Arthur Schopenhauer

📷 Wikimedia Commons — domaine public — Johann Schäfer — 1859

1788 — 1860

royaume de Prusse

LiteraturePhilosophyPhilosopheEarly ModernModern era — 19th century, Romantic and post-Kantian period

A 19th-century German philosopher, Schopenhauer is the great thinker of pessimism and the will. His masterwork, The World as Will and Representation (1818), profoundly influenced Nietzsche, Freud, and Wagner.

Famous Quotes

« Life swings like a pendulum back and forth between pain and boredom. »

« Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. »

« Compassion is the basis of all morality. »

Key Facts

1788: born in Danzig (present-day Gdańsk, Poland)
1813: defends his doctoral thesis On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
1818: publishes his masterwork The World as Will and Representation
1820: rivalry with Hegel at the University of Berlin, where he deliberately schedules his lectures at the same time
1860: dies in Frankfurt, belatedly recognized as a great philosopher

Works & Achievements

On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813)

Schopenhauer's doctoral dissertation, laying the epistemological foundations of his philosophy. He analyzes the four forms through which the principle of causality governs our knowledge of the world.

The World as Will and Representation (1818)

Schopenhauer's absolute masterpiece, in which he develops his vision of the world as a dual reality: representation (what we perceive) and blind Will (the dark force animating all things). The founding work of Western philosophical pessimism.

On the Will in Nature (1836)

An essay in which Schopenhauer confronts his metaphysics of the Will with the natural science discoveries of his time, seeking empirical confirmation for his philosophical system.

The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (1841)

A collection bringing together his two essays on the freedom of the will and the basis of morality. Schopenhauer argues that compassion — not Kantian reason — is the only authentic foundation of ethics.

Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)

A collection of accessible essays on varied subjects (practical wisdom, psychology, literature, philosophy). This late work finally brought Schopenhauer the international fame he had fruitlessly awaited for forty years.

Anecdotes

Schopenhauer was known for his misanthropic personality and his passionate love of animals, particularly poodles. He owned several of these dogs in succession, naming them all 'Atma' — a Sanskrit term for the universal soul — reflecting his Buddhist-influenced philosophy on the unity of all life.

For decades, Schopenhauer was ignored by the general public and academia alike. He had made the ill-advised decision to schedule his lectures in Berlin at the same time as Hegel, the star philosopher of the era — with disastrous results: his lecture halls sat empty while Hegel's overflowed. Fame only came to him late in life, in the 1850s.

In 1851, Schopenhauer published Parerga and Paralipomena, a collection of accessible and incisive essays. This book, which he considered a minor work, paradoxically became the success that finally brought him celebrity at over sixty years of age. He felt both relieved and bitter about it, painfully aware of the years lost to obscurity.

Schopenhauer harbored a deep and lasting hatred for Hegel, whom he called a 'charlatan' and an 'impostor.' This philosophical rivalry was no mere posturing: for Schopenhauer, Hegelian idealism represented precisely the kind of hollow, pretentious speculation he had spent his entire career fighting against.

By the end of his life, Schopenhauer had become so famous that visitors came from around the world to see him in Frankfurt. Every day he lunched at the same table in the same restaurant, read the English Times — which he loved — and walked his poodle through the streets of the city. This unchanging routine stood in curious contrast to the turbulence of his philosophy.

Primary Sources

The World as Will and Representation (1818)

The world is my representation: this is a truth valid for every living and thinking being... A man does not know a sun, does not know an earth; he only knows an eye that sees a sun, a hand that touches an earth.

The World as Will and Representation — Book IV (1818)

The will to live is the foundation of our being; it is what drives us, agitates us, makes us suffer. All suffering arises from an unsatisfied desire, and every satisfied desire immediately gives rise to a new boredom.

Parerga and Paralipomena — Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life (1851)

The health of the soul, inner peace — that priceless good we sometimes call happiness — depends far more on what we are than on what we have or how we appear in the eyes of others.

On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813)

Nothing is without a sufficient reason for being. This principle is the foundation of all science and all knowledge. Without it, no demonstration, no explanation could ever be successfully carried out.

Letter to Goethe (1815)

It is to your teachings, to your work on the theory of colors, that I owe my understanding that philosophical truth cannot do without the observation of the sensible world, and that metaphysics must be rooted in nature.

Key Places

Danzig (Gdańsk), Prussia

Schopenhauer's birthplace, then a cosmopolitan Hanseatic port city. Being born into this European merchant milieu gave him a lifelong taste for travel and foreign languages.

Weimar

His mother Johanna Schopenhauer ran a celebrated literary salon there, where the young Arthur met Goethe. Their intellectual relationship was fruitful, though marked by deep tension with his mother, with whom he was seriously estranged.

University of Berlin

Schopenhauer taught there as a Privatdozent from 1820, deliberately scheduling his lectures at the same times as Hegel. The failure of this direct confrontation led him to abandon an academic career for good.

Frankfurt am Main

The city where Schopenhauer settled in 1831 and lived until his death in 1860. He led a solitary and regimented life there, lunching every day at the same restaurant and walking his poodle through the streets of the old town.

Naples and Rome

Schopenhauer traveled extensively in Italy between 1818 and 1819 following the publication of his major work. These Mediterranean stays enriched his aesthetic thinking on beauty as a temporary escape from the Will.