Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Background
I. Life
1. Family: Schopenhauer’s father was a wealthy and admired businessman. He was also a determined and somber person. He wanted his son to make a career in business and even resorted to bribery, with a two-year opportunity to travel, as a way of getting his son to go along. He died in 1805, probably by suicide.
Schopenhauer’s mother was the daughter of a person of some political importance. She was a rather merry and pleasure loving individual. She maintained a salon where Schopenhauer met Goethe. She was also a novelist and essayist. She and her son did not get along well perhaps because of competitiveness as to who was the greater person. She forced him out of the house and they saw one another again.
2. Education: Schopenhauer studied at the University of Gottingen but moved on to the University of Berlin in 1811. He was especially influenced by reading Plato and Kant. The Kantian influence is especially evident in his work. Sensibility through space and time, causality as a category of the understanding, the thing in itself are all Kantian notions, although Schopenhauer departs from Kant by regarding causality as the only category of the understanding and by giving a different direction to the “thing-in-itself.”
He heard but was unimpressed by the lectures of Fichte and Schleiermacher. In 1813 he published his dissertation entitled On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. He knew and admired Goethe and wrote a work on color supporting Goethe against Newton. He was strongly influenced by eastern thought and was the first major western philosopher to exhibit such influence. The veil of Maya has an important place in his philosophical system.
3. Writings: His major work was entitled Die Welt als Wille and Vorstellung (The World as Will and Idea). It was published in 1818 and additions were made to it in later editions. The central term in the title is Vorstellung that means Idea or Representation.
Schopenhauer was unsuccessful in competing with Hegel at the University of Berlin in 1830. Although he despised Hegel’s thought, there are some strong similarities between his and Hegel’s though on several issues such as the will and spirit, the inferior nature of observational science and self-certification. He was very well read and could read in German, English, Spanish, French and Italian. He did not receive much recognition until the publication in 1851 of Parerga and Paralipomena (Subordinates and Things Passed Over.
4. Character: Schopenhauer was a reclusive, although he could be sharply witty in conversation and did attend artistic events. He was misanthropic and bitter about lack of recognition. He kept a loaded gun at his bed at all times and was always in dread of diseases.
II. Influence.
1. Followers: While there is an admiration for the uniqueness of his thought and for the clearness of his writing, there have not been a lot of philosophical disciples of Schopenhauer. His appeal probably rests more upon a personal appreciation of his work-particularly with respect to recognizing the role of pessimism and futility in life.
Apparently, novelists such as Tolstoy, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, and Thomas Mann were among the appreciators. Nietzsche exhibits some of Schopenhauer’s influence. Wittgenstein also is said to have read Schopenhauer appreciatively. His emphasis on the will resonates well with some later thought about a special “living force” being necessary for life, for example, Bergson’s élan vital.
