164 Facts About Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation, which characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind noumenal will.

Arthur Schopenhauer was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance.

Arthur Schopenhauer's work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism.

Arthur Schopenhauer's writing on aesthetics, morality, and psychology have influenced many thinkers and artists.

Arthur Schopenhauer's firm continued trading in Danzig where most of their extended families remained.

In 1797, Arthur Schopenhauer was sent to Le Havre to live with the family of his father's business associate, Gregoire de Blesimaire.

Arthur Schopenhauer seemed to enjoy his two-year stay there, learning to speak French and fostering a life-long friendship with Jean Anthime Gregoire de Blesimaire.

Arthur Schopenhauer deeply regretted his choice later because the merchant training was very tedious.

Arthur Schopenhauer spent twelve weeks of the tour attending school in Wimbledon, where he was disillusioned by strict and intellectually shallow Anglican religiosity.

Arthur Schopenhauer continued to sharply criticize Anglican religiosity later in life despite his general Anglophilia.

Arthur Schopenhauer was under pressure from his father, who became very critical of his educational results.

Arthur Schopenhauer was prone to anxiety and depression; each becoming more pronounced later in his life.

Arthur Schopenhauer showed similar moodiness during his youth and often acknowledged that he inherited it from his father.

Heinrich Arthur Schopenhauer left the family with a significant inheritance that was split in three among Johanna and the children.

Arthur Schopenhauer was entitled to control of his part when he reached the age of majority.

Arthur Schopenhauer invested it conservatively in government bonds and earned annual interest that was more than double the salary of a university professor.

Arthur Schopenhauer left the Gymnasium after writing a satirical poem about one of the schoolmasters.

Arthur Schopenhauer spent two years as a merchant in honor of his dead father.

Arthur Schopenhauer moved to Hamburg to live with his friend Jean Anthime, who was studying to become a merchant.

Arthur Schopenhauer accused his mother of being financially irresponsible, flirtatious and seeking to remarry, which he considered an insult to his father's memory.

Arthur Schopenhauer concentrated on his studies, which were now going very well, and he enjoyed the usual social life such as balls, parties and theater.

Arthur Schopenhauer left Weimar to become a student at the University of Gottingen in 1809.

Arthur Schopenhauer studied metaphysics, psychology and logic under Gottlob Ernst Schulze, the author of Aenesidemus, who made a strong impression and advised him to concentrate on Plato and Immanuel Kant.

Arthur Schopenhauer did not regret his medicinal and scientific studies; he claimed that they were necessary for a philosopher, and even in Berlin he attended more lectures in sciences than in philosophy.

Arthur Schopenhauer's friends included Friedrich Gotthilf Osann, Karl Witte, Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen, and William Backhouse Astor Sr.

Arthur Schopenhauer attended lectures by the prominent post-Kantian philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, but quickly found many points of disagreement with his ; he found Fichte's lectures tedious and hard to understand.

Arthur Schopenhauer attended the lectures of the famous Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, whom he quickly came to dislike.

Arthur Schopenhauer learned by self-directed reading; besides Plato, Kant and Fichte he read the works of Schelling, Fries, Jacobi, Bacon, Locke, and much current scientific literature.

Arthur Schopenhauer left Berlin in a rush in 1813, fearing that the city could be attacked and that he could be pressed into military service as Prussia had just joined the war against France.

Arthur Schopenhauer settled for a while in Rudolstadt, hoping that no army would pass through the small town.

Arthur Schopenhauer spent his time in solitude, hiking in the mountains and the Thuringian forest and writing his dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

Arthur Schopenhauer completed his dissertation at about the same time as the French army was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig.

Arthur Schopenhauer became irritated by the arrival of soldiers in the town and accepted his mother's invitation to visit her in Weimar.

Arthur Schopenhauer tried to convince him that her relationship with Gerstenbergk was platonic and that she had no intention of remarrying.

Arthur Schopenhauer's mother had just published her second book, Reminiscences of a Journey in the Years 1803,1804, and 1805, a description of their family tour of Europe, which quickly became a hit.

Arthur Schopenhauer found his dissertation incomprehensible and said it was unlikely that anyone would ever buy a copy.

Also contrary to his mother's prediction, Arthur Schopenhauer's dissertation made an impression on Goethe, to whom he sent it as a gift.

Arthur Schopenhauer soon started writing his own treatise on the subject, On Vision and Colors, which in many points differed from his teacher's.

Arthur Schopenhauer later admitted that he was greatly hurt by this rejection, but he continued to praise Goethe, and considered his color theory a great introduction to his own.

Arthur Schopenhauer was immediately impressed by the Upanishads and the Buddha, and put them on a par with Plato and Kant.

Arthur Schopenhauer continued his studies by reading the Bhagavad Gita, an amateurish German journal Asiatisches Magazin and Asiatick Researches by the Asiatic Society.

Arthur Schopenhauer held a profound respect for Indian philosophy; although he loved Hindu texts, he never revered a Buddhist text but regarded Buddhism as the most distinguished religion.

Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that he formulated most of his ideas independently, and only later realized the similarities with Buddhism.

Arthur Schopenhauer read the Latin translation and praised the Upanishads in his main work, The World as Will and Representation, as well as in his Parerga and Paralipomena, and commented,.

Arthur Schopenhauer was recommended to the publisher Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus by Baron Ferdinand von Biedenfeld, an acquaintance of his mother.

In September 1818, while waiting for his book to be published and conveniently escaping an affair with a maid that caused an unwanted pregnancy, Arthur Schopenhauer left Dresden for a year-long vacation in Italy.

Arthur Schopenhauer visited Venice, Bologna, Florence, Naples and Milan, travelling alone or accompanied by mostly English tourists he met.

Arthur Schopenhauer spent the winter months in Rome, where he accidentally met his acquaintance Karl Witte and engaged in numerous quarrels with German tourists in the Caffe Greco, among them Johann Friedrich Bohmer, who mentioned his insulting remarks and unpleasant character.

Arthur Schopenhauer enjoyed art, architecture, and ancient ruins, attended plays and operas, and continued his philosophical contemplation and love affairs.

Arthur Schopenhauer corresponded regularly with his sister Adele and became close to her as her relationship with Johanna and Gerstenbergk deteriorated.

Arthur Schopenhauer offered to share his assets, but his mother refused and became further enraged by his insulting comments.

The women managed to receive only thirty percent of their savings while Arthur Schopenhauer, using his business knowledge, took a suspicious and aggressive stance towards the banker and eventually received his part in full.

Arthur Schopenhauer shortened his stay in Italy because of the trouble with Muhl and returned to Dresden.

Arthur Schopenhauer contacted his friends at universities in Heidelberg, Gottingen and Berlin and found Berlin most attractive.

Arthur Schopenhauer was especially appalled by Hegel's supposedly poor knowledge of natural sciences and tried to engage him in a quarrel about it already at his test lecture in March 1820.

Hegel was facing political suspicions at the time, when many progressive professors were fired, while Arthur Schopenhauer carefully mentioned in his application that he had no interest in politics.

Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that he had just pushed her from his entrance after she had rudely refused to leave, and that she had purposely fallen to the ground so that she could sue him.

Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that he had attacked her so violently that she had become paralyzed on her right side and unable to work.

Arthur Schopenhauer immediately sued him, and the process lasted until May 1827, when a court found Schopenhauer guilty and forced him to pay her an annual pension until her death in 1842.

Arthur Schopenhauer enjoyed Italy, where he studied art and socialized with Italian and English nobles.

Arthur Schopenhauer left for Munich and stayed there for a year, mostly recuperating from various health issues, some of them possibly caused by venereal diseases.

Arthur Schopenhauer contacted publishers, offering to translate Hume into German and Kant into English, but his proposals were declined.

Arthur Schopenhauer liked Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Miguel de Cervantes, and especially Baltasar Gracian.

Arthur Schopenhauer made failed attempts to publish his translations of their works.

Arthur Schopenhauer had an on-and-off relationship with a young dancer, Caroline Richter.

Arthur Schopenhauer had already had numerous lovers and a son out of wedlock, and later gave birth to another son, this time to an unnamed foreign diplomat.

Arthur Schopenhauer refused and he went alone; in his will he left her a significant sum of money, but insisted that it should not be spent in any way on her second son.

Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that, in his last year in Berlin, he had a prophetic dream that urged him to escape from the city.

Arthur Schopenhauer was quite critical of the available studies and claimed that they were mostly ignorant or fraudulent, but he did believe that there are authentic cases of such phenomena and tried to explain them through his metaphysics as manifestations of the will.

Arthur Schopenhauer renewed his correspondence with his mother, and she seemed concerned that he might commit suicide like his father.

In July 1832, Arthur Schopenhauer left Frankfurt for Mannheim but returned in July 1833 to remain there for the rest of his life, except for a few short journeys.

Arthur Schopenhauer lived alone except for a succession of pet poodles named Atman and Butz.

Arthur Schopenhauer sent another essay, "On the Basis of Morality", to the Royal Danish Society for Scientific Studies, but did not win the prize despite being the only contestant.

Arthur Schopenhauer, who had been very confident that he would win, was enraged by this rejection.

Arthur Schopenhauer published both essays as The Two Basic Problems of Ethics.

Arthur Schopenhauer began to attract some followers, mostly outside academia, among practical professionals who pursued private philosophical studies.

Arthur Schopenhauer jokingly referred to them as "evangelists" and "apostles".

Arthur Schopenhauer was instrumental in finding another publisher after Brockhaus declined to publish Parerga and Paralipomena, believing that it would be another failure.

In 1848, Arthur Schopenhauer witnessed violent upheaval in Frankfurt after General Hans Adolf Erdmann von Auerswald and Prince Felix Lichnowsky were murdered.

Arthur Schopenhauer became worried for his own safety and property.

Arthur Schopenhauer gave a friendly welcome to Austrian soldiers who wanted to shoot revolutionaries from his window and as they were leaving he gave one of the officers his opera glasses to help him monitor rebels.

Arthur Schopenhauer even modified his will, leaving a large part of his property to a Prussian fund that helped soldiers who became invalids while fighting rebellion in 1848 or the families of soldiers who died in battle.

In 1851, Arthur Schopenhauer published Parerga and Paralipomena, which contains essays that are supplementary to his main work.

Arthur Schopenhauer was becoming less interested in intellectual fights, but encouraged his disciples to do so.

Arthur Schopenhauer seemed flattered and amused by this, and would claim that it was his first chapel.

Arthur Schopenhauer complained that he still felt isolated due to his not very social nature and the fact that many of his good friends had already died from old age.

Arthur Schopenhauer remained healthy in his own old age, which he attributed to regular walks no matter the weather and always getting enough sleep.

Arthur Schopenhauer had a great appetite and could read without glasses, but his hearing had been declining since his youth and he developed problems with rheumatism.

Arthur Schopenhauer remained active and lucid, continued his reading, writing and correspondence until his death.

The last friend to visit him was Wilhelm Gwinner; according to him, Arthur Schopenhauer was concerned that he would not be able to finish his planned additions to Parerga and Paralipomena but was at peace with dying.

Arthur Schopenhauer died of pulmonary-respiratory failure on 21 September 1860 while sitting at home on his couch.

Arthur Schopenhauer died at the age of 72 and had a funeral conducted by a Lutheran minister.

Arthur Schopenhauer saw his philosophy as an extension of Kant's, and used the results of Kantian epistemological investigation as starting point for his own.

Arthur Schopenhauer did not deny that the external world existed empirically but followed Kant in claiming that our knowledge and experience of the world is always indirect.

Arthur Schopenhauer reiterates this in the first sentence of his main work: "The world is my representation ".

In November 1813 Goethe invited Arthur Schopenhauer to help him on his Theory of Colours.

The difference between the approaches of Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer was this: Kant simply declared that the empirical content of perception is "given" to us from outside, an expression with which Arthur Schopenhauer often expressed his dissatisfaction.

Arthur Schopenhauer stresses the importance of the intellectual nature of perception; the senses furnish the raw material by which the intellect produces the world as representation.

The very being in-itself of all things, Arthur Schopenhauer argues, is will.

Music, for Arthur Schopenhauer, is the purest form of art because it is the one that depicts the will itself without it appearing as subject to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, therefore as an individual object.

Arthur Schopenhauer deemed music a timeless, universal language comprehended everywhere, that can imbue global enthusiasm, if in possession of a significant melody.

Arthur Schopenhauer asserts that the task of ethics is not to prescribe moral actions that ought to be done, but to investigate moral actions.

Arthur Schopenhauer calls the principle through which multiplicity appears the principium individuationis.

Arthur Schopenhauer deemed that this truth was expressed by the Christian dogma of original sin and, in Eastern religions, by the dogma of rebirth.

Arthur Schopenhauer who sees through the principium individuationis and comprehends suffering in general as his own will see suffering everywhere and, instead of fighting for the happiness of his individual manifestation, will abhor life itself since he knows that it is inseparably connected with suffering.

Arthur Schopenhauer referred to asceticism as the denial of the will to live.

Arthur Schopenhauer named a force within man that he felt took invariable precedence over reason: the Will to Live or Will to Life, defined as an inherent drive within human beings, and all creatures, to stay alive; a force that inveigles us into reproducing.

Arthur Schopenhauer refused to conceive of love as either trifling or accidental, but rather understood it as an immensely powerful force that lay unseen within man's psyche, guaranteeing the quality of the human race:.

Arthur Schopenhauer's politics were an echo of his system of ethics, which he elucidated in detail in his Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik.

In occasional political comments in his Parerga and Paralipomena and Manuscript Remains, Arthur Schopenhauer described himself as a proponent of limited government.

Arthur Schopenhauer shared the view of Thomas Hobbes on the necessity of the state and state action to check the innate destructive tendencies of our species.

Arthur Schopenhauer defended the independence of the legislative, judicial and executive branches of power, and a monarch as an impartial element able to practise justice.

Arthur Schopenhauer declared that monarchy is "natural to man in almost the same way as it is to bees and ants, to cranes in flight, to wandering elephants, to wolves in a pack in search of prey, and to other animals".

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote many disparaging remarks about Germany and the Germans.

The State, Arthur Schopenhauer claimed, punishes criminals to prevent future crimes.

Arthur Schopenhauer attributed civilizational primacy to the northern "white races" due to their sensitivity and creativity :.

The slave-holding states of North America, Arthur Schopenhauer writes, are a "disgrace to the whole of humanity".

Arthur Schopenhauer argued that Christianity constituted a revolt against what he styled the materialistic basis of Judaism, exhibiting an Indian-influenced ethics reflecting the Aryan-Vedic theme of spiritual self-conquest.

Arthur Schopenhauer saw this as opposed to the ignorant drive toward earthly utopianism and superficiality of a worldly "Jewish" spirit:.

Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that "woman is by nature meant to obey".

Arthur Schopenhauer's writings influenced many, from Friedrich Nietzsche to nineteenth-century feminists.

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that pederasty has the benefit of preventing ill-begotten children.

Mechanistically, Arthur Schopenhauer believed that a person inherits his intellect through his mother, and personal character through the father.

Arthur Schopenhauer went so far as to protest using the pronoun "it" in reference to animals because that led to treatment of them as though they were inanimate things.

Arthur Schopenhauer was very attached to his succession of pet poodles.

Arthur Schopenhauer criticized Spinoza's belief that animals are a mere means for the satisfaction of humans.

Arthur Schopenhauer read the Latin translation of the ancient Hindu texts, the Upanishads, translated by French writer Anquetil du Perron from the Persian translation of Prince Dara Shukoh entitled Sirre-Akbar.

Arthur Schopenhauer was so impressed by its philosophy that he called it "the production of the highest human wisdom", and believed it contained superhuman concepts.

Arthur Schopenhauer was first introduced to Anquetil du Perron's translation by Friedrich Majer in 1814.

Arthur Schopenhauer did not begin serious study of the Indic texts until the summer of 1814.

Safranski maintains that, between 1815 and 1817, Arthur Schopenhauer had another important cross-pollination with Indian thought in Dresden.

Arthur Schopenhauer called the opening up of Sanskrit literature "the greatest gift of our century", and predicted that the philosophy and knowledge of the Upanishads would become the cherished faith of the West.

Arthur Schopenhauer noted a correspondence between his doctrines and the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.

Arthur Schopenhauer felt this was similar to notions of purusartha or goals of life in Vedanta Hinduism.

Buddhist nirvana is not equivalent to the condition that Arthur Schopenhauer described as denial of the will.

Arthur Schopenhauer made the following statement in his discussion of religions:.

Some traditions in Western esotericism and parapsychology interested Arthur Schopenhauer and influenced his philosophical theories.

Arthur Schopenhauer praised animal magnetism as evidence for the reality of magic in his On the Will in Nature, and went so far as to accept the division of magic into left-hand and right-hand magic, although he doubted the existence of demons.

Arthur Schopenhauer grounded magic in the Will and claimed all forms of magical transformation depended on the human Will, not on ritual.

Arthur Schopenhauer had a wide range of interests, from science and opera to occultism and literature.

Arthur Schopenhauer kept a strong interest as his personal library contained near to 200 books of scientific literature at his death, and his works refer to scientific titles not found in the library.

Many evenings were spent in the theatre, opera and ballet; Arthur Schopenhauer especially liked the operas of Mozart, Rossini and Bellini.

Arthur Schopenhauer considered music the highest art, and played the flute during his whole life.

Arthur Schopenhauer saw Bruno and Spinoza as philosophers not bound to their age or nation.

Arthur Schopenhauer expressed regret that Spinoza stuck for the presentation of his philosophy with the concepts of scholasticism and Cartesian philosophy, and tried to use geometrical proofs that do not hold because of vague and overly broad definitions.

Arthur Schopenhauer noted that their philosophies do not provide any ethics, and it is therefore very remarkable that Spinoza called his main work Ethics.

Arthur Schopenhauer maintained that Kant stands in the same relation to philosophers such as Berkeley and Plato, as Copernicus to Hicetas, Philolaus, and Aristarchus: Kant succeeded in demonstrating what previous philosophers merely asserted.

Arthur Schopenhauer writes about Kant's influence on his work in the preface to the second edition of The World as Will and Representation:.

The bond which Arthur Schopenhauer felt with the philosopher of Konigsberg is demonstrated in an unfinished poem he dedicated to Kant :.

Arthur Schopenhauer dedicated one fifth of his main work, The World as Will and Representation, to a detailed criticism of the Kantian philosophy.

Arthur Schopenhauer praised Kant for his distinction between appearance and the thing-in-itself, whereas the general consensus in German idealism was that this was the weakest spot of Kant's theory, since, according to Kant, causality can find application on objects of experience only, and consequently, things-in-themselves cannot be the cause of appearances.

Arthur Schopenhauer insisted that this was a true conclusion, drawn from false premises.

Arthur Schopenhauer deemed Schelling the most talented of the three and wrote that he would recommend his "elucidatory paraphrase of the highly important doctrine of Kant" concerning the intelligible character, if he had been honest enough to admit he was parroting Kant, instead of hiding this relation in a cunning manner.

Arthur Schopenhauer reserved his most unqualified damning condemnation for Hegel, whom he considered less worthy than Fichte or Schelling.

Arthur Schopenhauer remained the most influential German philosopher until the First World War.

Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy was a starting point for a new generation of philosophers including Julius Bahnsen, Paul Deussen, Lazar von Hellenbach, Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, Ernst Otto Lindner, Philipp Mainlander, Friedrich Nietzsche, Olga Plumacher and Agnes Taubert.

Arthur Schopenhauer's legacy shaped the intellectual debate, and forced movements that were utterly opposed to him, neo-Kantianism and positivism, to address issues they would otherwise have completely ignored, and in doing so he changed them markedly.

Arthur Schopenhauer was well read by physicists, most notably Einstein, Schrodinger, Wolfgang Pauli, and Majorana.

When Erwin Schrodinger discovered Arthur Schopenhauer he considered switching his study of physics to philosophy.

Arthur Schopenhauer maintained the idealistic views during the rest of his life.

Jorge Luis Borges remarked that the reason he had never attempted to write a systematic account of his world view, despite his penchant for philosophy and metaphysics in particular, was because Arthur Schopenhauer had already written it for him.

Sergei Prokofiev, although initially reluctant to engage with works noted for their pessimism, became fascinated with Arthur Schopenhauer after reading Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life in Parerga and Paralipomena.

In later years, Wittgenstein became highly dismissive of Arthur Schopenhauer, describing him as an ultimately shallow thinker.

Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy has made its way into a novel, The Arthur Schopenhauer Cure, by American existential psychiatrist and emeritus professor of psychiatry Irvin Yalom.