I first learned about Schopenhauer, really—although I *heard* about him from a passing reference by Joseph Campbell—from the “Socrates Express” book I read, which was really not ~such~ a great book, although the chapter on Schopenhauer was better than practically any other chapter in that book…. I like referring to people by their first names, but somehow A.S. will never be “Arthur” for me, right: Arthur was a romantic king, the last pagan/first Christian king of Britain, right…. Schopie WAS a German, and did spend a lot of time on things that don’t have practical utility, as is common for Germans who aren’t, say, scientists, you know—their large brains help them avoid the everyday, sometimes…. Although, yeah, the links between Schopie and the East can be exaggerated—Schopenhauer never had any use for silence, or spiritual practice, would be the obvious thing—but it is curious how although “our” general philosophy is meant to be rationalist and Eastern philosophy is more intuitive, it is funny how both turn over the question of “whether the world really exists” and all that, and can be more similar than a nervous rationalist would allow. I don’t follow the arguments fully, I guess, and I think it’s kinda, well it’s to be avoided, to think too much about the world as “illusion” and everything, although I do think that the world is for us the world that we perceive: there is no perceiving the world “as it is”, and so in that sense the “real” world is a slightly unreal abstraction. (I’m not sure if that’s exactly Schopenhauer but that’s the thought I developed from reading this sort of thing, and I think his idea was something like that.) Really I like to call “objectivity”, “bias in favor of the negative”, right. “The world is my idea.” Although Schopenhauer’s pessimism is oddly appealing. I kinda theism-ified it in my head the thing about the Will, to make it this impersonal evil god we all fight against, right. (With the help of “the excellent god”, which I guess is my riff on the idea of the Dagda, although I can’t say that I’m using the idea of Him literally, or something.)

But yeah, I feel like I learned almost as much about Schopenhauer from that book chapter that was maybe a quarter as many pages, like 30 instead of 120–although VSI pages are very small, and the “Socrates Express” pages were a good size, so I don’t know, really: but it was a shorter, less professionally astute and more kinda savvy-general-reader-but-not-specialized than the VSI book, but I feel like it was still modestly worth it to read this book, and get a fuller summary from a different sort of professional, and everything. I would like to read a book-length selection of Schopenhauer eventually, and maybe I’ll even do that before I finish Thoreau (which I barely started)—Thoreau was a very careful, astute writer, but I feel like his thing was his non-conformity, and I feel like he was slightly less non-conformist than he tries to give the impression of being, right: like even just to take the text, right~ he starts that book of his basically with the etymologies of Greek words, which is very like, standard-issue, you know—although probably I will read Plato complete before Schopenhauer selections, and also some more non-classic philosophy books, histories and interpretations and stuff, like this. Half of philosophy is those few wise men, but then the other half is what the other people make of it, basically…. And I’m not going to stress about that, or Plato, being done “soon”, or whatever. Reading Shakespeare complete was more important; I should also read some “bad” books, too. But I will read Schopie eventually.

…. A sighted, lame man being carried by a strong, blind man is a good image of what a human being is like, you know.

Schoopie is great, you know. 🥳

…. Schoopie is like a very spiritual atheist; and brilliant and simple, and intricate and pessimistic. You wouldn’t invite him to a party. But he should have been like, a grandfather—he should have been, like, everyone’s grandfather, you know.

…. (The Child Hermes) Hello mommy; my name is Arthur Schopenhauer: and I believe that ~sadness~, is the Truth! He loves us…. He wants to see ~~good~~ things happen for us, mommy….

…. “To imagine an existence free of suffering is to imagine an existence that is not that of a human individual.”

You can see the problems this realization would create if you do not realize that human beings are gods, of course.

…. Incidentally I feel like Schoopie would like the Billy Joel song, “Blonde over Blue”—basically about taking refuge in conventional and misery-laden sexuality as the non-solution for one’s life; and I mean, if you listen to the rest of the album, it’s not like he’s saying that it works, right…. But yeah: the heart of the song is in what drives him to that, right—“Some days when I’m far away, in a lonely room, in a cold seclusion: some nights when I’m wound so tight there is no release, there is no solution…. These days, there’s a million ways, to be pulled and torn, to be misdirected: these times there are sins and crimes, on the morning shows, for the disconnected…. These days not a damn soul prays, and there is no faith, because there’s nothing to believe in: these days only good luck pays—and if we don’t get paid, then we try to get even. I look and I write my book, and I have my say, and I draw conclusions: some nights when I’m wound so tight, there is no release, there is no solution.” (But I have a chorus: I want to make some fast cash; don’t be too honest! “All I wanted was you!” Hahahaha…. Tell ‘em what they want to hear, girl: hahahaha…. If I told the truth, the lies would come in from somebody else!!)

But yeah: I never understood the thing about blondes: although when I had the terminal mental illness known as normality, I felt it “advisable” or whatever—perhaps I thought it moral!—to pretend that I did in order to conform, right…. Yeah: don’t do that. And I now feel that I can’t understand, what I once “understood”, about how sexy it is to hate your life, right: although to be fair to Schoopie, he didn’t think it was sexy. Just, loyal to the mind, right…. “I’ve never been to Hawaii. But I don’t want to go. No no, keep your plane ticket. I feel like if there’s no winter there, the cold that isn’t used up in December and January must get diffused over the nighttime hours, so that it’s like the desert, you know: cold yet hot…. I refuse to believe that anyone in Hawaii could bear that nighttime cold!”

And it is funny—although I realize Billy Joel was not literally aping Schoopie—that he called the song “Blonde over Blue”, right. In America we assume that blondes are the over-men, right: fun-loving Negro manners, in master-race skin. In Europe it’s a little different. Have you ever read, “A Man Called Ove”? Fucking dismal, depressed Nordics, you know. I guess they forget what the goddamn sun looks like, you know.

…. So it kinda ends where it began, right.

(Joseph Campbell) Schopenhauer is one of my favorite philosophers, (smile), (beat). But you wouldn’t invite him to a party.
(Child Hermes) (nods)

…. Then spake the Buddha: vanity of vanity, all is vanity.

~My dad hated teaching that part of the Bible in his class, lol—although he couldn’t admit that, I guess. “But don’t let those damn communists make you forget, that watching cartoons is good, because it reminds you who’s the Indians and who’s the White Man!!!”

~But yeah, I’ll pass, on Schoopie. It’s grand, and everything—but I’ll pass. It’s always curious to know how other people see the world, even if it is not our own: at least if there is something or another to recommend it, right. The conservative-id, of these times, I suppose I will not try to justify anymore—it in no way makes you less judgmental of it, to try to figure out how it makes sense, because it doesn’t, right…. But my own way is not the only way; from my way through the forest, other paths diverge widely, right.

…. And yeah: while this is too delicate a topic to enter into a discourse of this length and so on—people read things and immediately hit the roof, like: 🚨 🪖—but, although at the time I thought that Epictetus was the obvious philosophical tie-in for “Me Before You”, I guess that’s Schopenhauer isn’t entirely irrelevant, as well. I don’t really agree, you know, maybe that bears repeating: but I think that even if someone is on what I think is not a right path, it doesn’t fit to simply hit them over the head with some 50s-agitprop-story, right: “and then they adopted a dog, and then because of that: everything was always good.” Problems are always solved. All you have to do, is be loyal! ~Right? It’s like…. Even if I wouldn’t recommend someone’s attitude to them, right: that doesn’t give me a blank check to lie to them, basically.

…. Although I have read enlightenment books and meditated and I know that Schoopie’s paranoia about the impossibility of happiness is just lack of experience, basically, (and perception of society, obviously: it’s not strictly personal, really), I do think it’s a fun idea that ‘the ideal would be just enough failure to rescue one from boredom’. (“Against boredom even the gods struggle in vain.” —Freddy N…. Aside: if this is the Worst Possible World, and all the others are better…. Can’t that lead to optimism?) It simply isn’t so that bliss isn’t worth it because it’s emptiness, and nothing is not worth your while because it isn’t anything, right: that’s play with words, not experience. But sometimes it doesn’t seem worth the effort…. It takes a lot of effort to always be in bliss all the time, right. To see (and understand, and accept, and work with) the cycles of things like success and failure, boredom, and thrills—and perhaps bliss and non-bliss, too…. That seems the best, really.

…. But yeah, deep in the fear and pessimism of knowledge, the number 6, beguiles…. And the world wonders at it, at least until little by little, the procession of the decades makes the ordinary men, the men of their own day, forget…. While those men gathered together under the symbol 5, philosophy’s children, lose their breath with dismissiveness, and the technicians banish him far away….

And so too, Schoopie is the most singular atheist, that born under the sign called, among the Latins, Pisces: this most singular atheist has reached the end of the journey of the signs, and his heart has learnt much: though he has found it a weary journey, and at the end of all things, he considers it naught but a tiresome thing….

…. (even though I probs should stop with the above, right: very dramatic outro! 👍), I guess that’s Freddy N was an 8, so they really were more dissimilar than similar, but they’re both kinda hung out in the Non-5 Philosophy Club, right.

Schopenhauer është më i lexuari ndër filozofët gjermanë. Ai është i njohur si mendimtar sfidues, progresist dhe personalitet me ndikim të madh te njerëzit. Ky libër jep një shpjegim të përmbledhur të sistemit të tij metafizik, duke u përqendruar tek aspektet origjinale të mendimit të tij.

Shopenhaueri është më i lexueshmi ndër tërë filozofët gjermanë. Ky libër na jep një shpjegim të ngjeshur dhe sa më përmbledhtas të sistemit të tij metafizik, duke u përqendruar në pamjet origjinale të mendimit të tij, që u shfaq si burim frymëzimi për artistë dhe mendimtarë të shumtë, duke nisur nga Niçe, Vagner, Frojd dhe Vitgenshtain. Christopher Janway vendos përballë njëra-tjetrës pikëpamjen pesimiste të Schopenhauer-it, sipas të cilës për qenien njerëzore do të kish qenë më mirë të mos ekzistonte me idenë e tij, sipas të cilës vetëm vetëmohimi, largimi nga vullneti, është gjithë sa i jep vlerë jetës. Në këtë libër Shopenhaueri na zbulohet si një mendimtar sfidues, progresist dhe me ndikim gjithnjë e më të gjerë.

Kudos to Janaway for writing a solid introduction to one of the most influential and stupid philosophers of the nineteenth century; it makes me wonder who'll get that honor for the twentieth. Heidegger? Wittgenstein? Probably Whitehead. The lesson seems to be that if your thought is meager enough to be taken up by a large number of novelists and poets, you'll end up looking like a bit of a fool. Everything of value in Schopenhauer can be found in the Buddhist tradition. His bizarre decision to combine Plato with Kant shows only that Schopenhauer didn't understand either of them. One very valuable thing that I learned from this book is to take Nietzsche more seriously than I already did; falling for this claptrap so hard, but then seeing so clearly the dullness of it all took tremendous strength of mind.

Of course, I can understand why one might be a pessimist. I'm just not sure you need so much bullshit metaphysics to justify it; walking down the street generally does it for me.

Janaway does a wonderful job, as I said, and I do recommend this as a solid work in the history of philosophy. But good lord, he makes it easy to see why everyone went to Hegel's supposedly incomprehensible lectures instead of Schopenhauer's surely beautiful one: Hegel wasn't a complete nutter. ( )

Christopher Janaway’s little book on the life and philosophy of 19th century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer makes for a most engaging and thought-provoking read. Indeed, if you are interested in literature and the arts or would like have a deeper understanding of the challenges in life we all face yet are generally put off by philosophers and philosophy, this book is for you. By way of example, here are some Janaway and Schopenhauer quotes along with my comments.

“Humanity is poised between the life of an organism driven to survival and reproduction, and that of a pure intellect that can rebel against its nature and aspire to a timeless contemplation of a ‘higher’ reality." ---------- Schopenhauer is an atheist as opposed to a traditional theist within the monotheistic Western tradition (he very much appreciated the wisdom of both the Upanishads and Buddhism). He viewed life as not created or guided by some all-knowing God but propelled by an irrational force he calls ‘the will’. This being the case, ordinary existence is an alternating between frustration and boredom. But do not despair! There is the possibility of escape: literature, music, the arts and aesthetic experience.

“Although thoroughly conservative himself, Schopenhauer regarded the political state merely as a convenient means for protecting property and curbing the excesses of egoism; he could not stomach Hegel’s representation of the state as ‘the whole aim of human existence’. Hegel was also an appalling stylist, who seemed to build abstraction upon abstraction without the breath of fresh air provided by common-sense experience, and Schopenhauer – not alone in this – found his writing pompous and obscurantist, even dishonest.” ---------- Here is one of the keys to the appeal of Schopenhauer’s writing. He is clear and approachable, a great literary stylist and essayist, at the opposite end of the literary spectrum from the vast majority of academic philosophers with their dense, obscure, technical language and convoluted syntax, forever quoting and referring to other equally dense, obscure, dry thinkers.

“Nevertheless, in talking so bluntly about sexuality, and in making it such a cornerstone of his philosophy, he is again unusually forward-looking for his day, Sex is ever-present in our minds, according to Schopenhauer, ‘the public secret which must never be distinctly mentioned anywhere, but is always and everywhere understood to be the main thing. . . . It is the ultimate goal of almost all human effort; it has an unfavorable influence on the most important affairs, interrupts every hour the most serious occupations.” ---------- Going back to Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy, humans are defined as the ‘rational animal’. Schopenhauer didn’t buy it. He could see that having reason doesn’t free us from our constant preoccupation with sex; in fact, with our capacity for imagination, we humans are, in a way, even more bound to sex than other animals. With this thinking, Schopenhauer anticipates Sigmund Freud and the development of psychoanalysis.

“Schopenhauer belongs to a tradition which equates aesthetic experience with a ‘disinterested’ attitude towards its object, and is often cited as one of the chief proponents of such a view. The idea is that to experience something aesthetically, one must suspend or disengage all one’s desires toward it, attending not to any consideration of what ends, needs, or interests it may fulfill, but only to the way it presents itself in perception. In Schopenhauer’s case, aesthetic experience must always be an extraordinary episode in any human being’s life.” ---------- This is the prime reason generations of artists, writers and musicians have been moved and influenced by Schopenhauer. His emphasis on artistic transformation, creative imagination and the truth and dignity of aesthetic experience made a powerful imprint on Guy de Maupassant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner and Thomas Mann, to name several.

Sidebar: When once asked what philosopher I would recommend on the topic of aesthetics, I suggested Schopenhauer. I also suggested to start an aesthetics journal where you can make daily entries of your own aesthetic experiences of art, music, performance, reading, nature, and everyday encounters with the world: faces of people, driving a car, drinking coffee, etc.. The idea is to continually open yourself to experiencing the world aesthetically - a powerful path to self-transformation.

Janaway also writes on Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, epistemology ( theory of knowledge) , ethics and ideas on topics like the body, character and the self as well as how the great German thinker envisions a certain kind of mystical detachment as a way to salvation. I restricted my review to Schopenhauer's philosophy of art since this is the area of his thinking that was most influential, particularly among writers, artists and musicians. A philosopher deserving our attention, to be sure, and Janaway’s book is a great place to start. ( )