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Whereas Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel could count as optimists, Schopenhauer is the first (and last) thinker in all Western philosophy to have constructed a complete and systematic pessimism.

But he is interesting for other reasons too. For his Great Philosophers series (1987), Bryan Magee, who wrote a thick book on Schopenhauer, introduced him as “the only major Western philosopher to draw serious and interesting parallels between Western and Eastern thought.” 

Magee continues: “He was the first major Western philosopher to be openly and explicitly atheist. He placed the arts higher in the scheme of things and more to say about them than any other important philosopher … He was himself among the supreme writers of German prose. Many of his sentences are so brilliantly aphoristic that they’ve been torn out of context and published separately in little books of epigrams.”

Schopenhauer’s humorous epigrams

To give you a flavour, here are a few of his many epigrams:

  • Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
  • Life is a business that does not cover its costs.
  • The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain… If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.
  • What everyone most aims at in ordinary contact with his fellows is to prove them inferior to himself.
  • Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.
  • It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

Here’s why you laughed, according to Schopenhauer himself

Probably, you chuckled while reading these aphorisms. But why did you chuckle? Schopenhauer has his own theory of laughter, which is a version of the incongruence theory, according to which laughter arises from a contradiction between a concept (what people think is happening) and its reality (what is in fact happening)—highlighting a failure of reason over perception. Thus, when people laugh at us (rather than along with us) they are filling the gap between our idea of ourself, or people’s general idea of us, and the sad reality.

Many people who read Schopenhauer’s aphorisms laugh only half-heartedly, because they feel threatened by them. But the few who laugh full-throatedly feel liberated by their truth. In this moment of pure perception, while they laugh, they escape, if only for a few seconds, from the tyranny of the Will—the blind, irrational force that, in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, underlies all reality, and forces us to exist and strive without purpose.

Schopenhauer’s theory of weeping

Schopenhauer also had a theory of weeping. Weeping, which is a physical expression of mental misery, is a form of self-compassion. As such, it requires an outside perspective on the self, which is why animals don’t cry, and children don’t cry if no one is watching. Schopenhauer cites the example of a person who did not think to weep over their misery until their case was summarised to them in court and they were brought to reflect upon their suffering—when they suddenly broke into a stream of tears.

When we weep, we become “both the sufferer and the compassionate onlooker.” Because weeping originates from self-compassion, it suggests to others that the crier is capable of compassion, and thus worthy of compassion. Psychopaths don’t cry, or only crocodile tears.

A final reason why Schopenhauer is funny

To me, Schopenhauer is important also because he is the first since antiquity to offer a comprehensive solution to the problem of living and suffering. As well as a great philosopher, he was a fine psychologist, so that we often find ourself laughing along with him. But almost as often, we find ourself laughing at him, owing, I think, to the incongruence between his lofty philosophy of temperance and compassion and his own bad boy ways.

Neel Burton is author of The German Greeks: German Philosophy and the German Philosophers.

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If Freud is the father of psychoanalysis, Schopenhauer is the grandfather. Here’s why.

In 1809, the twenty-one-year-old Arthur Schopenhauer matriculated at the University of Göttingen, nominally to study medicine and satisfy his interest in the natural sciences. In Göttingen, the skeptic Gottlob Ernst Schulze introduced him to Plato and Kant. Arthur remarked to Schulze, “Life is a tricky business. I’ve decided to spend it trying to understand it.” With that, he left Göttingen to pursue his studies at the newly founded University of Berlin, which had fast risen into Germany’s premier centre of philosophy.

In Berlin, Schopenhauer attended lectures by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the head of the department, and found him to be abstruse and tedious. He thought of Fichte as a charlatan and second-rate Kant, and, in his notes, referred to his philosophy as a “world-comedy”. He held the dogmatic Friedrich Schleiermacher in equal contempt, and his notes on Schleiermacher’s lectures reveal a budding atheism. He never regretted his beginnings as a medical student. Even at Berlin, he attended more lectures in the sciences and medicine than in philosophy, since, he believed, a philosopher ought to have a strong grounding in the sciences.

The relationship between madness and genius

And not just the sciences, but life itself. In the winter of 1812, Arthur began visiting patients in the “melancholy ward” of Berlin’s Charité hospital to investigate the relationship between madness and genius. In his lectures, Fichte had characterised genius as “divine” and madness as “animal”, but Arthur, who was no stranger to mental illness, suspected the two to be intertwined. “Genius” he would write in The World as Will, “lives only one storey above madness.”

Many of the patients he spoke to were or had been highly accomplished people. They were perfectly capable of rational thought, even of wit, and rarely erred in their knowledge of the immediate present. Madness, he surmised, is not a disturbance of the rational faculty. Instead, it arises when the past is too painful to bear. When this happens, memories are repressed, and may be replaced by new “memories”. “If … certain events or circumstances are wholly suppressed for the intellect, because the will cannot bear the sight of them; and then, if the resultant gaps are arbitrarily filled up for the sake of the necessary connection, we then have madness.” “True mental health” in contrast, “consists in perfect recollection of the past.”

Schopenhauer conceived of genius as an ability to rise into timelessness, to see time merely, in that famous phrase of Plato, “as the moving image of eternity”. Thus, what genius and madness share in common is a disrupted relationship with time. Whereas the madman has lost the thread of the “where” and “when”, the genius can still pick it up, but disentangles himself to better concentrate on the “what”.

What Freud said about it

Freud, who was four years old when Schopenhauer died, denied having been at all influenced by him. But in 1914, he conceded: “What [Schopenhauer] says about the struggle against accepting a distressing piece of reality coincides with my concept of repression so completely that once again I owe the chance of making a discovery to my not being well read.”

Again, in 1925, Freud wrote: “I have carefully avoided any contact with philosophy proper. The large extent to which psychoanalysis coincides with the philosophy of Schopenhauer—not only did he assert the dominance of the emotions and the supreme importance of sexuality, but he was even aware of the mechanism of repression—is not to be traced to my acquaintance with his teaching. I read Schopenhauer very late in my life.”

If Freud is the father of psychoanalysis, Schopenhauer is the grandfather.

Neel Burton is author of The German Greeks: German Philosophy and the German Philosophers.

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The German Greeks was announced for end of June, because I didn’t want to rush it. But it was so inspiring to write that I finished earlier.

So I’m releasing the ebook early, on the quiet, at the special price of 2.99. When the paperback comes out at the end of June, the ebook will go up to the regular 9.99.

The work has already received a couple of editorial reviews, including from Prof Robert Wicks, editor of The Oxford Handbook of Schopenhauer, who called it: ‘A fine, enjoyably readable and historically accurate book that informatively and excitingly portrays the lives of Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.’

The lightning book cover (which I designed myself) is inspired by Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, who preaches:

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness by which you might be cleansed? Behold, I show you the Superman. He is this lightning, he is this madness.

For Schopenhauer, our character is inborn and immutable, and apparent, at every stage of life, in the face and, especially, the eyes, which are the ‘mirror of the mind’. For this reason, when someone surprises or disappoints us, we never say, ‘Oh, his character has changed’ but, ‘Oh, I must have been wrong about him.’

Under the changeable shell of his years, his relationships, even his store of knowledge and opinions, there hides, like a crab under its shell, the identical and real man, quite unchangeable and always the same.

Schopenhauer took this idea very seriously, and when sitting for painters, obsessed over the depiction of his eyes.

That’s why, now, his eyes are still so full of lightning.

You can order the ebook here in the US and here in the UK.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be very receptive to any comments and feedback.

PS. I appreciate that many will prefer to await the paperback or hardback.

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Despite his love of hosting, conversation, and fine dining, Kant’s house was unadorned and austere. He had only one picture, which hung above his bureau. This picture was of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was only 12 years older than him. According to lore, the only time Kant failed to take his daily walk was when he received his copy of Rousseau’s Émile.

How did Rousseau’s outlook work its way into Kant’s moral philosophy? If for Rousseau, it is by following the “general will” that we can be said to be free, for Kant, it is by obeying those moral laws that we would will as universal laws. Moral laws that we would will as universal laws are given not by our individual will but by our rational will, which we have in common with all other rational beings.

We often experience this dichotomy in our minds: this is what I selfishly or frivolously want to do, and this is what I truly ought to do—because I want to live in a better society that abides by this rule, and would resent it if other people behaved in such a biased, thoughtless way.

To conform to the universal law is not to be a slave; on the contrary, it is to follow reason and free ourselves from our irrational and disordered appetites. For Kant, this capacity to overrule our individual will lies at the heart of our special dignity as human beings.

The Categorícal Imperative vs. the Golden Rule

When obeying those moral laws that we could consistently and rationally will as universal laws, we are following the so-called Categorical Imperative, which might be re-stated as, “Always act such that the maxim of your action can at the same time be upheld as a universal law.”

This is similar to the much older Golden Rule of the Bible, according to which we should treat others as we would want to be treated. But whereas the Golden Rule is based on personal desire, which is subjective (I might, for example, be a masochist, or be willing to tolerate a degree of mistreatment), the Categorical Imperative is based on reason, which is objective.

Hypothetical imperatives and consequentialism

Hypothetical imperatives are practical rules for achieving a desired outcome, for example, “If you want to lose weight, you should watch what you eat.” If you do not desire a particular outcome, you do not need to follow the rules. In this much, hypothetical imperatives are conditional and contingent. Categorical Imperatives, in contrast, are universal moral commands that bind everyone regardless of their aims, for example, “Do not lie” or “Do not steal.”

Hypothetical imperatives answer to the lower faculty of desire, which aims at pleasure. Categorical Imperatives answer to the higher faculty of will, which functions rationally and autonomously by following the laws which it legislates for itself, regardless of consequences or personal feelings.

For Kant, true moral actions must be motivated by duty, not some desired outcome. Thus, Kantian ethics are sometimes described as deontological, or duty-based, and contrasted with consequentialism (for example, utilitarianism), which is outcome-based. For Kant, moral systems based on outcomes or desires, such as utilitarianism, operate on hypothetical imperatives, not true moral law.

Perfect vs. imperfect duties

Kant provides some examples to add flesh to the bones of the Categorical Imperative. Imagine a person in financial need who borrows money and promises to pay it back, in the knowledge that they never will. If this action were universalised, promises of repayment would no longer be believed and the entire practice of lending would collapse. Kant also points out that abusing the lender in this way reduces a dignified being with ends of his own to a mere means to an end (“Act always treating humanity, in yourself and others, as an end and never merely as a means” is the second formulation of the Categorícal Imperative).

Second, imagine a person who does not intervene to help a person in distress. Were this maxim to be universalised, no one would ever help anyone, making the world into a worse place.

In the first case, not repaying a loan, the maxim cannot be universalised because it would involve a contradiction. In the second case, not helping a person in distress, there is no such contradiction. Nonetheless, it would not be rational to will a world in which no one ever helped anyone. Whereas repaying a loan is a “perfect duty,” helping someone in need is an “imperfect duty” in that we have some latitude in how we go about fulfilling it. Though we ought to be benevolent, we do not need to go about helping everyone all the time.

Failing in an imperfect duty, such as helping others or cultivating our talents, does not attract the same strict blame as violating a perfect duty, so long as we do not adopt a maxim contrary to the imperfect duty.

Kant’s example of the prudent grocer

When we do help someone, our action must be motivated by duty if it is to have moral worth. If I help someone from inclination, for example, from sympathy or because it makes me feel good, I am still doing a praiseworthy thing, but my action, being circumstantial rather than principled and reliable, lacks moral worth.

Imagine a grocer who always gives the correct change, but only to avoid being caught and losing his reputation. His behaviour, though not blameworthy, is lacking in moral worth. If he knew that he could not get caught, he may behave differently and dishonestly. Because his behaviour is prudential and circumstantial, rather than born out of duty, it is not categorical.

For Kant, a paradigm of moral worth is the person who hates life and longs to commit suicide, but stays alive purely out of duty. Because this person has no self-serving inclinations, he is acting purely from duty, rather than mere “conformity to duty.” Similarly, a hard-hearted person who has no other motivation than duty has a moral worth “beyond all comparison the highest.”

How to identify the Categorical Imperative

During his trial in Jerusalem in the 1960s, the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, a major organiser of the Holocaust, claimed to have been abiding by Kant’s Categorical Imperative—having interpreted “doing your duty” as blind obedience to superior authorities.

To identify the Categorical Imperative, we need to look inward to our rational self and engage in our own moral reasoning—asking whether the maxim guiding our action could be universalised—rather than delegate responsibility to some external authority such as a dictator (say, Hitler) or even a religious doctrine (say, the Ten Commandments).

So long as they reason correctly, every rational being, human or otherwise, should be able to arrive at the same Categorical Imperative. As pure rational wills, shorn of our attributes, temperaments, and desires, we are all the same. Whenever we carry out an action with a moral dimension, we implicitly universalise that action for all other wills.

In her analysis of the Eichmann trial, the philosopher Hannah Arendt introduced the concept of the “banality of evil,” highlighting that evil can be perpetrated not only by fanatics and psychopaths, but, more ordinarily, by “normal” people who fail to engage in critical self-reflection.

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The sublime: What is it and why are we so keen to experience it?

The distinction between the beautiful and the sublime goes back at least to Longinus (first century CE), who saw the sublime as an overwhelming, ecstatic force that uplifts the soul with grandeur. A flower is beautiful, and so is a great oak, but the great oak is also sublime, and it is its sublimity rather than its beauty that we retain.

Longinus and literary sublimity

At the heart of our attraction to natural grandeur is our desire for transcendence, which is then expressed through sublime art and language. In On the Sublime, Longinus laid out five sources of literary sublimity: noble concepts; passionate feeling; figures of speech; noble diction; and dignified composition. The first two, he claimed, are innate, while the last three are learnt.

Edmund Burke on the sublime, or why we ride rollercoasters

Later thinkers like Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant more sharply distinguished between beauty and sublimity, which they presented as antithetical. In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1757), Burke associated beauty with the likes of smallness, smoothness, and delicate form; the sublime, in contrast, he associated with power, vastness, and obscurity.

Whereas the beautiful (like a flower or a gentle landscape) gives rise to feelings of love, pleasure, and relaxation, the sublime (like the open seas or a raging storm) gives rise to overwhelming feelings of awe, terror, and delightful horror.

However, the sublime is only delightful, awe-inspiring, and aesthetic when it is experienced from a certain distance or place of safety; otherwise, if it represents an imminent danger, it is simply terrible.

Many who partake in extreme sports like paragliding or bungee jumping, ride rollercoasters, or watch horror movies are really seeking the thrill of the sublime, triggering the atavistic fear of death in the full knowledge that they are safe.

Feelings associated with the sublime are far more powerful than feelings associated with beauty, because feelings associated with self-preservation are far more powerful than feelings associated with pleasure. Who, asked Burke, would choose a life of great pleasure if it were fated to end in slow torture?

Kant on the sublime: A bridge between two worlds

Kant read Burke and elaborated upon his ideas. He distinguished between two forms of the sublime, the mathematical sublime, which arises from the contemplation of immensity (like the starry heavens or the pyramids) and overwhelms our cognitive capacity, and the dynamical sublime (like a violent thunderstorm or raging waterfall), which arises from the contemplation of great power and overwhelms our practical capacity.

With the mathematical sublime, the failure of our senses awakens our divine reason, which can easily grasp the idea of infinity or absolute totality, even when our senses cannot. With the dynamical sublime, our feeling of helplessness and physical insignificance awakens our moral vocation, which is immune to natural forces, as well as the noumenal world (the world as it really is, beyond mere appearances), in which we too are powerful, majestic, and absolutely free.

In sum, the feeling of the sublime reminds us of the superiority of our rational, moral noumenal selves over the phenomenal world and our mortal, phenomenal selves. Whereas the beautiful makes the phenomenal world feel like a better place, the sublime reminds us that we belong to an altogether different world.

Both beauty and sublimity bridge the divide between the two worlds, the one through harmony, the other through disruption, or disjunction.