unequalled models of their kind, almost as the production of higher beings whom we can never hope to emulate.." while when Christianity took over as the reigning religion in Europe there was a "hideous ignorance and darkness of mind, and in consequence intolerance, quarrelling over beliefs, religious wars, crusades, persecution of heretics and inquisitions..." etc. From my perspective, Christianity's dogmatism and its devaluation of life caused the cultural stagnation in the dark ages (Why champion reason and seek insight through philosophical inquiry when the catechism of Christianity has all of the answers?) but the devaluation seems to be what Scopenhauer is attracted to and yet he fails to realize that. Nevertheless, Scopenhauer ends his dialogue on religion with Demopheles declaring to Philalethes, "Let us see, rather that, like Janus - or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death - religion has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloom: you have had your eyes fixed on one face, I have had mine fixed on the other." My second problem is that Scopenhauer proposes that the intellect is a result of the Will and does not exist on its own accord. But in the section "On Philosophy and the Intellect" he says that which inspires the genius is not related

This book grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and forced me to evaluate my priorities in life. This book has had more practical influence on the way I actually live my life day-to-day than any other. Never has pessimism been so beautiful. I'm glad I didn't die before I had the chance to read this book. This is the best-kept secret in the annals of wisdom. Schopenhauer's pessimism is like a solvent that cleans all the nasty sludge off your moving parts, and his wit is like a fresh grease-pack in your bearings. Read it and tell a friend!

Taken from the nineteenth-century philosopher's last book, Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Essays & Aphorisms is a superb introduction to Schopenhauer's thought, a sampling of his final views on a wide range of subjects. Admittedly, the author's original two-volume work is often tedious and repetitive, but the selections and abridgements by Hollingdale have produced an easily consulted and highly readable result. As explained in the Introduction, Parerga was actually not a collection of essays or of aphorisms, but, in Schopenhauer's own words, one of "single but systematically ordered thoughts on diverse subjects." The "Essays" contained in this volume are really chains of such thoughts on specific subjects. Schopenhauer is famous, or rather infamous, primarily for his pessimistic outlook, and only secondarily so for the adaptation to Kant's metaphysics that he constructed to support it. Pessimism is at least as old as literature - Sophocles wrote: "Not to be born at all is the most to be desired; but having seen the light, the next best is to die as soon as possible" - but Schopenhauer's contribution was to try to show that this is justified. The background for this attempt is the system he had worked out and published by 1818 in his principle work, The World as Will and Representation (or Idea), 1200 pages in its final form, and recommended only to the reader who already possesses a healthy interest in Schopenhauer's complete system as the outcome of German metaphysics. Thankfully, Hollingdale outlines this background, and the background necessary to understand it, in an amazingly concise Introduction, which also includes an illuminating biographical sketch. As Hollingdale notes, there is nothing to prevent the reader completely unacquainted with Kant and with Schopenhauer's life and times from picking up Essays & Aphorisms and enjoying it immensely, but it is the reviewer's opinion that the Introduction will prove invaluable to such a reader, and helpful or at least interesting to most others. After the obscure and awkward writing styles of the two giants of German philosophy, Kant and Hegel, Schopenhauer, who revered the former and despised the latter, really comes across as much as an heir to Goethe's legacy as to Kant's. His stylistic strengths, which are both presented and, indirectly, discussed, in the penultimate section "On Books and Writing," partly accounts for his enduring popularity and the enthusiasm with which at least two of his most famous adherents, Richard Wagner and the young Nietzsche, embraced his philosophy. It is of course, though, the substance of his writing which strikes the reader most in such a condensed book as Essays & Aphorisms. The initiation is brutal. The first two essays "On the Suffering of the World" and "On the Vanity of Existence" leave no doubt as to the overriding sentiment in Schopenhauer's world-view and ethics: "the world is Hell, and men are