Schopenhauer is one of the few philosophers who can be
generally understood without a commentary. All his theories claim
to be drawn direct from the facts, to be suggested by observation,
and to interpret the world as it is; and whatever view he takes, he
is constant in his appeal to the experience of common life. This
characteristic endows his style with a freshness and vigor which
would be difficult to match in the philosophical writing of any
country, and impossible in that of Germany. If it were asked
whether there were any circumstances apart from heredity, to which
he owed his mental habit, the answer might be found in the abnormal
character of his early education, his acquaintance with the world
rather than with books, the extensive travels of his boyhood, his
ardent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and without regard to
the emoluments and endowments of learning. He was trained in
realities even more than in ideas; and hence he is original,
forcible, clear, an enemy of all philosophic indefiniteness and
obscurity; so that it may well be said of him, in the words of a
writer in the Revue Contemporaine, ce n’est pas un
philosophe comme les autres, c’est un philosophe qui a vu le
monde .
It is not my purpose, nor would it be possible within the
limits of a prefatory note, to attempt an account of Schopenhauer’s
philosophy, to indicate its sources, or to suggest or rebut the
objections which may be taken to it. M. Ribot, in his excellent
little book, [Footnote: La Philosophie de
Schopenhauer , par Th. Ribot.] has done all that
is necessary in this direction. But the essays here presented need
a word of explanation. It should be observed, and Schopenhauer
himself is at pains to point out, that his system is like a citadel
with a hundred gates: at whatever point you take it up, wherever
you make your entrance, you are on the road to the center. In this
respect his writings resemble a series of essays composed in
support of a single thesis; a circumstance which led him to insist,
more emphatically even than most philosophers, that for a proper
understanding of his system it was necessary to read every line he
had written. Perhaps it would be more correct to describe
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung as
his main thesis, and his other treatises as merely corollary to it.
The essays in this volume form part of the corollary; they are
taken from a collection published towards the close of
Schopenhauer’s life, and by him entitled Parerga
und Paralipomena , as being in the nature of
surplusage and illustrative of his main position. They are by far
the most popular of his works, and since their first publication in
1851, they have done much to build up his fame. Written so as to be
intelligible enough in themselves, the tendency of many of them is
towards the fundamental idea on which his system is based. It may
therefore be convenient to summarize that idea in a couple of
sentences; more especially as Schopenhauer sometimes writes as if
his advice had been followed and his readers were acquainted with
the whole of his work.
All philosophy is in some sense the endeavor to find a
unifying principle, to discover the most general conception
underlying the whole field of nature and of knowledge. By one of
those bold generalizations which occasionally mark a real advance
in Science, Schopenhauer conceived this unifying principle, this
underlying unity, to consist in something analogous to that
will which self-consciousness reveals
to us. Will is, according to
him, the fundamental reality of the world, the thing-in-itself; and
its objectivation is what is presented in phenomena. The struggle
of the will to realize itself evolves the organism, which in its
turn evolves intelligence as the servant of the will. And in
practical life the antagonism between the will and the intellect
arises from the fact that the former is the metaphysical substance,
the latter something accidental and secondary. And further, will
is desire , that is to say, need
of something; hence need and pain are what is positive in the
world, and the only possible happiness is a negation, a
renunciation of the will to live
.
It is instructive to note, as M. Ribot points out, that in
finding the origin of all things, not in intelligence, as some of
his predecessors in philosophy had done, but in will, or the force
of nature, from which all phenomena have developed, Schopenhauer
was anticipating something of the scientific spirit of the
nineteenth century. To this it may be added that in combating the
method of Fichte and Hegel, who spun a system out of abstract
ideas, and in discarding it for one based on observation and
experience, Schopenhauer can be said to have brought down
philosophy from heaven to earth.
In Schopenhauer’s view the various forms of Religion are no
less a product of human ingenuity than Art or Science. He holds, in
effect, that all religions take their rise in the desire to explain
the world; and that, in regard to truth and error, they differ, in
the main, not by preaching monotheism polytheism or pantheism, but
in so far as they recognize pessimism or optimism as the true
description of life. Hence any religion which looked upon the world
as being radically evil appealed to him as containing an
indestructible element of truth. I have endeavored to present his
view of two of the great religions of the world in the extract
which concludes this volume, and to which I have given the title
of The Christian System . The
tenor of it is to show that, however little he may have been in
sympathy with the supernatural element, he owed much to the moral
doctrines of Christianity and of Buddhism, between which he traced
great resemblance. In the following
Dialogue he applies himself to a
discussion of the practical efficacy of religious forms; and though
he was an enemy of clericalism, his choice of a method which allows
both the affirmation and the denial of that efficacy to be
presented with equal force may perhaps have been directed by the
consciousness that he could not side with either view to the
exclusion of the other. In any case his practical philosophy was
touched with the spirit of Christianity. It was more than artistic
enthusiasm which led him in profound admiration to the Madonna di
San Sisto:
Sie trägt zur Welt ihn, und er schaut entsetzt
In ihrer Gräu’l chaotische Verwirrung,
In ihres Tobens wilde Raserei,
In ihres Treibens nie geheilte Thorheit,
In ihrer Quaalen nie gestillten Schmerz;
Entsetzt: doch strahlet Rub’ and Zuversicht
Und Siegesglanz sein Aug’, verkündigend
Schon der Erlösung ewige gewissheit.
Pessimism is commonly and erroneously supposed to be the
distinguishing feature of Schopenhauer’s system. It is right to
remember that the same fundamental view of the world is presented
by Christianity, to say nothing of Oriental religions.
That Schopenhauer conceives life as an evil is a deduction,
and possibly a mistaken deduction, from his metaphysical theory.
Whether his scheme of things is correct or not — and it shares the
common fate of all metaphysical systems in being unverifiable, and
to that extent unprofitable — he will in the last resort have made
good his claim to be read by his insight into the varied needs of
human life. It may be that a future age will consign his
metaphysics to the philosophical lumber-room; but he is a literary
artist as well as a philosopher, and he can make a bid for fame in
either capacity. What is remarked with much truth of many another
writer, that he suggests more than he achieves, is in the highest
degree applicable to Schopenhauer; and his obiter
dicta , his sayings by the way, will always find
an audience.