I've been reading a lot of Schopenhauer's work and I gotta say that his words are concise, wise and yet poignant when he talks about what he called "The will to life" , his work inspired a lot of people like Nietzche, Tolstoy, Wagner, and Wittgenstein.
But I'm surprised when they're more famous than he is, why is that ?
i mean look at him
He's still pretty famous, if not quite that famous. People probably just find those other writers and artists more inspirational and aesthetically interesting. His writing is pretty straightforward and to the point, while the others are more emotionally resonant (even Wittgenstein) so that might have something to do with it.
I read his Essays and Aphorisms. Can anyone recommend me what to read next? What's his best major work?
The guy was a fucking pimp in his day. I aspire to be him.
The world as Will and Representation is probably his best work.
Can I read it without having much of a philosophy background? I heard you need to read Kant or something in order to get a grasp of what he is saying in The World as Will and Representation but I don't know.
Read Fourfold Root before World as Will, as it's necessary prerequisite to that.
Currently about to start Wisdom of Life though.
just read about the ideas of plato and kant and understand them.
look at that fucking gaze. real G cold and detached and piercing.
Thanks anons
He criticizes Kant in one of his chapters, but as a whole Schopenhauer's words are very clear and while reading Kant's work helps, it's not THAT necessary.
He talked about metaphysics in general and delves into Buddhism too.
because he thinks from a 'negative' point of view and that in our western societies seems 'depressing' and 'angsty'.
Also, hegelian-fanbois at my faculty consider him asistematic, that is, unworthy. Fuck that. Reading Schopy deepened my understanding of good literature (Mann, Borges, some Houllebecq, etc).
He's seen some shit. He is enlightened by his own intelligence. He see's the world for what it truly is. A shit storm with mean women REEEEEEEE
no. you will get nothing out of it or severely misunderstand it. you need to have read, at least, the first critique to get even a first order understanding out of it.
to the op's question, schopenhauer isn't remembered much because he didn't produce good philosophy. remember that one of the primary reasons why nietzsche is so famous is because he took schopenhauer to task so summarily.
schopenhauer's case is a typical one in the history of philosophy: a minor figure produces a relatively important work of pessimism or skepticism, only to have a greater and more important mind overcome said skepticism. see Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein. he's not studied seriously at the professional level, he's just popular on Veeky Forums because he and sterner are the poster children for the alt-right 20 year old male.
just find a schopenhauer reader and go through that if you are REALLY serious about reading him. going through WWAR is a fucking huge 700 page slog that only has relevance as a historical situation for nietzsche's philosophy. no one takes him seriously.
It's because people assume that philosophers inspired by hegel are marxists while philosophers inspired by schopenhauer are nazis.
...
I respect your opinion, but I disagree.
Schopenhauer had a lot to say about the society he lived through and his insight into Buddhism are fascinating to read about.
Stirner is good, but I never found him to be THAT great so I agree with you on that front.
He doesn't really contribute to the Western philosophical project in any meaningful way. Thinkers like Hume, Aristotle, even Nietzsche, solve particular philosophical problems and/or pose new ones. Schopenhauer doesn't really do that, he's more of a literary figure facing the question of "how should one live?" rather than an academic.
Was that really the lines of logic that people accepted during those days? Was it because schopenhauer was German that they assumed so?
Schopenhauer is a buddhist. ietzche, Tolstoy, Wagner, and Wittgenstein are not. /thread.
Huh... he totally was an academic. He was even teaching in the same university as Hegel. It's not that he didn't contribute to the Western philosophical project, it's more that he was completely overshadowed by Hegel and that no Western philosopher wanted to hear what he had to say. He was too unconventional.
His writings were heavily inspired by Buddhism, but he was not actually a practicing Buddhist.
In his time it was simply not possible to be both from the Western culture AND as Buddhist as he was.
The usual interpretation of Schopenhauer and his will is as a direct inversion of Kant, and while he may not cite Kant explicitly all the way through Kant is referenced an awful awful lot.
Schopenhauer p much expects that you're familiar with Kant like Nietzsche expects you're familiar with Plato as Foucault expects you're familiar with Marx and so on
>He was too unconventional.
Looking at letters and diaries around the time he was viewed with suspicion and wasn't very fashionable in general. I think it boils down to Hegel having this unifying and progressive idea of the world, while Schopenhauer was viewed as being a bit airy fairy hits bong "like will man" hippy shit. I guess that that was to do with industrialisation ramping up more and more.
Uh, Nazis > Marxists, bro.
how do you find witt more emotionally resonant than shope?
I'd say 1% of people on this board have read him properly.
Of that 1%, 99% have only read his fucking aphorisms.
Schopenhauer is literally your grouchy yet lovable German grandpa, who nonetheless had a wild (relatively speaking) and womanising youth, before making you seriously consider a pessimistic world view.
He's admirable in that regard. Then Nietzsche comes along with his obscenely misunderstood life affirmation...
>The philosophy of Kant, then, is the only philosophy with which a thorough acquaintance is directly presupposed in what we have to say here. But if, besides this, the reader has lingered in the school of the divine Plato, he will be so much the better prepared to hear me, and susceptible to what I say. And if, indeed, in addition to this he is a partaker of the benefit conferred by the Vedas, the access to which, opened to us through the Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage which this still young century enjoys over previous ones, because I believe that the influence of the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century
from the preface of TWAWAR
elsewhere he literally tells you to fuck off if you havent read kant and plato.
you dont necessarily have to READ all of kant and plato - second hand source/abridgements suffice - but what reason could you have for reading schopenhauer that does not compel you to read Kant and Plato, who are more famous and influential.
>you dont necessarily have to READ all of kant and plato - second hand source/abridgements suffice
You have to focus quite heavily on sense perception, thing in itself, imagination and other things in that general area if you're going to do that with Kant. It's best to read Kant AND THEN also read secondary sources on Kant imo tho.
but shopenheur is demanding of his readers. for example, in one of his mini-essays he basically says that if you are reading him in translation you are a pile of shit. but that is just because translations back then WERE shit. ive read him in english and german and its not that different, as long as you have extensive notes on technical terms used. he also says you need to read all of kant and plato, but thats just because secondary texts didnt really exist back then. nowadays, scholarly texts are so advanced you probably know more about kant/platos philosophy after reading a secondary text than a primary.
but yeah, i mainly agree
He was an academic but he wrote philosophy for non-philosophers which is why most of the people who dug him weren't really philosophers. Nietzsche had little relationship with philosophy until stumbling upon Der Welt, for example, and was never big into conventional philosophers of his day like Kant and Hegel (though he didn't share the hatred of Hegel that Schop had), he was always half literary figure and half philosopher. He also paints a gloomier picture than people in the west were really ready for until after the first world war.
sorry for that ant-sized pic. i dont have a higher resolution. here is a better image.
>Der Welt
>Der
Also, if you'd read Die Welt, you'd know that Schopenhauer absolutely did write for philosophers. He just happened to write a great deal for non-philosophers too, and even then it's not clear cut.
Also, Nietzsche didn't like Hegel - but had a much more considered dislike than Schopenhauer. The latter hated him as his writings were meaningless/ambiguous and typically mystic drivel, which was true. Nietzsche hated him because the 1% of his writing that wasn't, was only of use in bringing about either an apotheosis of the state - or else more 'Welt-Geister' like Napoleon.
It's only really two points I'm thinking of:
1 I'm p sure most secondary texts on Kant refer to his ethics (my experience is his ethics is more famous than his CoPR for most people)
2. His metaphysics is difficult to grasp straight away. I think it's mostly his dry writing style, but a lot of people don't get the hard separation we have to objects and how they're like constructed in our minds iykwim. So if they read one writing they tend to think they "get it" when they don't. It's better to read Kant first, get him wrong, then read someone on Kant and realise you're wrong imo.
I found Freud and Nietzsche lost quite a lot in translation (N because of his ridiculous amounts of wordplay), never looked at Schopenhauer in German however.
yeah, literature really requires the original language if possible, and hence the writings of Nietzsche, who is almost more poet than philosopher, must be read in german if one can read the language.
kant and schopenhauer are not lost in translation given EXTENSIVE notes on technical terms (their trivial meaning, specialised meaning, connotations ect) and compound words.
i havent read freud in english, but i am sure that any word-play can be described in notes
start with the greeks cunt
With Freud the problems tended to be technical terms that can seem easy to translate and may make sense 99% of the time, but Freud is using it in a way that it's the 1%. It doesn't happen all the time either, you could get through most Freud in translation fairly easily but there would still be a few key areas that are confusing.
Unlike Nietzsche he didn't write with his "Blood"
Its because people only like philosophers that affirm life. Schopenhauer shit all over life so nobody wants to pay attention to him because they would rather think of conscious experience as a brilliant thing. Nietzsche puts a positive spin on his ontology as reality being a manifestation of Will and now he is the most memed philosopher of all. Meanwhile Stirner could be said to be the one true nihilist, repudiating absolutely everything and he has been roundly ignored by humanity.
what's some essential stirner?
I didn't find anything particularly loveable about him. I enjoyed his wit and ideas in the first 3 parts of TWaWaR, but then he ruined it for me in the fourth part.
To add to your analogy, he is like that really cool and eccentric uncle that seems to have everything figured out, but then, one night, you find yourself alone with him and he starts touching you in weird ways. From that point on you never want to be alone with him again; all you see is a weird pervert who has a thing for under age kids. So now, when you are at family gatherings, you usually stay close to uncle Nietzsche and grandpa Goethe.
Part 4 of TWaWaR was full of life-denying bullshit. I hated it. Schopenhauer was a "glass half empty" kind of guy. Schopenhauer was actually a pedo btw
>he is like that really cool and eccentric uncle that seems to have everything figured out, but then, one night, you find yourself alone with him and he starts touching you in weird ways. From that point on you never want to be alone with him again; all you see is a weird pervert who has a thing for under age kids. So now, when you are at family gatherings, you usually stay close to uncle Nietzsche and grandpa Goethe.
Congratulations on the most retarded shitpost of the day
>reading Fraud in any language
Congratulations on successfully venting your anger on someone. Do you feel better now?
He only wrote one only essay, do your research dude
>implying I have to be angry to be insulting
Your own post sounded a lot angrier than his
>Implying that such rudeness could be explained as anything but pent-up anger
Congratulations on the most retarded shitpost of the day.
See, this is the pinnacle of anger-posting.
Freud pls...
by who? I only see philosophers talked about on Veeky Forums and he gets brought up everyday
Essays and Aphorisms as well the Wisdom of Life are all sections culled from Parerga and Paralipomena. It is by far has most accessible work. If you're not up to speed on the Greeks or the Moderns his first two essays will help enormously.
here is a reading list for P&P. Get the Oxford addition
...
Bro!
If you're speaking about Schopenhauer as he appears in the chronology of history of philosophy than I agree with you, but if you approach him on his own terms, as an idiosyncrasy, he is a great educator. The perspicuity and clarity of his diction greatly enhances this effect.
>he's not studied seriously at the professional level, he's just popular on Veeky Forums
That's just not true. Sure, he's completely overshadowed by other philosophers, especially since they're so numerous and diverse, but it's false that he's simply not studied at the professional level. He's a perfectly valid and serious possible choice for a PhD thesis, even if he's unconventional. His work (I mean WWAR) is pretty huge, very erudite, and makes use of lots of rather technical and original concepts.