Arthur Schopenhauer

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Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 - 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher.

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3 Comments on Schopenhauer
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Sourced

The composer reveals the inmost essence of the world and utters the most profound wisdom in a language which his reason does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist give disclosures about things which she has no idea of when awake.
- Quoted by Arnold Schoenberg in "The Relationship to the Text", Style and Idea (1912).

Philosophy... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.
- Parerga & Paralipomena, Vol I

In general admittedly the Wise of all times have always said the same thing, and the fools, that is to say the vast majority of all times, have always done the same thing, i.e. the opposite; and so it will remain in the future.

[Im allgemeinen freilich haben die Weisen aller Zeiten immer dasselbe gesagt, und die Toren, d.h. die unermessliche Majorität aller Zeiten, haben immer dasselbe, nämlich das Gegenteil getan; und so wird es denn auch ferner bleiben.] - Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit

The presence of a thought is like the presence of a lover.

[Die Gegenwart eines Gedankens ist wie die Gegenwart einer Geliebten.] - Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit

One can forget everything, everything, only not oneself, one's own being.

[Alles, alles kann einer vergessen, nur nicht sich selbst, sein eigenes Wesen.] - Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit

For our improvement we need a mirror.

[Zu unserer Besserung bedürfen wir eines Spiegels.] - Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit

Every human perfection is linked to an error which it threatens to turn into.

[Jede menschliche Vollkommenheit ist einem Fehler verwandt, in welchen überzugehn sie droht.] - Zur Ethik

Mostly only loss teaches us about the value of things.

[Meistens belehrt uns erst der Verlust über den Wert der Dinge.] - Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit

All wanting comes from need, therefore from lack, therefore from suffering.

[Alles Wollen entspringt aus Bedürfnis, also aus Mangel, also aus Leiden.] - Welt und Mensch II, S. 230ff

There is only one healing force, and that is nature; in pills and ointments there is none. At most they can give the healing force of nature a hint about where there is something for it to do.

[Es gibt nur eine Heilkraft, und das ist die Natur; in Salben und Pillen steckt keine. Höchstens können sie der Heilkraft der Natur einen Wink geben, wo etwas für sie zu tun ist.] - Neue Paralipomena

The cheapest form of pride by contrast is national pride. For it betrays in the one thus afflicted the lack of individual qualities of which he could be proud, while he would not otherwise reach for what he shares with so many millions. He who possesses significant personal merits will rather recognise the defects of his own nation, as he has them constantly before his eyes, most clearly. But that poor beggar who has nothing in the world of which he can be proud, latches onto the last means of being proud, the nation to which he belongs to. Thus he recovers and is now in gratitude ready to defend with hands and feet all errors and follies which are its own.

[Die wohlfeilste Art des Stolzes hingegen ist der Nationalstolz. Denn er verrät in dem damit Behafteten den Mangel an individuellen Eigenschaften, auf die er stolz sein könnte, indem er sonst nicht zu dem greifen würde, was er mit so vielen Millionen teilt. Wer bedeutende persönliche Vorzüge besitzt, wird vielmehr die Fehler seiner eigenen Nation, da er sie beständig vor Augen hat, am deutlichsten erkennen. Aber jeder erbärmliche Tropf, der nichts in der Welt hat, darauf er stolz sein könnte, ergreift das letzte Mittel, auf die Nation, der er gerade angehört, stolz zu sein. Hieran erholt er sich und ist nun dankbarlich bereit, alle Fehler und Torheiten, die ihr eigen sind, mit Händen und Füßen zu verteidigen.] - Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, Kap. II

The less one, as a result of objective or subjective conditions, has to come into contact with people, the better off one is for it.

[ Je weniger einer, in Folge objektiver oder subjektiver Bedingungen, nötig hat, mit den Menschen in Berührung zu kommen, desto besser ist er daran.] Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit

What now on the other hand makes people sociable is their incapacity to endure solitude and thus themselves.

[Was nun andrerseits die Menschen gesellig macht, ist ihre Unfähigkeit, die Einsamkeit und in dieser sich selbst zu ertragen.] - Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit

In Christian ethics.... animals are seen as mere things. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coarsing, bull-fights and horse-races and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with their heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that fails to recognise the eternal essence that exists in every living thing and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun.
- On the Basis of Morality

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, persues his indefatiguable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.
- Letter to Goethe

To call the world ‘God’ is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word ‘world’.
- On Pantheism from his Manuscript Remains

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late; look upon it as the quintessense of life, as to a certain extent sacred.
- Counsels and Maxims, Ch. 2

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The World as Will and Representation (1818-1819)

This actual world of what is knowable, in which we are and which is in us, remains both the material and the limit of our consideration.
- Vol I (1818)

Life is short and truth works far and long: let us speak the truth.
- Vol. I, Introduction

To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.
- Vol II (1819)

There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence...hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.
- Vol II (1819), On the Road to Salvation

[...] life is a business that does not cover the costs.
- Vol II (1819), On the Affirmation of the Will-to-Live

Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child.

[Jedes Kind ist gewissermaßen ein Genie; und jedes Genie ist gewissermassen ein Kind.] - Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1819

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Studies in Pessimism (1851)

A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten
- On the Suffering of the World

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.
- Psychological Observations

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
- Psychological Observations

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.
- Psychological Observations

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.
- On Women

There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?
- On Women

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.
- On Noise

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Essays

The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.
- Personality; or, What a Man Is

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.
- Personality; or, What a Man Is

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.
- Our Relation to Others, Sec. 23

There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
- Our Relation to Others, Sec. 24

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Attributed

A reproach can only hurt if it hits the mark. Whoever knows that he does not deserve a reproach can treat it with contempt.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.

Childish and altogether ludicrous is what you yourself are and all philosophers; and if a grown-up man like me spends fifteen minutes with fools of this kind, it is merely a way of passing the time. I've now got more important things to do. Goodbye!
- "Thrasymachus", in a humorous ending to a fictional dialogue on the indestructibility of our inner-being.

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Every nation criticizes every other one—and they are all correct.
- Attributed in Letter from Wolfgang Pauli to Abraham Pais, August 17, 1950. Quoted in Pais, Abraham (2000), The Genius of Science p. 242, New York: Oxford University Press.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played unnumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.

Fame is something which must be won; honor is something which must not be lost.

From every sentence deep, original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit....In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. They are destined sooner or later to become the faith of the people.
- Comment on the Upanishads, some of Hinduism's sacred scriptures.

Have these gentlemen of the scalpel and crucible no notion at all then that they are first and formost men and chemists only secondly? How can you sleep soundly, knowing you have harmless animals under lock and key, in order to starve them slowly to death? Don't you wake up screaming, in the night?
- Statement about the use of animals in experiments.

I was gripped by the misery of life as Buddha was in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, pain and death ... This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.

I was very fond of them, if only they would have had me.
- His confession on women.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works.

In the West, where our skin has turned White, we have ceased to recognise our kinship with animals.

Life is so short, questionable and evanescent that it is not worth the trouble of major effort.

Man can control what he wills, but not how he wills.

Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but is also a disruption of thought.

Reason is feminine in nature: it will give only after it has received.

Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.

Talent hits a target no-one else can hit; genius hits targets no-one else can see.

The less a man is forced to come into contact with others, the better off he is.

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general and when only its most significant features are emphasised, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail, it has the characteristics of a comedy.

There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted.

Ultimately, death must triumph, for by birth it has already become our lot and it plays with its prey only for a while before swallowing it up. However, we continue our life with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible— just as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst.

There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity.

There is no Kantian-Fichtean philosophy: there is Kantian philosophy and there is Fichtean humbug.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

We have to regard art as the greater enhancement, the more perfect development of all this; for essentially it achieves just the same thing as is achieved by the visible world itself, only with greater concentration, perfection, intention and intelligence; and therefore, in the full sense of the word, it may be called the flower of life.

We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams ... and we search in vain for their original ... Much would have been gained if through timely advice and instruction young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.

Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honour.

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Comments on Schopenhauer

I do not believe in freedom of will. Schopenhauer's words, "Man can indeed do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants", accompany me in all life situations and console me in my dealings with people, even those that are really painful to me. This recognition of the unfreedom of the will protects me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and judging individuals and losing good humour.

[Ich glaube nicht an die Freiheit des Willens. Schopenhauers Wort: »Der Mensch kann wohl tun was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will.« begleitet mich in allen Lebenslagen und versöhnt mich mit den Handlungen der Menschen, auch wenn sie mir recht schmerzlich sind. Diese Erkenntnis von der Unfreiheit des Willens schützt mich davor, mich selbst und die Mitmenschen als handelnde und urteilende Individuen allzu ernst zu nehmen und den guten Humor zu verlieren.] - Albert Einstein, Mein Glaubensbekenntnis, August 1932, Caputh

Kant and Berkeley always seemed to be very deep thinkers, but, with Schopenhauer, you seem to be looking at the bottom straight away. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

He speaks to me as no other philosopher does, direct and in his own human voice, a fellow spirit, a pentratingly perceptive friend, with a hand on my elbow and a twinkle in his eye. ~ Bryan Magee

...we are struck by the psychological force and even fierceness with which he reveals the deepest recesses of the human heart. ~ E.F.J. Payne, translator

He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of confusion, passion, evil -- all those things which the [other philosophers] hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-embracing harmony and comprehensiblility. Here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundaments of the universe. ~ Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Vintage Books, 1961, p. 69

Obit anus, abit onus. (The old woman is dead, the debt is extingushed.) He wrote so when an old servant died. He was liable of paying an annuity to her.

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