David Bather Woods

ABSTRACT Few are persuaded by Schopenhauer’s argument that ours is the worst of all possible worlds. In this paper, I propose and defend an alternative reading of Schopenhauer’s argument. According to my reading, the argument has considerable polemical force against Leibnizian optimism independently of its positive success. Its force lies in its implicit proposal of worldly sustainability as a measure of worldly perfection. Worldly sustainability is the degree by which a possible world can tolerate alterations for the worse without ending. There is a natural connection between this measure of worldly perfection, on the one hand, and the inhabitants of the world, on the other, insofar as these inhabitants have an indirect interest in the global degree of worldly sustainability through their own will to exist. Measuring worldly perfection by the degree of existential sustainability is consistent with Schopenhauer’s general tendency to adopt the perspective of beings in the world when making evaluations of the world, always to the detriment of optimism. Regardless of whether Schopenhauer’s argument successfully inverts the thesis of Leibnizian optimism, therefore, it poses a serious and substantial challenge to the worldly values on which such optimism is based.

– An engaging biography of one of the most influential Western philosophers and a thought-provoking exploration of how to live with Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimism. – Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) almost wasn’t one of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century. Born in the Free City of Danzig to a family of shipping merchants, he was destined for a life of imports and exports until his father died in a suspected suicide. After much deliberation, the young Schopenhauer invested his inheritance in himself and his philosophical vocation. But the long road to recognition was a difficult one, with Schopenhauer spending all but the last decade of his life in total obscurity. Yet his ideas and style went on to influence great thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Sigmund Freud, as well as artists such as the composer Richard Wagner and writers Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Samuel Beckett, and many more. A singular and remarkably influential thinker, Schopenhauer is usually described as an extreme pessimist. He questioned the purpose of existence in a world where pain and suffering are inescapable and happiness is all too brief. In this engaging philosophical biography, David Bather Woods reevaluates Schopenhauer’s pessimism in the context of his life experiences, revealing the philosopher’s relentless fascination with the world and making a case for his contemporary relevance. Bather Woods weaves together Schopenhauer’s ideas with the story of how he came to be, including such topics as love, loneliness, morality, politics, gender, sexuality, death, suicide, fame, and madness. In doing so, this book answers some of life’s most challenging questions about how to deal with pain and loss, and how to live with ourselves and each other. Despite his pessimistic outlook on human existence, Schopenhauer didn’t give up on life. Rather, he recognized that the question of how to live becomes even more pressing, and he worked to provide an answer. Bather Woods shows how Schopenhauer’s life informed his ideas and how they still resonate today.

Schopenhauer has a longstanding reputation for misanthropy. The reputation is warranted, but it is also potentially misleading. Privately, Schopenhauer resisted being called misanthropic, possibly because of the false implication that he hated humanity. Recent philosophical studies of misanthropy have helped to forestall this implication by detaching the definition of misanthropy from hatred and associating it instead with a negative critical verdict of humankind that can be expressed in a wider range of responses. On this definition, whether Schopenhauer endorses the misanthropic verdict, on the one hand, and how he proposes to respond to it, on the other, are separate questions. In this paper, I answer the second question by presenting two of Schopenhauer’s proposals for preventing a hateful response. Both proposals confirm that Schopenhauer not only resisted hatred of humanity but also had recommendations for achieving such resistance. However, the two proposals are also markedly different in important respects. The first proposal is still based on a misanthropic evaluation of humankind but recommends a different negative response from hatred, namely contempt. The second proposal, by contrast, is based on an alternative evaluation of humankind and recommends a positive response that supplants both hatred and contempt, namely compassion. In the course of presenting these proposals, I shall give reasons to disfavour the contemptuous proposal and thereby favour the compassionate one.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is now recognised as a figure of canonical importance to the history of philosophy. Schopenhauer founded his system on a highly original interpretation of Kant's philosophy, developing an entirely novel and controversial worldview guided centrally by his striking conception of the human will and of art and beauty. His influence extends to figures as diverse as Fredrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Iris Murdoch within philosophy, and Richard Wagner, Thomas Hardy, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Samuel Beckett and Jorge Luis Borges outside it. The Schopenhauerian Mind is an outstanding, wide-ranging collection that explores the rich nature of Schopenhauer's ideas, texts, influences, and legacy. Comprising 38 original chapters by an international team of contributors, the volume is organised into five clear parts: Knowledge and Reality Aesthetics and the Arts Ethics, Politics, and Salvation Before Schopenhauer After Schopenhauer. The Schopenhauerian Mind covers all the key areas and concepts of Schopenhauer's philosophy, including fields omitted in previous studies. It is essential reading for students of nineteenth-century philosophy, Continental philosophy and philosophy of art and aesthetics, and also of interest to those in related disciplines such as literature and religion.

A evidência textual primária confirma que Schopenhauer estava ciente da adoção generalizada do confinamento solitário no sistema penitenciário americano e alguns de seus efeitos prejudiciais. Ele entende sua perniciosidade no que diz respeito ao tédio, fenômeno pelo qual é conhecido por ter nele pensado e analisado extensivamente. Neste artigo, eu interpreto o relato de Schopenhauer sobre o tédio e sua relação com o confinamento solitário. Defendo Schopenhauer contra a objeção de que os casos de confinamento servem apenas para ilustrar a inadequação geral de sua explicação do tédio como a falta de coisas para se querer. Esta defesa chega à conclusão de que, ao contrário, alguém pode muito bem sofrer da falta de coisas para querer como resultado direto de estar confinado; e que o tédio, entendido como a privação de vontade — fenômeno que sugiro poder ser chamado de privação conativa — faz uma contribuição esclarecedora para a nossa compreensão teórica da nocividade do confinamento solitário.