Christopher Janaway

The essay draws attention to some of the different uses made of Schopenhauer throughout Nietzsche's writings. Different roles for Schopenhauer coexist at all stages of Nietzsche's writing. He functions as an exemplar for European culture, but at the same time Nietzsche can find serious fault with his philosophical doctrines, as he does in early unpublished notes. In later writings Schopenhauer is assigned the role of Nietzsche's antipode, but even then Schopenhauer is paid the compliment of being Nietzsche's great and only teacher. The essay includes a commentary on Genealogy III:12 in which Nietzsche's conception of 'perspectival knowledge' is anti-Schopenhauerian, but can only be seen for what it is once an underlying Schopenhauerian structure is made explicit.

Nietzsche vehemently attacks the traditional conception of the unitary self. This essay tries to show that some of the undermining of that conception had already been done in Schopenhauer’s work. We should not ignore the obvious fact that while Nietzsche is a philosopher of cultures, classes and epochs, Schopenhauer’s view of knowledge and ethics remains firmly ahistorical. 1 Nevertheless, if we first try to inhabit Schopenhauer’s point of view, we can look forward to Nietzsche and illuminate him from one (partial) perspective. 2 For Nietzsche’s opposition to Schopenhauer’s conceptions of the subject and of the will is interwoven with more positive debts to his predecessor’s philosophy, and he by no means fully overcomes its problems and tensions.

This flexible introductory textbook explores several key themes in philosophy, and helps the reader learn to engage with the key arguments by introducing and analysing a selection of classic readings. Fully integrated introductory text with readings for beginning students of philosophy. Each chapter focusses on a core philosophical topic, and contains an introduction to the topic, 2 classic readings and interactive commentaries on the readings. An introductory book which doesn't merely _tell_ the reader about the subject, but requires them to engage philosophically with the text. A pedagogical resource developed in the classroom by the authors at the University of London.

This paper elucidates and interrogates Schopenhauer’s notion of will and its relation to ideas about the unconscious, with the aim of addressing its significance as an exercise in philosophical psychology. Schopenhauer aims at a global metaphysics, a theory of the essence of the world as it is in itself. He calls this essence will (Wille), which, to put it briefly, he understands as a blind striving for existence, life, and reproduction. Human beings have the same essence as all other manifestations of will in the world, and this has several consequences for Schopenhauer's conception of humanity. Neither rationality, nor intentional action, nor consciousness is primary or foundational in human beings. The true core of the personality is not the self-conscious ‘I’ or subject of knowledge, but rather the will, which is fundamentally blind and without knowledge, but which interacts with the intellect almost as an agent distinct from it. Schopenhauer makes a number of psychological observations about the interplay of intellect and will. These include the omnipresence of sexual desire in or beneath our experience; the persistence of desires and affects unknown to the self-conscious intellect; the will's capacity to prohibit representations in the intellect that are liable to arouse certain emotions; and the occurrence of madness when memories painful to the will are shielded from the intellect and arbitrary representations are substituted.

The article argues against various proposals to treat the term 'beauty' as standing for a single, generic concept of aesthetic value, which has application both to natural objects and to art. It argues that in Kant's aesthetic theory 'beauty' must be treated as ambiguous because in the case of art, but not in that of nature, part of beauty is the expession of aesthetic ideas. This gives rise to the dilemma: either beauty is always the ultimate aesthetic value of any thing, in which case there is no single account of beauty to be had that covers both art and nature, or being beautiful is the same for both art and nature, but must constitute only part of the aesthetic value of art. It is argued that certain late twentieth century theories of beauty do not overcome this problem.

This series of lectures was originally scheduled to include a talk on Schopenhauer by Patrick Gardiner. Sadly, Patrick died during the summer, and I was asked to stand in. Patrick must, I am sure, have been glad to see this series of talks on German Philosophy being put on by the Royal Institute, and he, probably more than anyone on the list, deserves to have been a part of it. Patrick Gardiner taught and wrote with unfailing integrity and quiet refinement in the Oxford of the 1950s, '60s, '70s and '80s, when the changing fashions in philosophy, and Oxford philosophy in particular, were quite remote from his own central interests. He went his own way, radically but quite undemonstratively. His book on Schopenhauer, originally published in 1963, was a beacon in the night as far as English-language publications on that philosopher are concerned. It is still a leader in the field, and I am pleased to say it has been re-issued just this year after being out of print for too long. Patrick worked in aesthetics, on Kant, and on the German Idealists, showing an expertise and a fondness for Fichte which now seem well ahead of their time. He also contributed well known books on Kierkegaard and on the philosophy of history. I am honoured to be invited as Patrick's replacement. He was a true pioneer, whom all of us working in these several fields that have now grown more fashionable and more populated should pause to salute