A Curious Little Blog

I have only one thing to add to the last post, on Schopenhauer, concerning his personal behaviour.  Wikipedia cites Betrand Russell's complaint that Schopenhauer did not at all live the life of asceticism that he extolled.  Schopenahuer himself provided an anticipatory response, also cited in the article, "In general, it is a strange demand on a moralist that he should commend no other virtue than that which he himself possesses. To repeat abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts the whole inner nature of the world, and thus to deposit it as a reflected image in permanent concepts always ready for the faculty of reason, this and nothing else is philosophy." While it is true that a person's philosophy does not depend ultimately on whether he himself follows what he teaches, it is nevertheless a relevant matter to consider.  If a person were to proclaim publicly that there can be no earthly happiness outside of complete chastity, and yet spend his eve...

Schopenhauer has a reputation as being a little bit whack (to use the technical term), so I approached "The World as Will and Idea" with some trepidation.  It immediately put me at ease with its clear style.  After having just read "Thus Spake Zarathustra" and finding it little more than gibberish, it was refreshing to read an author who actually intended for his readers to understand him.  Admittedly, Schopenhauer does begin by saying that the only way to understand this massive work is to read it through twice, and he does jump right in with the arrogance by stating that he is going to give a real philosophy where all previous writers had only made attempts at it.  Still, I at least understood what he was saying, and that was more than I could say for Nietzsche or Hegel. I thought "The World as Will and Idea" would be an abstract phrase representing something else, but Schopenhauer means it quite literally:  everything in the world is either will, or i...