Arthur Schopenhauer

The World as Will and Representation

Written in his early thirties: almost unnoticed for decades.

💡 Did you know? „The World as Will and Representation“ went almost unnoticed for decades before bringing Schopenhauer late fame.

the will

A restless striving that never comes to rest: at work in everything alive.

💡 Did you know? Behind the world of appearances, for Schopenhauer, works a blind, restless „will“: the source of all striving and suffering.

pain and boredom

Fulfilled desires bore us, unfulfilled ones hurt: hence his reputation as a pessimist.

💡 Did you know? He counts as the most famous pessimist in the history of philosophy.

music

Which is why composers like Wagner and Mahler invoked him with enthusiasm.

💡 Did you know? For Schopenhauer music stands above all the arts: it expresses the „will“ itself directly.

compassion

In the suffering of another we recognise our own essence: directed against Kant's ethics of duty.

💡 Did you know? The basis of all morality, for Schopenhauer, is compassion: the immediate suffering-with other beings.

the Indian

He called the Upanishads 'the consolation of my life'.

💡 Did you know? Schopenhauer was one of the first European philosophers to take the wisdom of Buddhism and the Upanishads seriously.

Hegel

He spoke to empty benches and soon abandoned the academic career altogether.

💡 Did you know? He reviled Hegel all his life as a 'mindless charlatan'.

Parerga and Paralipomena

With the accessible 'Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life': suddenly the world made pilgrimages to Frankfurt.

💡 Did you know? Only his readable late work „Parerga and Paralipomena“ finally made Schopenhauer famous in 1851.

Johanna Schopenhauer

In her lifetime she was more famous than her son: their relationship broke down for good.

💡 Did you know? His mother Johanna was a celebrated writer in whose Weimar salon Goethe moved; she quarrelled bitterly with her son.

poodles

Frankfurters mockingly called the dog 'young Schopenhauer'.

💡 Did you know? When annoyed with people, he reportedly told the poodle: 'You too are only a human.'

his father's inheritance

It allowed him to philosophise for decades without post or public.

💡 Did you know? A paternal inheritance made Schopenhauer financially independent: he could philosophise all his life without a post.

Frankfurt

He died peacefully on his sofa: Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud and Thomas Mann stand in his debt.

💡 Did you know? Schopenhauer spent his last decades reclusively in Frankfurt, where he lived in 1860 with his poodle „Atma“.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher whose pessimistic doctrine of the blind „will“ shaped artists and thinkers from Wagner to Nietzsche.

💡 Did you know? All his life he kept poodles, which he always named „Atma“ (world-soul) or „Butz“.