#schopenhauer philosophy

[areadersquoteslibrary]

When someone tells you in the general anti-intellectual scene of these end days of the world that college is a bad investment or indoctrinating kids etc etc, just agree with them and give them some version of this quote from Schopenhauer lamenting that college-level education was too focused on his personal nemesis Hegel instead of more worthy minds like Kant.

"Now if it is said that ‘Sound reason teaches this’, or that ‘Reason should rein in the passions’ and the like, then in no way does this mean that reason produces material knowledge from its own means; rather, this points to the results of rational reflection, to logical inferences from principles that abstract knowledge, enriched by experience, has gradually gained, and by virtue of which we can clearly and readily survey not merely that which is empirically necessary and hence to be foreseen, should the occasion arise, but the grounds and consequences of our own deeds as well. ‘Rational’ or ‘reasonable’ is everywhere synonymous with ‘consistent’ or ‘logical’, and the opposite is also true. For indeed, logic is just the natural method of reason itself expressed as a system of rules: these expressions (rational and logical) are related to one another as are practice and theory. A rational way of acting is understood in just this sense as a way of acting that is quite consistent, proceeds from universal concepts, and is intentionally led by abstract thoughts, but not determined by momentary, fleeting impressions; however, nothing is said about the morality of such a way of acting; on the contrary, it could be bad as well as good. Detailed explanations of this can be found in my ‘Critique of  [117] Kantian Philosophy’ 2nd edn, p. 576 ff.,b as well as in The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, p. 152 ff.c Finally knowledge from pure reason (knowledge that we can bring to consciousness a priori, i.e., without the aid of experience) is such that its origins lie in the formal part of our cognitive faculty, be it thinking or intuiting. This sort of knowledge is always based on propositions that have transcendental or even metalogical truth.

In contrast, the idea of reason through its own means providing original material knowledge, knowledge therefore beyond all possibility of experience, positively enlightening us – the idea of reason as something that must contain innate ideas – is a pure fiction of philosophy professors, resulting from the anxiety evoked in them by the Critique of Pure Reason. – Are these gentlemen acquainted with a certain Locke, and have they read him? Perhaps once, a long time ago, superficially, in passages, in a poor, hackneyed German translation, looking down on the great man with conscious superiority – for I do not see an increase in knowledge of modern languages in proportion to the decrease in knowledge of ancient languages, no matter how much it is lamented. Of course they have had no time to waste on such old curmudgeons; in fact, even a real and fundamental knowledge of Kantian philosophy is at most to be found in some – very few – old fellows. For the youth of the generation now in manhood must have been expended on the works of that ‘giant intellect, Hegel’, of the ‘great Schleiermacher’ and the ‘discerning Herbart’. Alas! Alas! Alas! For this is just what is pernicious about such university celebrities and about what comes out of the mouths of decent colleagues in office and aspirants hoping to rise to the heroic heights of a university chair: that mere products of the factory of nature are praised as great minds, as the exceptions and ornaments of humankind, to good, faithful, youth of mediocre minds, lacking in judgement, so that these students dedicate themselves, with all their youthful energy, to the sterile study of such people's endless and mindless scribbling and squander the short and valuable time granted to their higher education, instead of devoting their youthful energy to real instruction, offered  [118] by the works of rare, genuine thinkers, the true exceptions among humankind, ‘scattered swimmers in the vast abyss’,a who across the centuries have only now and then emerged, since even nature only occasionally produces their sort and then ‘breaks the mould’. These genuine thinkers would also have been alive for today's youth, had they not been cheated out of their share of these genuine thinkers by the exceeding perniciousness of those who praise the bad, those members of the great fellowship of sponsors of mediocre thinking, who always flourish and hoist their banners high as the regular enemies of the great and genuine, who humble them. Just because of these and their activities, the age has so declined that Kantian philosophy, which our fathers understood only after years of serious study and through great effort, has now become unknown to the current generation, before whom Kant's philosophy is like pearls before swinea and who try to attack it in a kind of crude, awkward, doltish way – as barbarians throw stones at statues of Greek gods unfamiliar to them. Because this is the way it is nowadays, it is incumbent upon me to recommend something new to the advocates of that reason that knows immediately – that comprehends, that intuits, in short, that reason that produces material knowledge from its own means – to recommend the first book of the world-famous, 150-year-old work of Locke, which is expressly directed against all innate knowledge, and especially to recommend the 3rd chapter, §§ 21–26.b For although Locke goes too far in his denial of all innate truths, insofar as he extends that denial to formal knowledge (for which Kant most brilliantly corrected him later), nonetheless he was perfectly and undeniably correct about all material knowledge, i.e., substantial knowledge."

-Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

[funeral]

Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation

[philosophybits]

Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.

Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality

[philosophybitmaps]

[philosophors]

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

[nousrose]

Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made out of another's flesh; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by thinking of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us. This is the fundamental difference between the thinker and the mere man of learning. The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the color perfectly harmonized; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colors, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning. Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own. To think with one's own head is always to aim at developing a coherent whole, a system, even though it be not a strictly complete one; and nothing hinders this so much as too strong a current of others' thoughts, such as comes of continual reading. These thoughts, springing every one of them from different minds, belonging to different systems, and tinged with different colors, never of themselves flow together into an intellectual whole; they never form a unity of knowledge, or insight, or conviction; but, rather, fill the head with a Babylonian confusion of tongues. The mind that is overloaded.

The Art of Literature

Arthur Schopenhauer

[castilestateofmind]

“All happiness is of a negative rather than positive nature, and for this reason cannot give lasting satisfaction and gratification, but rather only ever a release from a pain or lack, which must be followed either by a new pain or by languor, empty yearning and boredom.”

-Arthur Schopenhauer

[amicus-noctis]

"We should depart from life as Odysseus parted from Nausicaa  — blessing it rather than in love with it."  ― Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Painting: "Odysseus and Calypso" by Frank Buchser

[quotessentially]

From Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation

[quotelr]

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

[funeral]

Every person can be considered from two opposite points of view; from the one, they are an individual, beginning and ending in time, fleeting and transitory, “the dream of a shadow,” besides being afflicted with pangs and failings; from the other, they are the indestructible primary being that objectifies itself in every existing thing and as such can say like the statue of Isis at Sais: “I am all that was, and is, and will be.” Such a being, of course, might do something better than manifest itself in a world such as this. For it is the world of finitude, suffering, and death. What is in it and comes out of it must end and die. But what is not out of it and will not be out of it, pierces through it, all-powerful like a flash of lightning which strikes upwards and then knows neither time nor death. To reconcile all these antitheses is really the theme of philosophy.

Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World

[philosophybits]

Poetry is related to philosophy as experience is related to empirical science. Experience makes us acquainted with the phenomenon in the particular and by means of examples, science embraces the whole of phenomena by means of general conceptions. So poetry seeks to make us acquainted with the Platonic Ideas through the particular and by means of examples. Philosophy aims at teaching, as a whole and in general, the inner nature of things which expresses itself in these.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

[schwarze-cat]

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

Arthur Schopenhauer

Movie: The double life of veronique

[philosophors]

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

[nousrose]

All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one's condition, and is thus suffering as long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting; instead, it is only the beginning of a new striving. We see striving everywhere inhibited in many ways, struggling everywhere; and thus always suffering; there is no final goal of striving, and therefore no bounds or end to suffering.

The World as Will and Representation

Arthur Schopenhauer

[papillon-de-mai]

"Why read Hegel? It is a good question, one no Hegel scholar should shirk. After all, the burden of proof lies heavily on his or her shoulders. For Hegel's texts are not exactly exciting or enticing. Notoriously, they are written in some of the worst prose in the history of philosophy. Their language is dense, obscure and impenetrable. Reading Hegel is often a trying and exhausting experience, the intellectual equivalent of chewing gravel. 'And for what?' a prospective student might well ask. To avoid such an ordeal, he or she will be tempted to invoke the maxim of one of Hegel's old enemies whenever he lost patience with a tiresome book: 'Life is short!' [Footnote revealing that the enemy is Schopenhauer]"

— Frederick Beiser, from “Hegel”