Arthur Schopenhauer

Life

• 1788: Born in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) into a wealthy merchant family.
• 1809: Enrolls at the University of Göttingen to study medicine, later switching to philosophy.
• 1813: Receives his doctorate from the University of Jena for his dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
• 1818: Publishes his magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation, at the age of 30.
• 1820: Begins lecturing at the University of Berlin, famously scheduling his lectures at the same time as Hegel's, which led to poor attendance.
• 1831: Flees Berlin due to a cholera epidemic, eventually settling permanently in Frankfurt.
• 1860: Dies in Frankfurt, Germany.

People Who Influenced Their Thought

• Immanuel Kant: Adopted Kant's distinction between the phenomenal world (appearance) and the noumenal world (thing-in-itself), which he identified as the Will.
• Plato: Incorporated Plato's theory of Ideas (Forms) as the adequate objectification of the Will.
• Eastern Philosophies: Was deeply influenced by the Upanishads and Buddhist thought, which reinforced his pessimism and ascetic ideals.

Main Ideas and Publications

• Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation, 1818): His central work presenting his entire philosophy.
• Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, 1813): His doctoral dissertation examining the fundamental principle of all explanation.
• The World as Will and Representation: The phenomenal world is mere "representation" governed by the principle of sufficient reason, while the underlying reality is a blind, striving, irrational "Will."
• Pessimism: Life is fundamentally suffering because the Will is insatiable. The best one can hope for is the temporary cessation of desire through aesthetic contemplation or its permanent denial through asceticism.
• Aesthetics as Salvation: In aesthetic experience, particularly through music, one can temporarily escape the tyranny of the Will and become a "pure, will-less subject of knowledge."
• Asceticism: The ultimate denial of the Will-to-life, following the model of saints and mystics, is the only true path to salvation from suffering.

Controversies around his main work or thought

• Initial Obscurity: His work was largely ignored by the academic philosophical establishment for decades, which was dominated by Hegelian idealism.
• Pessimism and Nihilism: His bleak view of existence as meaningless suffering was heavily criticized as morally debilitating and nihilistic.
• Misogyny: His essays, particularly Über die Weiber (On Women), contain virulently misogynistic views that have been widely condemned.
• Inconsistencies: Critics have pointed to potential contradictions, such as how the "Will" can be both unitary and objectified in competing individuals, or how aesthetic and ascetic release from the Will is possible if the Will is all-encompassing.

Key People Influenced by Their Thought

• Richard Wagner: Deeply influenced by Schopenhauer's metaphysics of music and pessimism, which profoundly shaped his operas, especially Tristan und Isolde.
• Friedrich Nietzsche: Initially a devoted follower, Nietzsche later broke with Schopenhauer's pessimism, but the concepts of the Will and asceticism remained central points of engagement.
• Sigmund Freud: Acknowledged Schopenhauer's anticipation of psychoanalytic concepts like the unconscious, repression, and the primacy of irrational drives.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein: Was influenced by Schopenhauer's epistemology and his view of the subject as the limit of the world.
• Thomas Mann: Schopenhauer's pessimism and artist philosophy are recurring themes in Mann's novels, such as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain.
• Jorge Luis Borges: Frequently referenced Schopenhauer's idealism and the world as representation in his short stories.

Legacy

He is renowned as the philosopher of pessimism whose synthesis of Western and Eastern thought, along with his profound influence on psychology and the arts, established him as a pivotal and unsettling figure in intellectual history.