Arthur Schopenhauer
Behind everything is a blind, restless will that makes life suffering; art and compassion offer the only relief.
Placement
The world as will and representation: a blind will to live drives everything; redemption through art and compassion.
Key ideas
- Will
- Pessimism
- Ethics of compassion
- Art as redemption
Influence
Influenced by 7
Uddalaka Aruni
influenced by
Schopenhauer made Uddalaka’s ‘tat tvam asi’ (that art thou) from the Chandogya Upanishad, read in the Oupnek’hat, the formula of his ethics of compassion (1819, 1840). A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819); Über die Grundlage der Moral (1840); U. App, Schopenhauer’s Compass (2014)
Evidence: AI draft
Uddalaka Aruni › traditionally c. 830–760 BCE
Yajnavalkya
influenced by
The link runs through the Upanishads: Schopenhauer read the Oupnek’hat (1801–02), which includes Yajnavalkya’s teachings from the Brihadaranyaka, and called it the consolation of his life (Parerga, 1851). A. Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena II (1851); A. H. Anquetil-Duperron, Oupnek’hat (1801–02); U. App, Schopenhauer’s Compass (2014)
Evidence: AI draft
Yajnavalkya › traditionally c. 800–720 BCE
Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)
influenced by disputed
Schopenhauer saw his teaching of suffering and will-denial confirmed in Buddhism (World as Will, 1844); how much he knew of it before 1818 is debated. A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung II (1844); U. App, “Schopenhauer’s Initial Encounter with Indian Thought”, Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch (2006); SEP “Arthur Schopenhauer”
Evidence: AI draft
Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) › c. 480–400 BCE · conventionally dated 563–483 BCE
Plato
influenced by ✓
In Book Three of The World as Will and Representation (1819) Schopenhauer made Plato’s Ideas, as grades of the will’s objectification, the object of art and aesthetic contemplation. A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819), Book Three; SEP “Arthur Schopenhauer”
Plato › 428–348 BCE
Baltasar Gracián
influenced by
Schopenhauer translated Gracián’s Oráculo manual (1832; published 1862) and drew on its worldly prudence in his Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life (1851). A. Schopenhauer (tr.), Balthazar Gracians Hand-Orakel und Kunst der Weltklugheit (1862); Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, in Parerga und Paralipomena (1851)
Evidence: AI draft
Baltasar Gracián › 1601–1658
Dara Shikoh
influenced by
Schopenhauer read the Upanishads from 1814 in Anquetil-Duperron’s Latin Oupnek’hat (1801–02), a translation of Dara Shikoh’s Persian Sirr-i akbar (1657), and praised them in the preface to The World as Will and Representation (1819). A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819), preface; Parerga und Paralipomena II (1851), § 185; U. App, Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 87 (2006)
Evidence: AI draft
Dara Shikoh › 1615–1659
Immanuel Kant
influenced by ✓
Schopenhauer kept Kant’s distinction of appearance and thing in itself, calling the latter will, and appended a Critique of the Kantian Philosophy to his main work (1819). A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819), appendix “Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie”; SEP “Arthur Schopenhauer”
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Influenced 5
Leo Tolstoy
influenced ✓
Tolstoy read Schopenhauer in 1869 while finishing War and Peace, writing to Fet of ‘unceasing raptures’, and in A Confession (1879–82) cited him on the vanity of life. L. N. Tolstoy, letter to A. A. Fet, 30 Aug. 1869; Ispoved’ (1879–82)
Leo Tolstoy › 1828–1910
Sigmund Freud
influenced
Freud granted that Schopenhauer had anticipated repression (1914) and said his death drive had steered into ‘the harbour of Schopenhauer’s philosophy’ (Jenseits des Lustprinzips, 1920). S. Freud, “Zur Geschichte der psychoanalytischen Bewegung” (1914); Jenseits des Lustprinzips (1920); SEP “Arthur Schopenhauer”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
José Vasconcelos
influenced
Vasconcelos took from Schopenhauer the redemptive power of aesthetic contemplation, making art the highest form of knowledge in his aesthetic monism (El monismo estético, 1918). J. Vasconcelos, El monismo estético (1918); Estética (1936)
Evidence: AI draft
José Vasconcelos › 1882–1959
Ludwig Wittgenstein
influenced ✓
Wittgenstein’s early view of the metaphysical subject and will, in the Notebooks 1914–16 (publ. 1961) and the Tractatus (1921), drew on Schopenhauer, whom he read as a youth. L. Wittgenstein, Tagebücher 1914–1916 (publ. 1961); Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (1921); G. H. von Wright, “Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Biographical Sketch”, Philosophical Review 64 (1955); SEP “Arthur Schopenhauer”
Ludwig Wittgenstein › 1889–1951
Max Horkheimer
influenced
Horkheimer, who read Schopenhauer from his youth, valued his pessimism and ethics of compassion as a corrective to optimistic philosophies of history (‘Die Aktualität Schopenhauers’, 1961). M. Horkheimer, “Schopenhauer und die Gesellschaft” (1955); “Die Aktualität Schopenhauers” (1961); A. Schmidt, Drei Studien über Materialismus (1977)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Max Horkheimer › 1895–1973
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Friedrich Nietzsche influenced
influenced ✓
Nietzsche discovered The World as Will and Representation in a Leipzig bookshop in 1865 and built The Birth of Tragedy (1872) on Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of will and music. F. Nietzsche, “Rückblick auf meine zwei Leipziger Jahre” (1867); Die Geburt der Tragödie (1872); SEP “Friedrich Nietzsche”
criticised by
Nietzsche came to reject Schopenhauer’s morality of pity and denial of the will as a life-denying romanticism (Genealogy of Morals, 1887, Preface §5). F. Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887), Preface §5; Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1887), §370
Evidence: AI draft
Friedrich Nietzsche › 1844–1900
Criticizes 2
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
criticised
Schopenhauer held that Fichte, deriving the object from the subject, made the mirror-image error of materialism (The World as Will and Representation, 1819, I §7). A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I (1819), §7; SEP “Arthur Schopenhauer”
Evidence: AI draft
Johann Gottlieb Fichte › 1762–1814
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
criticised
Schopenhauer derided Hegel’s philosophy as obscure verbiage serving state and church, and denied that history is the rational self-unfolding of spirit (World as Will II, 1844, ch. 38). A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung II (1844), ch. 38; Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (1841), Preface; “Über die Universitäts-Philosophie”, Parerga I (1851)
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Works
The world is my representation – and its essence is blind will.
Position
Schopenhauer took up Kant’s distinction between appearance and thing in itself and gave the latter a name: will. The world as we perceive it is our representation, ordered by space, time and causality; but from within, in our own bodies, we experience it as blind, restless striving. Because this will can never be satisfied, life swings between pain and boredom. Relief comes through art, especially music, which lets us contemplate without desire; through compassion, the basis of morality, in which we recognise ourselves in others; and finally through the ascetic denial of the will. Close to Buddhist and Hindu thought, he deeply influenced Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud and Thomas Mann. His essay “On Women” (in Parerga and Paralipomena, 1851) is notorious for its misogyny.
Life & context
Son of a Danzig merchant and of the novelist Johanna Schopenhauer, he abandoned a business career to study philosophy. His main work found almost no readers, and his Berlin lectures, scheduled at the same hour as Hegel’s, failed. In 1821 he pushed his neighbour, the seamstress Caroline Marquet, out of his anteroom; after years of litigation the Berlin courts found against him and ordered him to pay her a quarterly annuity for life. He lived as a private scholar in Frankfurt from 1833 and only won fame in old age with the essays of Parerga and Paralipomena. From 1814 he read the Upanishads in Anquetil-Duperron’s Latin Oupnek’hat (1801–02), a translation of a Persian version, and later called it “the consolation of my life”; he studied Buddhism in detail only after 1818.
Further main works
- On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813)
- The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (1841)
- Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)
Appears in
- Journey ‘Asia and Europe in Dialogue’ · Stop 5 of 11
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