Schopenhauer

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I came to this book with a particular interest and a set of expectations.

My interest was in attempting to determine what, if any, effect Schopenhauer had on forming the philosophy of Adolf Hitler. Numerous books attest to Hitler's early interest in Schopenhauer. Hitler carried a volume of Schopenhauer with him through World War I and would quote long passages of Schopenhauer throughout his life. Ernst Hanfstaengl affirms that Hitler turned to Nietzsche only during the 1920s. Yet, I've never seen anything indicated how Schopenhauer played a role in Hitler's thinking. (Hanfstaengl does note that Schopenhauer actually had an ameliorating effect on Hitler, compared to Nietzsche, because of Schopenhauer's Buddhist tendencies.

The prejudices I had were that Schopenhauer was a pessimistic philosopher of minor importance compared to Nietzsche.

This book offers a good overview of Schopenhauer's life and philosophy. The discussion of Schopenhauer's philosophy is hard to follow (I listened to this as an audiobook), but that has more to do with Schopenhauer's philosophy, which the author acknowledges as being muddled and incoherent at times. Schopenhauer's most famous work divided reality between “will,” the universe of subjectivity, and “representation,” everything known in the outside world. “Will” is a difficult concept at best in that Schopenhauer seems to make the immaterial material:

“This account of acts of will is a decisive step for Schopenhauer, since it places the human subject firmly within the material world. If striving towards ends is setting the body in motion, then, while we will, we are rooted in the world of objects. Schopenhauer thus cannot conceive of a subject of will as being anything other than bodily. He also makes the converse claim that our bodily existence is nothing other than willing. Whenever we undergo feelings of fear or desire, attraction or repulsion, whenever the body itself behaves according to the various unconscious functions of nourishment, reproduction, or survival, Schopenhauer discerns will manifesting itself – but in a new and extended sense. What he wants to show is that ordinary conscious willing is no different in its basic nature from the many other processes which set the body, or parts of it, in motion. Admittedly, willing to act involves conscious thinking – it involves the body's being caused to move by motives in the intellect – but it is, for Schopenhauer, not different in principle from the beating of the heart, the activation of the saliva glands, or the arousal of the sexual organs. All can be seen as an individual organism manifesting will, in Schopenhauer's sense. The body itself is will; more specifically, it is a manifestation of will to life (Wille zum Leben), a kind of blind striving, at a level beneath that of conscious thought and action, which is directed towards the preservation of life, and towards engendering life anew.”

Will then becomes the “thing in itself,” and a single thing. Human life is a mere representation; the Will is everything real and death simply ends the individual life but the Will continues.

This is abstruse stuff.

Schopenhauer's pessimism was a consequence of his belief that suffering was the dispositive feature of human existence. Humans suffered in having unfulfilled wants and desires. However, fulfilling these desires and wants did no more than provide a momentary relief from suffering before some new unfulfilled desire emerged.

Schopenhauer developed a theory of aesthetics because aesthetic suspended the will of the subject. I think it may be this aspect of Schopenhauer that may have interested Hitler. Apparently, Hitler liked to talk about art. This seems like a natural fit.

For me, the most interesting part of the book was the last chapter on Schopenhauer's influences. Schopenhauer did not start a school, like Kant or Hegel, but he was extremely popular wth Germans and Austrians until about the 1920s. Wittgenstein read Schopenhauer and incorporated some of Schopenhauer's views into his philosophy. Likewise, Wagner incorporated Schopenhauer's pessimistic outlook into Tristan and Ysolde. Freud claimed that he didn't read Schopenhauer, who had anticipated his views on sublimation and sexuality, but Schopenhauer's philosophical concepts were simply “in the air.” For Austrians of Wittgenstein's age - and Hitler went to school with Wittgenstein - reading Schopenhauer counted as part of what it meant to be a literate Austrian, which probably explains Hitler's interest.

This is a book with narrow appeal to those with a particular interest. It is well-written and does everything it promises by providing a “very short introduction” to the subject.