Essays
& Aphorisms – Arthur Schopenhauer (1851)
Philosophy, as a field of study, is fascinating
to me. Ideally, it is pure
thought/reasoning, utilized to explore and understand ourselves, the world
around us, and the workings of existence, providing answers that empirical data
cannot. This is the purported goal of
philosophy, yet too many philosophers undercut themselves right off the bat by
assuming certain basic truths to be unquestionable, and proceeding to extract
their philosophical thought from this basis.
This error results in whole streams of thought that are easily
discounted by anyone who does not assume their initial postulates are
verboten. It also makes it very easy to
justify horrible things, such as the subjugation of women, the
superiority/inferiority of this or that race or people, or the idea that the
state of being alive is a punishment meted out by a vengeful creator deity and
which, if we suffer through the horror with dignity and the proper
rituals/beliefs we will be rewarded with everlasting joy and happiness once we
die. Schopenhauer was the first
philosopher to start off his work without the crutch of pre-existing,
non-verifiable beliefs, and man, does it make for extremely interesting
reading!
I feel that the field of philosophy
is one where the individual great thinkers should be studied, not for the truth
they uncovered about the world, but for how they saw the world they inhabited. Too many pedantic people get fixated on one
philosopher whose ideas about existence so mirror their own ideas that other
philosophers are neglected. This is the
sign of a closed, simple mind, one that cannot comprehend that it is in their
best interest to read widely, think
deeply, and then to come up with their personal ideas about existence. This is the best way to read philosophy. It is a map to human thought, not a set of
rules to live by.
I had heard the name Schopenhauer mentioned
in much of my reading over the last 20 years.
Many of the writers I admire see him as a crucial point in their own
development. In his life he wrote
extensively but the book he published early on, his masterpiece The
World As Will & Representation, is really the definitive statement of
all of his extremely well-thought out ideas.
I will read that one day, but for an introduction I am glad I found this
book which collects many different writings under various subject headings,
such as religion, ethics, women, the arts, psychology, and writing itself.
Schopenhauer is described as an
atheistic, philosophical pessimist. This
description is due to where Schopenhauer chose to begin his exploration of
philosophy. He did not start from the
tenets that any specific religion’s ideas were a priori truth. His philosophy was the first that took all of
the recent scientific advancements for its basis, instead of the theological
arguments that most philosophers use as a crutch when creating their
thought. Schopenhauer saw through the
lies inherent in organized religion of any kind, and because of this, his
philosophy is truly a humanist one. The
supernatural is never evoked as the cause of anything, nor as the redemption of
anything. This does not mean that he did
not find beauty and value in the ethics and wisdom found in religious
texts. Not at all. He was widely read on the Christian texts,
Buddhists texts, and was the first major European philosopher to read and
understand the value of the India Vedas, mythological tales which preceded most
of the monotheistic religions by thousands of years. He was a world thinker in the best sense, and
understood the deep correlations between the Buddhist philosophies (Buddhism
being an atheistic religion) and the Christian philosophies that Jesus preached
in the New Testament. He understood the
warped desecration of these ideas by the organized church.
Some of the greatest writers and
artists are ignored in their lifetime and only praised and championed once
enough time has passed to allow the indignation to die down and the work to be
seen honestly for what it is. The list
of greats that were directly influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer reads
like a who’s who of the greatest minds of the last 150 years. These include Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard
Wagner, Leo Tolstoy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Otto Rank, Gustav
Mahler, Joseph Campbell, Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, Thomas Mann, Jorge Luis
Borges, to name but a few. I am so glad
I finally dove into Schopenhauer’s world.
It is a world I will keep returning to and exploring my entire
life. I wish I could just quote endless
passages from Essays & Aphorisms but perhaps a few will do.
On
Ethics: “Every good human quality is related to a bad one into which it
threatens to pass over: and every bad quality is similarly related to a good
one. The reason we so often misunderstand people is that when we first make
their acquaintance we mistake their bad qualities for the related good ones, or
vice versa: thus a prudent man will seem cowardly, a thrifty one avaricious; or
a spendthrift will seem liberal, a boor frank and straightforward, an impudent
fellow full of noble self-confidence, and so on.”
On
Philosophy and The Intellect: “If you want to earn the gratitude of your own
age you must keep in step with it. But
if you do that you will produce nothing great.
If you have something great in view you must address yourself to
posterity: only then, to be sure, you will probably remain unknown to your
contemporaries; you will be like a man compelled to spend his life on a desert
island and there toiling to erect a memorial so that future seafarers shall
know he once existed.”
On
Thinking For Yourself: “A truth that has merely been learnt adheres to us only
as an artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose does, or at most like
transplanted skin; but a truth won by thinking for ourself is like a natural
limb: it alone truly belongs to us. This
is what determines the difference between a thinker and a mere scholar.”
(This book is available for purchase here: AMAZON )
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