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Arthur SchopenhauerGerman idealist philosopher who denied historical progress
Date of Birth: 22.02.1788
Country:  Germany |
Content:
Biography of Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher and idealist who rejected historical progress. He is best known for his major work, "The World as Will and Representation" (1819-44), in which he presents the essence of the world and human beings as an unconscious "will to live."
Early Life and Education
Arthur Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788, in Danzig (now Gdansk), Germany. He came from a wealthy merchant family. His father, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer (1747-1805), although temperamental and prone to depression, was known as a kind, open-minded, and independent person with honest business practices. His mother, Johanna Henrietta Schopenhauer (1766-1823), was the daughter of a senator named Troziner and had a passion for the arts, engaging in literary pursuits with a collection of 24 volumes of her writings published in 1830-31.
During his childhood, Schopenhauer did not receive a systematic education. His father, wanting him to continue the family business, sent him to live with a friend and business partner in Le Havre when he was nine years old. After a brief period at a private school in Hamburg, Schopenhauer embarked on a educational journey across Europe. This experience convinced him of the futility of studying "mere words" and the value of engaging with the world itself.
After his father's death, Schopenhauer's mother allowed him to pursue a university education. In 1809, he enrolled as a medical student at the University of Göttingen but later transferred to the philosophy faculty, where he diligently studied Plato and Kant. In 1811, he attended lectures at the University of Berlin by F. A. Wolf on the history of Greek and Latin literature, Friedrich Schleiermacher on the history of philosophy, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte on philosophy. He defended his doctoral dissertation, "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason," at the University of Jena in 1813.
Later Years and Philosophical Contributions
In 1814, after a falling out with his mother, whom he never forgave for her coldness toward his sick father, Schopenhauer settled in Dresden. Here, he wrote the treatise "On Vision and Colors" (1816) based on discussions with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whom he had met in 1813-14 in Weimar in his mother's literary salon. In March 1818, he completed the first volume of his major work, "The World as Will and Representation." Unfortunately, the reception of the first edition of his book, most of which went unsold and was eventually recycled, deeply disappointed him. Subsequently, Schopenhauer faced a setback in his teaching career in Berlin in 1820 when his trial lecture was met with negative reviews from G. W. F. Hegel.
In 1831, Schopenhauer settled in Frankfurt, where he continued to write, primarily adding supplements to the first volume of his magnum opus or popularizing its ideas. Despite the success of his later work, "Parerga and Paralipomena" (1851), and his increasing fame, Schopenhauer remained plagued by a sense of spiritual solitude. Nevertheless, he firmly believed in the exceptional significance and originality of his work. Considering himself a disciple of Kant, Schopenhauer maintained that experience, the "world of phenomena," is given to humans as their "representation," with space, time, and causality as its a priori forms. Subject and object are relational moments of the world as "representation." The world as the "thing-in-itself" appears to Schopenhauer as the groundless "will," which reveals itself in the blind force of nature and deliberate human activity, with reason being merely an instrument of this "will." As the "thing-in-itself," the will is one and lies beyond causes and effects, but in the world as "representation," it manifests in an infinite variety of "objectifications." These stages of objectification (inorganic nature, plants, animals, humans) form a hierarchical unity reflecting the hierarchy of ideas (in the Platonic sense) as "adequate objectifications of the will." Each objectification possesses a striving for absolute domination. In the realm of living nature and society, the will manifests as the "will to live," the source of animal instincts and human egoism. Every individual "realizes itself as the entire will to live," while all other individuals exist in their representation as something dependent on him, resulting in a continuous "war of all against all." The state does not destroy egoism but functions as a system of balanced private wills.
In contrast to Leibniz, Schopenhauer referred to the existing world as the "worst of all possible worlds" and his philosophy as "pessimism." World history holds no meaning. Suffering is a "punishment" for the "original sin" of isolated existence. The overcoming of egoistic impulses and the suffering they cause occurs in the realms of art and morality. Art is based on "disinterested contemplation" of ideas, freeing the subject from the dominance of space and time and serving the "will to live." The highest form of art is music, which aims not to reproduce ideas but to directly reflect the will itself. However, complete liberation occurs only in the realm of morality, through asceticism, the suppression of desires and passions (here, Schopenhauer is close to Buddhism and its concept of Nirvana). Through a unique personal experience of compassion, the illusory boundary between the self and the non-self is overcome, resulting in the "turning" of the will, a revolution in being.
Critiquing the language of contemporary philosophy, Schopenhauer aimed for simplicity of style, vivid imagery, and aphoristic clarity in presenting his own philosophy. His pessimistic and voluntaristic motives, his intuitionism, and moral critique of culture found resonance in the philosophy of life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His influence was felt in Germany by Richard Wagner, Eduard von Hartmann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and others, and in Russia by Leo Tolstoy, Afanasy Fet, and others.
