Schopenhauer, Arthur, << SHOH puhn `how` uhr, AHR toor >> (1788-1860), was a German philosopher who became widely known for his pessimistic views and his fine prose style. Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Following Kant’s argument, Schopenhauer insisted that the world we experience through our senses is mere representation. By this he meant that we experience the world not as it really is, but only as we represent it to ourselves. In representing the world to ourselves, we change it.
Both Kant and Schopenhauer argued that we represent objects as existing in space and time, and we represent all events as having a cause. But according to these philosophers, space, time, and causality are not really properties of the world. Instead, we add them to our experience of the world. They are the structures we always necessarily use to organize our experience. But the price we pay for this ordering is never knowing the world as it really is–that is, as it exists apart from the structures we add to the world as we experience it.
Schopenhauer believed that we can at least know ourselves without introducing this distortion. In addition to knowing ourselves as we know other things, we also experience ourselves from the inside as individuals making choices and willing certain desired ends. As Schopenhauer expressed it, we experience ourselves as will as well as representation. In knowing ourselves as will, we know ourselves apart from the structures of space, time, and causality. Thus, we know ourselves as we really are. For Schopenhauer, the real inner nature of the world is will.
Schopenhauer’s pessimism was based on his belief that the will can never really be satisfied. According to Schopenhauer, the will is either striving for something that it unhappily does not yet possess, or it quickly experiences the boredom that invariably follows the attainment of any goal. Given the impossibility of ever satisfying the strivings of the will, Schopenhauer advised us to dissociate ourselves as much as possible from these strivings. He suggested that one important way of achieving this withdrawal is through the quiet contemplation of natural and artistic beauty.
Schopenhauer was born on Feb. 22, 1788, in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). At his father’s urging, he began training for a career in business. But he turned to philosophy after his father’s death. Schopenhauer’s first book is On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813). His most important work is The World as Will and Representation (1819, second edition 1844). A collection of essays titled Parerga and Paralipomena (1851) brought Schopenhauer international fame toward the end of his life.
