Schopenhauer - Biography

Arthur Schopenhauer (Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860), born on February 22, 1788. Known as the "pessimist philosopher". He was an opponent of Hegel's absolute idealism and a pioneer of the new "life" philosophy. He is very sensitive to human suffering, so his outlook on life has a strong pessimistic tendency. Devoted to the study of the works of the philosophers Plato and Kant, he despised Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. He lived an unsuccessful life and lived in seclusion until he achieved fame a few years before his death. Died of illness on September 21, 1860.

Schopenhauer, who was born in Danzig (Danzig) in 1789, was withdrawn, arrogant, moody and a little neurotic since he was a child. Schopenhauer received education in England and France in his early years and was able to speak fluently in many European languages ??such as English, Italian, Spanish and ancient languages ??such as Latin. He was initially forced to choose business to inherit his father's business, and it was only after his father's death that he was able to enter university. In 1809 he entered the University of G?ttingen to study medicine, but shifted his interest to philosophy and studied for a period in Berlin in 1811. There he developed a keen interest in Fichte and Schleiermacher. He received his PhD with "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason". Goethe admired this article very much, and at the same time discovered Schopenhauer's pessimism tendency, and warned: If you love your own value, then give more value to the world. He called Plato divine and Kant miraculous, and he greatly respected the ideas of these two men. But he hated the speculative philosophy later represented by Fichte and Hegel.

He was also extremely conceited about his philosophy, claiming that it was a brand-new philosophical method that would shock the entire European intellectual world. Yet his writings are often ignored. When he was teaching at the University of Berlin, he tried to compete with Hegel on the podium. As a result, Hegel's lectures were often full, but there were never more than three students listening to his lectures. So Schopenhauer left the university platform with an angry mood. The confrontation between Schopenhauer and Hegel was actually a contest between two philosophical tendencies. He failed. Because he does not belong to that era. In Schopenhauer's own words, his books were written for future generations. This is also true: in his later years, the times came together with him, and he finally enjoyed the honor he had been looking forward to his whole life.

Schopenhauer - Introduction to Academic Achievements

In 1818, Schopenhauer published "The World as Will and Representation" (The World as Will and Representation) ), thus establishing his philosophical system. He made the most optimistic prediction for this pessimistic masterpiece: "This book is not written for the fleeting era but for all mankind. It will become the source and basis for hundreds of other books in the future." However, 10 years after the book was published, most of it was sold as scrap paper. The extremely disappointed Schopenhauer had to quote other people's words to hint at his masterpiece, saying that such a work is like a mirror, "when a stupid donkey looks into it, , you can’t see an angel in the mirror.”

Schopenhauer was the founder of voluntarist philosophy. He abandoned the speculative tradition of German classical philosophy, tried to find a new way out from the irrational aspect, and proposed the theory of will to survive. Life is a kind of pain, and the pain a person feels is directly proportional to the depth of his will to live. The stronger the will to survive Schopenhauer Introduction, the more painful a person will be. There is only one way to get rid of pain, which is to abandon desires and deny the will to live. He believes that a person can temporarily escape pain through artistic creation and appreciation, but the most fundamental way to escape is to enter the realm of emptiness and nothingness in Buddhism.

Schopenhauer - Introduction to Works

In 1819, he published the important work "The World of Will and Representation", which is divided into four volumes, including: epistemology, natural philosophy, aesthetics and ethics . This book

marks the culmination of the development of Schopenhauer's thought. Although he was disappointed by the cold reception he received from his contemporaries, he believed in the ultimate triumph of truth. He believes that "truth can wait because it exists for a long time." After 19 years of "silent indignation", he published a short essay "On the Will in Nature" in 1836. Schopenhauer's article deftly used questions and discoveries in the rapidly developing natural sciences to defend his doctrine of will. In the preface, he openly and severely criticized the "liar" Hegel and his gang. However, it was not until after 1853 that Schopenhauer's philosophy was taken seriously by the world. Schopenhauer - Quotes

1. Things themselves remain unchanged, only people’s feelings change.

2. Learning is an end, not a means.

3. Every rose in the world has thorns. If you give it up because you are afraid of pricking your hands, then you will never get the fragrance of roses.

4. Bad books are poison that damages our spiritual thoughts.

5. The two things a person should do in life are to take precautions before they happen and to be open-minded. The former is to prevent him from suffering pain and loss, and the latter is to avoid disputes and conflicts.

6. Life is a mass of desires. If desires cannot be satisfied, they will be painful, and if they are satisfied, they will be boring.

Life swings between pain and boredom.

7. People feel fear and sadness for a person's death, because death means that they will no longer be able to experience and feel what happens in the world, and will lose their perception of everything, everything that happened while they were alive. will be reduced to zero.

8. When a person looks in the mirror, he will never look at himself with the eyes of a stranger. His self-awareness will only keep reminding himself in a low voice: "What I see is not another self." , but my self.”

9. All love and passion, no matter how elegant and ethereal it looks, is only rooted in passion. .

10. Small people are often proud of the shortcomings or mistakes of great people.

11. In literature, there are countless bad books, like flourishing weeds, hurting the grains and causing them to wither. They were originally written for the sake of money and seeking official positions, but they caused readers to waste time, money and energy, preventing them from reading good books and doing noble things. Therefore, they are not only useless but also very harmful.

12. Desire is the source of human suffering, because desire can never be satisfied. The farther we are from our ideals, the closer we will be to our desires. In real life, we often get lost in ideals and desires, and regard the things we desire as ideals. This is because they are sometimes too close, so close that there is only a thin line between them; in other words, desires are emotional, while ideals are rational. of.

13. Life is pain, and we can turn pain into happiness.

14. Life is a suffering.

15. People are like hedgehogs in the cold winter. If they get too close to each other, they will feel stinging; if they are too far away from each other, they will feel cold; people must keep an appropriate distance to live.

16. Time is infinite, but human life is limited. In order to use limited time to compete with infinite time, people adopt the method of reproduction to extend their life time. This is the human instinct to reproduce.

17. The starting point of philosophy is death.

18. Man has always been in pain, because his essence falls into the hands of pain.

19. If desire is too violent and strong, it will no longer just affirm one's own existence, but will on the contrary deny or cancel the existence of others.

20. Wise men always enjoy their own lives and their leisure time; while those who are too stupid are always afraid of leisure and the boredom that leisure will bring to them, so they always give Find some low-level fun games for yourself to give yourself some temporary pleasure.

21. Human beings are the embodiment of desires and needs.

22. Style is the appearance of the soul.

23. A person can do what he wants, but he cannot have what he wants.

24. Our misfortunes are often due to our pursuit of happiness; when we start doing things, we like to hold a belief that we will definitely be able to find some kind of happiness in the world.

Schopenhauer - Influence and Evaluation

Schopenhauer's pessimism, metaphysics and aesthetics have influenced many aspects such as philosophy, art and psychology. Famous figures who are considered to be influenced by him include

Philosophers: Nietzsche, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Bergson, Popper, Horkheimer

Psychologists: Freud Lloyd

Writers: Tolstoy, Maupassant, Thomas Mann, Beckett Svevo

Artists: Bernard Shaw, Wagner, ***

Poets: Dylan Thomas, Borges

Scientists: Einstein, Schr?dinger, Darwin

There are many famous philosophers with broad systems and pure thinking, but their writing style is clear. Smooth and fascinating ones are rare. To ordinary readers, philosophical masters like Schopenhauer will always be like a famous city with steep walls and deep chasms. It looks very spectacular from the outside, but it is a pity that the guards are tight and no one can enter. Such a master may have a too big system, or his ideas may be too mysterious, or he may only care about what he says, but not what he says beautifully. In short, it is difficult to sum up the benefits in a single sentence. Therefore, if you open any dictionary of proverbs, Schopenhauer has been quoted far less often than philosophers such as Bacon, Nietzsche, Russell, and Santayana. Schopenhauer belongs to this clear and easy-to-summarize category. Although he does not win with outstanding literary talents, his thinking is clear, his writing is clean, and his tone is firm. It is refreshing to read, and he is infinitely fascinated by the lonely and aloof sentiment of the philosopher.