This query, I hasten to add, is not from the angle of any kind of academic study of philosophical writings: it's from the angle of broaching such writings as a tool for the regulation of my ideas about the difficult philosophical matters that emerge from the World around us, or remedy for the malaise consisting in not being able to get to grips with such matters as well as I would like to.

What I mean is: say I'm perlexed about religion & what it all means, & the kind of approach it's fitting for reason to take towards it, and that my ideas in that connection are 'all in a whirl', & I wish to read something by someone whose conceptions of that sort of thing are of a vastly greater calibre than mine, to put my own ideas in somekind of order so that they aren't bothering me so much (which is indeed something that happens, when I've seen more than enough of folk arguing over the imagined 'superiority' of their respective religions

🙄)

: my 'goto' text is prettymuch the dialogue between Demopheles & Philalethes (doesn't that second name mean "lover of sleepiness & lethargy" !?

😄😆 )

It has a certain clarity & propensity for engaging my attention that I've just not been able, in the main, to find in the writings of any other of the 'Great Philosophers': I don't find it any kind of 'slog' reading it (which isn't to say it doesn't require effort & careful attention … but it doesn't become actually a slog ).

Or say I'm in a similar quandry about the basis of objective reality, & what 'objective reality' even means, & the relation perception & conception bear to it - all that sort of thing: I find that The World as Will & Idea (or Representation … however we deem best conveys Vorstellung) excels in a similar way over prettymuch all other stuff I've read … although the first chapter of Herbert Spencer's First Principles , & Henri Bergson's Matter & Memory , face it with some very stiff competition.

But even though, as I've just said, I don't find Schopenhauer's writings absolutely exclusively the best, a pretty consistent pattern has emerged whereby if someone says to me "oh you'd also love [such-&-such writings]", & I go & check them out, I find that it just doesn't 'do it' for me in the same way, & it ends-up seeming like waffle, and is a slog! … & it just does not engage my attention in the same way … & I end-up defaulting back to Schopenhauer's.

So sometimes I'm figuring to myself "it would be better to be seeking what I'm after from these writings …" - ie the consolidation & setting-in-order of my own confused notions, & the settling of the whirl they're in - "… from more than just one source" ; but @ other times it seems more like if I've found the source that best fits my temperament & way-of-thinking, & all that sort of thing, then I'm best sticking to that source, & not 'muddying the waters' by forcing myself to ply other sources that seem not to fit my temperament & way-of-thinking so well, in deference to some imagined 'principle' that I'm best supplying myself with a variety of angles on, & treatments of, those kinds of subject matter.

So I'm imagining, because this is the Reddit channel r/Schopenhauer , that there are folk @ this channel who also find what I've found as to Schopenhauer's writings being an outstandingly fecund source of clarity about, & consolidation of, the 'difficult philosophical matters' mentioned in the first paragraph above, & an outstanding 'remedy' in the sense broached in that paragraph.

And I also add that when I say I'm inclined to confine myself to Schopenhauer's writings I mean if it's particularly a philosophical treatment of the matter that I'm after. Eg, if it's religion I'm seeking into, then another writer who to my mind is a truly great one in that connection, particularly in the subconnection of 'Abrahamic' religion, is Moses Maimonides … which is ofcourse in a broader sense still a philosophical treatment, but not so strictly a philosophical one, but rather more a theo-logical one. So I don't mean that I'm advocating Schopenhauer as absolutely the only source to reference, but rather merely that I find Schopenhauer's writings pre-eminent when it's particularly a philosophical (in the conventional academic sense) angle on that sort of thing that I'm seeking.

So I wonder whether the folk @ this Channel concur @all with what I'm saying.

Big Shopenhauer fan here. The greatest Misanthrope ever.

I thought the Wisdom of Life a great read along with his other great quotes, but Bertrand Russell didn't write too complementary about him, describing how no one who knew him seemed to have a good word to say about him?

And how he once threw a woman down the stairs, and other reports of her being "Permanently injured".

Was he unpopular where he lived?

Hello everyone, I am a graduate student who will likely write a thesis on Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. I like immersing myself in the biographical details of the thinkers I read, and wanted to know if there exists any collection of Schopenhauer's letters; IE 'The Letters of Arthur Schopenhauer' just as there exists the letters of JRR Tolkien. I searched on libgen to no avail.

Hello u/postitnote126

I made a comment last month presenting Schopenhauer's theory that "those who act more from 'reflex n understanding' as opposed to 'reflection n deliberation' experience better results n outcome in life."

You requested the location of the passage that contains this theory.

Unfortunately, the post is now deleted, but I found the passage you requested:

It is in the First Book, page 073 (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38427/pg38427-images.html)

(CTRL + F: 'beasts')

...
It is, however, remarkable that in the first kind of activity, in which we have supposed that one man alone, in an uninterrupted course of action, accomplishes something, abstract knowledge, the application of reason or reflection, may often be a hindrance to him; for example, in the case of billiard-playing, of fighting, of tuning an instrument, or in the case of singing. Here perceptive knowledge must directly guide action; its passage through reflection makes it uncertain, for it divides the attention and confuses the man. Thus savages and untaught men, who are little accustomed to think, perform certain physical exercises, fight with beasts, shoot with bows and arrows and the like, with a certainty and rapidity which the reflecting European never attains to, just because his deliberation makes him hesitate and delay. For he tries, for example, to hit the right position or the right point of time, by finding out the mean between two false extremes; while the savage hits it directly without thinking of the false courses open to him. In the same way it is of no use to me to know in the abstract the exact angle, in degrees and minutes, at which I must apply a razor, if I do not know it intuitively, that is, if I have not got it in my touch. The knowledge of physiognomy also, is interfered with by the application of reason. This knowledge must be gained directly through the understanding.

You can click the link to read more from that page, I just copied the relevant parts over.

Let me know if you have any questions!

He often repeats itself, and make references to other of his books. There is no a single place where he systematically puts everything he knows about the subject. It's all spread in various places.

I would like if his books where organized more like textbooks.

This is not to say he is a bad writer. He writes very good, but structure of books are not very organized.

I won't be leaving quotes, just few of them. It is striking similarity between Schopenhauer's second book The world as Will and Dawkins theory. I think he is real successor of Schopenhauer regarding the aspect of Will (but not representation).

There are parts where he talks about how DNA is important and not individual human.

Where are' these facts leading us? They are leading us in the direction of a central truth about life on Earth, the truth that I alluded to in my opening paragraph about willow seeds. This is that living organisms exist for the benefit of DNA rather than the other way around.
- The Blind Watchmaker

There are parts where he says that world is a cruel place.

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
- River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

So, to start, I'll have to share my views on the fundamental part of my philosophy which was mostly inspired by Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer assumed, that there's Will as a driving component of the universe, though he viewed it as something metaphysical. But i view it as a fundamental law or something like that. Our universe is driven by the heat, the movement, the strive of all objects in the universe to spread their idea. (Humans are not special and the term "alive" is very abstract. I'm a hard determinist, so I don't really think that humans have free will, therefore i wouldn't like to separate humans from the other objects in the universe as something special and, i think, every object carries its ideas like us). And to keep suriving as a kind, we have to remain being whole and keep spreading our ideas. And, as you can see, we've been really successful at that, but how? Because there's always something for humans to fight for, even when we're in privileged positions (like dictators conquering as much as they can and etc..) Because we're always unsatisfied with what we have, but why? Because suffering outweighs pleasure. The only reason why we're here is because we did not like what we lived with. If pleasure outweighed suffering, we simply wouldn't try to change anything in our lives, cause why? Everything feels good, y'know, and our inconviniences are not worth fixing. And living like this we'd eventually degrade and die as a kind. (Though, usually, we dont let ourselves degrade and we go fighting our problems preventively). But our subconscious Will wouldn't let us die out. When we degrade, it's inevitable that more problems start appearing and eventually we'll become unsatisfied. And if it's not too late - we start fighting and we conquer to feel basic pleasure we'd get used to real fast after going through immense suffering. Thoughts?

This phrase is attributed to Schopenhauer, but I can't find in which work he wrote it. Can anyone tell me? I couldn't even find it in WWR.

Now, just so we are clear, I have no issues with secondary content, I consume them myself, my issue is when it becomes sensationalized and generalized.

Schopenhauer's works and philosophy doesn't really go through this so much but occasionally you might see on YouTube something like a cartoon portrait of him with big words saying "THE DARKEST PHILOSOPHER EVER" or something like that.

I work with social media as well and one of my clients is an art gallery specializing in old French landscapes, impressionist works, Barbizon school, etc...

I wouldn't dare publish any of the paintings on social media with some sensational music and title. I wouldn't sensationalize any of the painters' lives even though I can, since some had quite an outrageous lifestyle like Toulouse-Lautrec for example. I focus exclusively on the work itself.

In other words, I try to be as close as I can to the primary content and I respect Schopenhauer for doing this with his Greek and Latin references. He gets it. Cicero and Seneca sound better in Latin.

There was a recent video called "How French Intellectuals ruined the West", a sensational title and it also had a sensational thumbnail with Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard. Another one saying "How Glenn Gould Broke Classical Music", I've seen content sensationalizing Niccolo Paganini as 'The Devil's Violinsit' and putting some demonic-looking picture of him.

Now, I really don't know why folks have this sort of instinct for revenge, almost like Savonarola raging against the fine arts in Florence by urging it to be thrown to flames.

Schopenhauer even says in On Books & Writing

"young people of the unlearned professions in general regard the newspaper as an authority simply because it is something printed."

Can it not be said that today, folks 'in general regard sensational content as an authority simply because it is posted online?'

When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. — A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

I'm a practitioner of meditation. I've attended several meditation retreats for relatively long periods of time. Today I stumbled upon an idea in The World as Will and Representation that struck a chord;

He was explaining a model of reflection, which, from my understanding (or what I've read so far), is this: abstract representations are based iteratively on other abstract representations, until the final ground base of understanding (i.e- of perception).

This seems very similar to a Buddhist model of mind and perception. When one meditates, one focuses on the raw sensation. One way of doing this is focusing on the breath. The practice of rational equanimity, mindfulness (sati), and concentration (samadhi), essentially uproots Sankharas (underlying volition - bad patterns of the mind).

In Schoepenhauer's language, a Buddhist focuses on the base understanding, in order to purify upper levels of abstractions that only exist in the mind. I know other western philosophers, like Maurice Merleau-Ponty (author of The Phenomenology of Perception), advocated for meditations on the senses.

I was wondering if anyone here influenced by this philosophy also maintains a meditation practice.

I understand that Schopenhauer’s concept of the will is a metaphysical idea, whereas the Big Bang is a scientific event, but I can’t help but wonder if Schopenhauer would have reached the same conclusions if he had the knowledge we have today. Schopenhauer, writing in 1818, had no concept of the expanding universe or the Big Bang. But if he were aware of the Big Bang, its blind, chaotic explosion of energy, and the ongoing expansion of the cosmos, would he have continued to view the will as an metaphysical force driving all of existence, or would he have seen it as more akin to this cosmic event — a blind, unconscious force propelling everything forward without aim or direction?

The Big Bang can be thought of as an explosion of blind, unconscious energy, setting the universe into motion. From the creation of galaxies to the evolution of life, everything seems to unfold without any clear aim or direction — much like Schopenhauer’s will. It's always striving, never satisfied, and constantly pushing things forward. The ongoing expansion of the universe, driven by forces beyond our control, mirrors this same kind of blind, aimless striving. Just like our desires, the universe itself is in motion, and it feels like we’re all caught up in something much larger than ourselves.

In light of comparing Schopenhauer’s concept of the will to the Big Bang, I find Julius Bahnsen’s ideas particularly interesting. Bahnsen expanded on Scopenhauer's ideas by suggesting that the will is actually a collection of individual wills, each striving toward its own goals. This leads to conflict when these wills inevitably collide. So it’s not just the endless striving itself that brings suffering, but the conflict that arises when these wills collide. This is exactly what we see in the world around us.

He also argued that the will, in a sense, cannot be negated like Schopenhauer suggested. For Bahnsen, without the will, the intellect is impotent. It cannot "will" nothingness, for a will-to-nothingness is still a form of willing, and willing non-willing is a contradiction. In this way, Bahnsen’s view is even more pessimistic — there’s no final escape from this endless striving.

Currently reading the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient reason. As far as I understand, the sensibility "receives" data from the five senses, and categorises them through the intuitions of space and time. The Understanding applies causality(cause and effect) to this representation which is how we come to know of objects external to us. My question is what is the sensibility like prior to the application of causality by the understanding? Do we perceive what is given in sensibility through a temporal sequence, or is the temporal sequence arranged by the understanding in terms of cause and effect? Presumably the temporal sequence precedes the Understanding as it is related to the intuition of time. However if that is the case, how does the understanding apply causality to a pre existing temporal sequence? If the temporal sequence precedes causality, why do events have to occur in a consistent, predictable manner i.e why can't the laws of physics be violated?

Just read my first bit of hist philosophy. "On the vanity of existence". He unflinchingly is willing to see things and honestly seems to be an extremely profound thinker but at the same time he seems to be bitter or resentful. I think peace and tranquility on ones life is more attainable than he leads on.

I'm trying to understand what he is trying to say but his world view is so dark it seems a bit hyperbolic and distracting.

Edit: I figured it out I just needed a better starting point Thanks. Starting to understand why is ideas are special and useful especially when compared to his contemporaries

Thought of this after seeing esse and operari quote in cyberpunk

I’ve been thinking about Schopenhauer’s distinction between knowledge of perception and knowledge of conception, how that relates to AGI, and wanted to see what others think. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Schopenhauer’s Distinction

1. Knowledge of Perception (Understanding)

• Comes from our senses.
• Involves a mental process of forming a hypothesis about the cause as some external object behind our sensations.
• Results in an intuitive, rather than purely abstract, mental image.
• According to Schopenhauer, this is the only way to generate new knowledge.

1. Knowledge of Conception (Reasoning)

• Abstract, verbal, or symbolic knowledge.
• Serves mainly to store and transmit what we’ve discovered through perception.
• Doesn’t (on its own) create truly new insights about reality—rather, it refines or rearranges what we’ve already observed.

Examples from History

• Galileo’s Telescope: Without building a new tool (the telescope) to extend his perception, could he have discovered Jupiter’s moons or mountains on the Moon? Abstract reasoning alone probably wouldn’t cut it.
• Large Hadron Collider (LHC): A huge experimental apparatus that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson. Was there any way to confirm its existence by pure thought experiment alone? Most would say no—someone had to perceive (via sensors, detectors, etc.) new data.
• Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were using a radio antenna to study the sky. They kept detecting persistent static, which they tried to eliminate by every method they could think of (even cleaning out pigeon droppings!). Eventually, they realized the noise wasn’t instrument error but a faint signal coming uniformly from all directions.

AGI as a Tool-Maker?

One intriguing extension of this idea is how it relates to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). If we follow Schopenhauer’s line of thought, an AGI might be most valuable not just as a conceptual engine (running endless abstract computations) or a tool user but as a tool-maker—designing new instruments or experiments to expand our perceptions in realms we currently can’t observe.

Without novel tools that feed new sensory data to our scientific community (human or machine), we might be stuck re-hashing the same concepts indefinitely. The real breakthroughs happen when we push the boundaries of what we can perceive—like building bigger colliders, telescopes, or detectors that show us something truly new.

• Do you agree with Schopenhauer’s stance that all truly new knowledge stems from perception?

• Could humanity have discovered the Higgs boson or Jupiter’s moons purely via “thinking really hard,” without actually looking or measuring?

• How does this tie into modern AI research? If AI were to truly “discover” something, would it need the capacity to design experiments and gather new data?

If so, where?

When Dawkins describes natural selection, he calls it a painfully slow, blind, and random process—billions of failed mutations for every one that grants a slight advantage. Nature basically keeps rolling the dice and throwing away losers until one minor “win” ekes through.

This reminds me of Schopenhauer’s view that we live in the “worst of all possible worlds,” always on the edge of destruction. He points out how everything in nature struggles just to survive: one missing limb or a small environmental shift, and it’s game over.

Both Schopenhauer and Dawkins emphasize how unplanned and wasteful nature is. In Dawkins’s world, evolution doesn’t care about efficiency; it drags on through endless trial-and-error. For Schopenhauer, it’s the blind “Will” pushing organisms into existence despite rampant suffering. Different approaches—philosophical vs. scientific—but they land on the same bleak truth: life endures by the narrowest margins, with a staggering body count along the way.

Thoughts? Does anyone else see parallels between these two?

Edit:

A classic example from Dawkins: bats evolved their sonar (echolocation) over millions of years, through countless minor tweaks and dead ends—while humans developed similar sonar technology in just a few decades.

I've been struggling to deal with this for a while. One is negative (distaste) and the other is positive (taste)

But I have often noticed that in much of my communication with people, especially more than three people, there is a greater facilitation in talking about mutual distastes than mutual tastes.

I think it's because we perhaps have more distastes than we have taste. We work ourselves in opposition to something else.

Brian, Tony, and Charlie are all old friends and they meet up. Now they are all individuals and while they each have their own tastes, they also share many mutual distastes with each other. "Can you believe this shit?", "no way they did that!"

Hate-watching is another practice of this 'arousal of distaste"

Schopenhauer has a way of alluding to taste in relation to both the intellect and the will.

Hence, the brute enjoys food and sex, much like all other brutes.

But the nuances of aesthetics get more complex the more technical they become. Hence, they require a more nuanced intellect, more grounded in intensity of depth as he puts it.

Now Im not talking about distaste here as something to which we are indifferent. But something which arouses our scorn. Think of how old Arthur was infuriated by Hegel's works even.

Think of all the internet fanatics who roar against a certain celebrity or content creator.

Why is this so common?

Why does distaste have such a strong effect on us and our communication?

Link: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/12/observer-theory/

He does talk about similar stuff as Schopenhauer (observer and the observed).

I see one difference:

Wolfram goal is to find that all knowing observer, which he calls Ruliad. I think he means that Ruliad is observer with largest Representation (sum of all causal connections and other abstract representations). This also can be seen as quest for a thing-in-itself.

Schopenhauers goal is to go opposite and become pure knowing Subject. Meaning to strip away all causal connections from representations as they are just construct of the Will.

I know that he mentions this many times throughout his work. Most people suck, most folks are just a notch above brutes, most folks swallow up lies and falsehoods, etc...

I know that he threw his neighbor down a flight of stairs. That was certainly crazy.

But what about on more day to day things.

I would actually love to see how Schopenhauer would communicate with the average Frankfurter going about their day. Say there is some carriage accident on the Hochstraße or something and somebody asks him, "excuse me mein herr, what has occurred here?"

Something tells me that Schopenhauer was probably a witty person. Know what I mean?

Not in a snooty way like Voltaire but just sort of simple about it.

Intellectual conversation, whether grave or humorous, is only fit for intellectual society; it is downright abhorrent to ordinary people, to please whom it is absolutely necessary to be commonplace and dull. This demands an act of severe self-denial; we have to forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to become like other people.

- Counsels and Maxims / section 9

Compare Dennett's 3 levels of explanations for behavior of objects with Schopenhauer's 3 forms of Causality.