Schopenhauer and Pessimism

Arthur Schopenhauer

• %%Arthur Schopenhaue%%r (1788-1860) belongs, to a certain extent, to the tradition of German idealism, being the heir of Kant's critical metaphysics.
• However, in his ideas, one can notice the influence of Romanticism and Indian philosophical-religious thought. If, on the one hand, he accepts the rational criticism of superstitions, on the other, he denounces the unrestricted faith in reason.
• For him, %%reason (intellect) is a mere accident%%, and the essence of the world and the human being is something that results from irrational will (choice).
• Schopenhauer stated that %%what we can know comes from our perception%%. The world, reality, and the thing in itself are inaccessible to us, leaving only the mediation performed by the mind that provides us with a representation of what exists.

Therefore, %%subjectivity becomes the key to understanding and transforming external data into representations%%.

Reason

• Understanding, however, is no reason.
• %%Reason allows representations that are not intuitive%%, but those that make a man have a sense of time and memory. And, thus, be able to remember.
• Its function is the formation of concepts, which filter the intuitive representations and exterminate the original coloring of experience.

Concepts

• Concepts are representations of other representations. They are not equivalent to the direct translation of an object captured by sensation.
• When we submerge into our inner world, we find ourselves enveloped in affections and feelings, and it becomes hard to separate subject and object. In this case, we arrive at something more profound than reason. And that cannot be taken as mere representation: this is the will.
• %%The will is that vital essence that is independent of reason%%. The image used to explain the desire is "that of the blind man carrying a cripple who can see"; the blind man is the will, and the cripple our consciousness. But what does this mean?

Representation is rational, but the will is not.

• Representation is rational, but the will is not. The latter is a cause in itself; it is a pure desire for satisfaction. In animals, the craving represents instinct.

• But in humans, it's what governs the desire to live, possess, and dominate.

• %%Man thus lives the paradox of rationally understanding the world%%. But not being able to use this same reason when what is at stake are his desires.

• Schopenhauer saw advantages and disadvantages in this paradox: On the other hand, reason makes language possible. And with its communication, science, and poetry. On the other hand, motivation leads to suffering. Because it makes man aware of his finitude, propagating dogmas and superstitions.

%%The desire remains foreign to the domain of reason.%% It is, therefore, absolutely groundless.

Detachment of living

• In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer used elements present in Taoism and Buddhism. One of them is the notion of karma, seen in Buddhism, defining life as a journey of pain through the renunciation of incessant desires, like the notion of nirvana, which corresponds to the supreme state of rest achieved by the detachment of living.

• %%Schopenhauer, however, believed that suffering could be overcome through art.%% Through the aesthetic experience, man could annul himself as will, forgetting himself and his suffering.

• On the other hand, Schopenhauer affirmed that love was the goal of life as the authentic source of human goodness.

• To talk about love represented a possibility to fill a gap that had been left by philosophy.

• He analyzed the passion that recurrently appears in the most varied works from what the feeling is based on: the sexual impulse, which would be the most vigorous impulse of human nature and is what makes people, both in literature and in real life, sacrifice their health, wealth, dignity, and happiness in the name of passion. For him, this suffering could only be a consequence of a cause: the will to reproduce.

• %%In art, pleasure is the negation of desire, leading the individual to a kind of illusion.%%

• If love is a strategy of the will to delude the individual, paradoxically, it is an illusion; because nothing is more authentic and concrete than it.

• Schopenhauer highlights how the desire (being irrational) pushes us toward people with whom we sometimes feel opposed but irresistibly moved and attracted.

• According to him, instinct is oriented toward what is best for the species, not the individual.

Love

• For the philosopher, however, there is another form of love. It is a feeling that, as in art, denies the will instead of affirming it. This love of a high character was practiced by the saints and by Christ, %%compassion%%.
• %%For Schopenhauer, compassion is authentic love.%% Because it is superior and avoids suffering. It means to exercise empathy, to put oneself in the place of the other. Only in this can we give away the most important to us: ourselves.
• Here arises the philosopher of universal love. His ethos is the ethics of compassion, abandonment, selfishness, and negation of the will.

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