schopenhauer.docx

1、schopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer(22 February 1788 21 September 1860) was aGermanphilosopherknown for his atheisticpessimismand philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation,On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question o

2、f whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world.Schopenhauers most influential work,The World as Will and Representation, emphasized the role of mans basic motivation, which Schopenhauer calledwill. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires

3、 can never be fulfilled. Consequently, he favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of ancient GreekStoicphilosophers,Buddhism, andVedanta.Schopenhauersmetaphysicalanalysis of will, his views on humanmotivationand desire, and hisaphoristicwriting style influenced many w

4、ell-known thinkers includingFriedrich Nietzsche,2Richard Wagner,Ludwig Wittgenstein,Erwin Schrdinger,Albert Einstein,3Sigmund Freud,Otto Rank,Carl Gustav Jung,Leo Tolstoy, andJorge Luis Borges.Arthur Schopenhauer was born in the city ofDanzig(Gdask) as the son of Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer andJoha

5、nna Schopenhauer,4both descendants of wealthy GermanPatricianfamilies. When theKingdom of Prussiaacquired thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealthcity of Danzig in 1793, Schopenhauers family moved toHamburg. In 1805, Schopenhauers father might have committed suicide.5Schopenhauers mother Johanna shortly af

6、ter moved toWeimar, then the centre ofGerman literature, to pursue her writing career. After one year, Schopenhauer left the family business in Hamburg to join her.Schopenhauer became a student at theUniversity of Gttingenin 1809. There he studiedmetaphysicsandpsychologyunder Gottlob Ernst Schulze,

7、the author ofAenesidemus, who advised him to concentrate onPlatoandKant. In Berlin, from 1811 to 1812, he had attended lectures by the prominent post-Kantian philosopherJ. G. Fichteand the theologianSchleiermacher.In 1814, Schopenhauer began his seminal workThe World as Will and Representation(Die W

8、elt als Wille und Vorstellung). He would finish it in 1818 and publish it the following year. In Dresdenin 1819, Schopenhauer fathered an illegitimate child who was born and died the same year.67In 1820, Schopenhauer became a lecturer at theUniversity of Berlin. He scheduled his lectures to coincide

9、 with those of the famous philosopherG. W. F. Hegel, whom Schopenhauer described as a clumsy charlatan.8However, only five students turned up to Schopenhauers lectures, and he dropped out of academia. A late essay, On University Philosophy, expressed his resentment towards university philosophy.Whil

10、e in Berlin, Schopenhauer was named as a defendant in an action at law initiated by a woman named Caroline Marquet.2She asked for damages, alleging that Schopenhauer had pushed her. According to Schopenhauers court testimony, she deliberately annoyed him by raising her voice while standing right out

11、side his door.9Marquet alleged that the philosopher had assaulted and battered her after she refused to leave his doorway. Her companion testified that she saw Marquet prostrate outside his apartment. Because Marquet won the lawsuit, he made payments to her for the next twenty years.10When she died,

12、 he wrote on a copy of her death certificate,Obit anus, abit onus(The old woman dies, the burden flies).11In 1821, he fell in love with nineteen-year old opera singer, Caroline Richter (called Medon), and had a relationship with her for several years. He discarded marriage plans, however, writing, M

13、arrying means to halve ones rights and double ones duties, and Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes. When he was forty-three years old, seventeen-year old Flora Weiss recorded rejecting him in her diary.12Schopenhauer had a notably s

14、trained relationship with his mother Johanna Schopenhauer. After his fathers death, Arthur Schopenhauer endured two long years of drudgery as a merchant, in honor of his dead father. Afterward, his mother retired to Weimar, and Arthur dedicated himself wholly to studies in the gymnasium of Gotha. Af

15、ter he left it in disgust after seeing one of the masters lampooned, he went to live with his mother. But by that time she had already opened her infamous salon, and Arthur was not compatible with the vain, ceremonious ways of the salon. He was also disgusted by the ease with which Johanna had forgo

16、tten his fathers memory. Therefore, he gave university life a shot. There, he wrote his first book,On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. She informed him that the book was incomprehensible and it was unlikely that anyone would ever buy a copy. In a fit of temper Arthur told her

17、 that his work would be read long after the rubbish she wrote would have been totally forgotten.1314In 1831, acholeraepidemic broke out in Berlin and Schopenhauer left the city. Schopenhauer settled permanently inFrankfurtin 1833, where he remained for the next twenty-seven years, living alone excep

18、t for a succession of pet poodles named Atman and Butz. The numerous notes that he made during these years, amongst others on aging, were publishedposthumouslyunder the titleSenilia.Schopenhauer had a robust constitution, but in 1860 his health began to deteriorate. He died of heart failure on 21 Se

19、ptember 1860, while sitting in his armchair at home. He was 72.ThoughtPhilosophy of the willA key focus of Schopenhauer was his investigation of individual motivation. Before Schopenhauer, Hegel had popularized the concept ofZeitgeist, the idea that society consisted of acollective consciousnesswhic

20、h moved in a distinct direction, dictating the actions of its members. Schopenhauer, a reader of both Kant and Hegel, criticized their logical optimism and the belief that individual morality could be determined by society and reason. Schopenhauer believed that humans were motivated only by their ow

21、n basic desires, orWille zum Leben(Will to Live), which directed all of mankind.15For Schopenhauer, human desire was futile, illogical, directionless, and, by extension, so was all human action in the world. To Schopenhauer, the Will is a metaphysical existence which controls not only the actions of

22、 individual, intelligent agents, but ultimately all observable phenomena. Will, for Schopenhauer, is what Kant called the thing-in-itself.Art and aestheticsMain article:Arthur Schopenhauers aestheticsFor Schopenhauer, human desiring, willing, and craving causesuffering or pain. A temporary way to es

23、cape this pain is through aesthetic contemplation (a method comparable toZapffes Sublimation). This is the next best way, short of not willing at all, which is the best way. Total absorption in the world as representation prevents a person from suffering the world as will. Art diverts the spectators

24、 attention from the grave everyday world and lifts them into a world that consists of mere play of images. With music, the auditor becomes engrossed with a playful form of the will, which is normally deadly serious.Musicwas also given a special status in Schopenhauers aesthetics as it did not rely u

25、pon the medium of phenomenal representation. Music artistically presents the will itself, not the way that the will appears to an individual observer. According to Daniel Albright, Schopenhauer thought thatmusicwas the only art that did not merely copy ideas, but actually embodied the will itself.16

26、EthicsSchopenhauers moral theory proposed that of three primary moral incentives,compassion,maliceandegoism, compassion is the major motivator to moral expression. Malice and egoism are corrupt alternatives.PunishmentAccording to Schopenhauer, whenever we make a choice, we assume as necessary that t

27、hat decision was preceded by something from which it ensued, and which we call the ground or reason, or more accurately the motive, of the resultant action.17Choices are not made freely. Our actions are necessary and determined because every human being, even every animal, after the motive has appea

28、red, must carry out the action which alone is in accordance with his inborn and immutable character.18A definite action inevitably results when a particular motive influences a persons given, unchangeable character. If there is no free will, should crimes be punished?The State, Schopenhauer claimed,

29、 punishes criminals in order to prevent future crimes. It does so by placing beside every possible motive for committing a wrong a more powerful motive for leaving it undone, in the inescapable punishment. Accordingly, the criminal code is as complete a register as possible of countermotives to all

30、criminal actions that can possibly be imagined.19Does the State seek revenge for a crime?the law and its fulfillment, namely punishment, are directed essentially to thefuture, not to thepast. This distinguishespunishmentfromrevenge, for revenge is motivated by what has happened, and hence by the pas

31、t as such. All retaliation for wrong by inflicting a pain without any object for the future is revenge, and can have no other purpose than consolation for the suffering one has endured by the sight of the suffering one has caused in another. Such a thing is wickedness and cruelty, and cannot be ethi

32、cally justified. the object of punishmentis deterrence from crime. Object and purpose for the future distinguish punishment from revenge, and punishment has this object only when it is inflictedin fulfillment of a law. Only in this way does it proclaim itself to be inevitable and infallible for every future case; and thus it obtains for the law the power to deter.2021Should capital punishment be legal? For safeguarding the lives of citizen