Arthur Schopenhauer biography

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Arthur Schopenhauer Biography

SCHOPENHAUER, Arthur (1788–1860). A German philosopher, born at Danzig, Feb. 22, 1788. He was the son of a rich banker and merchant, who determined to educate him to be a man of affairs and put him to school in France and afterward took him on travels through Belgium, England, France, and Switzerland. In 1805 he was placed in a business house in Hamburg, but soon afterward, on his father's sudden death, he was taken by his mother to Weimar, where he entered upon the study of classics, natural science, and philosophy. In 1809 he entered the University of Göttingen and devoted himself at first to medicine, but was soon attracted to philosophy, and in 1811 he went to Berlin to hear Fichte. In 1813 he took his degree at Jena on the since celebrated thesis, Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde. In this treatise he distinguished between the principles of being, of becoming, of knowing, and of acting. These are respectively space and time, causality, logical ground, and motive. Schopenhauer spent the winter of 1813 at Weimar, where he enjoyed the society of Goethe, and devoted himself to studies in Oriental philosophy and in the theory of color. From 1814 to 1818 he lived at Dresden, occupied in writing a treatise on optics, Ueber das Sehen und die Farben (1816), and his magnum opus, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819; 3d ed., 1859). He then traveled in Italy and returned to lecture for a short time in Berlin as privatdocent in 1820. Hegel was at that time the rage, and Schopenhauer found no success in lecturing against such a popular rival. After two years he returned to Italy, to stay three years more. But a renewal of philosophic interest recalled him in the south, and he again attempted to establish himself as a lecturer in Berlin. In a spirit of bravado he chose for his own lectures the hours when Hegel was drawing his crowds, but failed to furnish a sufficient counterattraction. In 1831 he settled in Frank-fort-on-the-Main, where he spent many years in morose seclusion. He still worked in elaboration of his system and published Ueber den Willen in der Natur (1836), Die beiden Grund-probleme der Ethik (1841), and Parerga und Paralipomena (1851).

The last few years of his life were made happy for him by the homage of his admirers and by the calm which had come to his passionate nature with advancing years. He died in 1860, and the fame he had vainly longed for in life soon gathered around his memory. By temperament moody and despondent, irritablè in temper, and violent in passions, he was well endowed to seize just those aspects of life which are the elements of a pessimistic philosophy. But the value of Schopenhauer's philosophy cannot be measured by any such method of personal criticism. His system, set forth in a literary form that, in the field of philosophy, has seldom been surpassed, and based on marvelous insight into the realities of life, falling in also with the disappointed mood of the age, has gained an acceptance that is, perhaps, greater than its real value warrants. Yet it has an abiding worth as emphasizing elements which a too optimistic philosophy did not sufficiently consider. The profound tragedy of life, the very real evil of the world, is ever present in his thought, though without sufficient balance. In this his thought is akin to that of the ancient Hindu philosophies, with which he felt himself in close harmony, believing that he had accomplished a synthesis of their insight with Kantian thought. He accepted, with some qualification in details, Kant's view that the world of phenomena is a world of ideas (Vorstellungen); but instead of agreeing with Kant that the Ding-an-sich lies hopelessly beyond experience, he identified it with experienced will. But will is not limited by Schopenhauer to voluntary action with foresight; all the experienced activity of the self is will, ranging all the way down to unconscious physiological functionings. This will is the inner nature of each experiencing being and assumes in time and space the appearance of the body, which is an idea. Now, starting, from the fact that the will is the inner nature of his own body as an appearance in time and space, Schopenhauer generalized to the conclusion that the inner reality of all material appearances is will, the ultimate reality is one universal will. With him the tragedy of life arises from the very nature of the underlying source of all existence, which is will, not intelligence—will, not in the ordinary sense of choice, but in the sense of activity, energy, impulse. This is not rational, since impulse is prior to reason. In its caprice (essentially incapable of reasoned action) it makes reason to be. Thus it is not reason that goes out into realization of itself in the world of persons and things, but impulse, which happens to realize itself in intelligence. Reason, thus, can never understand its own profounder source, since it is more and other than reason—is essentially irrational. It may modify impulse, may by resignation deny the will to live. The supreme wisdom of life is, therefore, what it has been (with differences) to such mystics as Thomas à Kempis and Gautama—resignation. This conception of the source of all life in will came to Schopenhauer through clear insight into the very nature of consciousness as essentially impulsive. His metaphysics is thus empirical, based on experience, arrived at by induction. Only a brief word can be given to Schopenhauer's plan of salvation. A temporary relief from the evil of life is to be found in the disinterestedness of artistic enjoyment; æsthetic pleasure does not rest on previous craving. But such relief is only a respite; permanent redemption can be had only in a moral life of unselfishness. In resolute altruism the self-seeking will is overcome. And altruism is not a tour de force. Once convince ourselves of the fundamental unity of will and, in devoting ourselves to others, we are really working for what is the most real in ourselves. See Pessimism; Philosophy.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 568-569.