Welcome back to the Deem Dive. Today we are opening
a dossier on a man who is arguably the most paradoxical
figure in the entire history of Western thought.
That's a big claim, but I think it holds up.
It really does. We're looking at a philosopher
who is, for all intents and purposes, the patron
saint of gloom. I mean, this is the man who argued
that existence is a business that doesn't cover
its costs. Right. Not exactly a motivational
speaker. Not at all. And yet, and this is the
part that hooked me immediately, he was the primary
source of comfort for people like Albert Einstein,
Leo Tolstoy, and Erwin Schrödinger. It's a fascinating
contradiction, isn't it? We are talking, of course,
about Arthur Schopenhauer. the so -called godfather
of pessimism. Right. And usually when you hear
pessimism, you think of, I don't know, a teenager
in a dark room listening to sad music or maybe
a nihilist who thinks nothing matters. Yeah,
very simplistic, almost cartoonish idea of it.
But Schopenhauer is doing something much, much
more rigorous and strangely much more vibrant
than that. We have a massive stack of sources
here today. His biography, his essays from Parerga
and Paralapamana, and of course this absolute
brick of a masterpiece, The World as Will and
Representation. It is a doorstop, that one. It
really is. And the mission for this deep dive
is to figure out how this guy, who is by all
accounts a misanthropic... curmudgeon who literally
pushed his neighbor down the stairs. We will
definitely get to that. How that guy developed
a theory of the universe that is so strangely
comforting that it sat on Einstein's wall. Exactly.
If we only look at the label pessimist or, you
know, the caricature of the grumpy old man, we
miss the treasure. Schopenhauer is really the
missing link between the cold logic of Western
science, the world of Newton and Kant. And the
spiritual depth of Eastern philosophy. That's
a great way to put it. He connects those two
worlds. He really does. He's the guy who connects
the European Enlightenment to the Upanishads.
Decades. I mean, decades before it was cool to
do so. And to understand him, we have to go deep.
We have to talk about his rivalry at Hegel. We
have to talk about the will. And yes, we absolutely
have to talk about his obsession with poodles.
I cannot wait to get to the poodles. But I really
want to get to the will. Because that is the
engine of his whole system. And frankly, it changes
how you look at everything from gravity to your
own cravings. It's a total paradigm shift. But
let's start with the man himself. Because you
can't really separate Schopenhauer's philosophy
from his life. He wasn't the guy sitting in an
ivory tower just, you know, speculating on logic.
He was a guy with some serious family trauma
and a chip on his shoulder the size of Berlin.
That is putting it mildly. Understand, Arthur,
you have to understand the world he was born
into. It's 1788. He's born in Danzig, which is
modern -day Gask. And the first thing to note,
which distinguishes him from so many other starling
artists or philosophers, is that this is not
a rags -to -riches story. Not at all. No, he
was born with a silver spoon. A platinum spoon.
Arthur was born into the absolute 1%. He was
a trust fund baby, essentially. He was. His father,
Heinrich Flores Schopenhauer, was a patrician
merchant. He was part of the Henseatic League
elite. Extremely wealthy, very international,
very Republican in the anti -monarchy sense.
Okay, so a powerful family. Immensely. And his
mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, was this lively,
artistic socialite who would go on to be famous
in her own right. But the atmosphere in the house,
well... The sources describe it as heavy. The
sources mention the father, Heinrich, cast a
very, very long shadow over Arthur's early life.
It sounds like he was a pretty intense guy. Heinrich
was a complicated man, incredibly successful
in business, but prone to severe bouts of anxiety
and depression. He was described as moody, exacting,
and controlling. And he had a very specific vision
for Arthur. And it wasn't philosopher. Oh, God,
no. He didn't care about Arthur's inner life.
He wanted a successor. He wanted a little Heinrich.
He wanted a merchant prince who could take over
the international shipping business. This leads
to that famous merchant's trap story in the biography.
I found this really manipulative, honestly. It's
like a master class in how to guilt trip your
kid. It was a classic devil's bargain. So Arthur
is a teenager, maybe around 15 or 16, and he's
starting to show these signs of intellectual
curiosity. He's bored by ledgers and shipping
manifestos. He wants to read books. He wants
to go to the gymnasium, which is the academic
high school track in Germany, to prepare for
university. He wants to read poets. He wants
to study Latin and Greek. Heinrich sees this
happening and he panics. He thinks, I'm losing
my air to the clouds. Right. He's getting soft.
Exactly. So he sits Arthur down and makes him
an offer. And it's a clever offer. A really clever
offer. It's diabolical. He says, OK, Arthur.
You have a choice. We can stay here in Hamburg
and you can go to that boring school with the
strict teachers and learn your Latin or R. Here
it comes. We can go on a glamorous grand tour
of Europe. We'll go to London. We'll see Paris.
We'll cross the Alps. We'll stay in the best
hotels. But if we go, you have to promise me
that when we return, you will enter a merchant
apprenticeship and never mention the university
again. That is dirty. He dangled the entire world
in front of a curious kid to kill his dream.
Of course, a teenager is going to pick the road
trip. How could he not? And he did. He chose
the travel. And to be fair, the travel was educational,
but perhaps not in the way his father intended.
What do you mean? Well, he spent two years touring
Europe. He saw the slums of London, which horrified
him. He saw the galleys in Toulon where prisoners
were chained to benches, rowing until they died.
He saw the suffering of the world firsthand.
This wasn't just a vacation. It was his first
exposure to the raw misery of humanity. So it
hardened his pessimistic worldview even then.
It planted the seeds. But when he came back,
he had to pay the piper. He had to sit in the
counting house. For two years. He sat in a merchant's
office in Hamburg, stacking receipts, checking
cargo lists, bored out of his mind. He called
it a galley slave existence. He felt he was selling
his soul. He wrote later that he spent those
years grieving for his lost life. Just watching
his potential wither away. Exactly. Under the
fluorescent lights, metaphorically speaking,
of the family business. But then the story takes
a very dark turn. And this is the event that...
ironically sets him free. It's a moment of tragedy
that becomes the catalyst for his entire career.
Yes. In 1805, when Arthur is just 17, his father
Heinrich falls into a canal behind their warehouse
in Hamburg and drowns. And the sources suggest
this wasn't just an accidental slip on a wet
dock. It is widely believed and was certainly
believed by Arthur at the time to be suicide.
Heinrich had been spiraling mentally. He was
becoming paranoid, thinking he was going bankrupt,
even though he was incredibly rich. Arthur was
devastated, but he also interpreted this through
a very specific lens. He believed that he had
inherited his father's darkness. He thought that
mental anguish, that gloom, was in his blood.
So he sees himself as the heir to this psychological
burden. But practically speaking, the death changed
everything for his future. It did. It was a tragedy,
but it was also a liberation. His mother, Johanna,
didn't waste much time gruiting. She took her
share of the money and moved to Weimar to start
a new life as a literary figure. She got out
of town fast. Immediately! And Arthur? Well,
after a brief period of trying to stick to the
promise he made his father, his mother eventually
told him, don't be an idiot, follow your dream.
He quit the apprenticeship. And crucially, he
was left with a massive fortune. Forget the merchant
life, I'm rich. Exactly. He invested his inheritance
in government bonds. The returns gave him an
annual income that was roughly double what a
tenured university professor made at the time.
I think this is such a crucial detail for the
listener to grasp. We often hear about philosophers
who are struggling or who are dependent on patronage.
Schopenhauer never had to work. He never had
to please a dean or a publisher or a bishop.
That is the absolute key to his intellectual
ferocity. You have to remember, most philosophers
of his day, like Hegel, Fichte, Schelling were
academics. They were civil servants. They had
to tow the line of the Prussian state or the
Lutheran church. They couldn't rock the boat.
They couldn't just say, God is dead, or the world
is meaningless without risking their livelihood.
Schopenhauer was intellectually sovereign. He
could say whatever he wanted, no matter how offensive,
bleak, or atheistic, because nobody could fire
him. He was writing for the truth, not for tenure.
So he's free. He finally gets his education.
He learns his Greek and Latin at record speed.
But now we have to talk about his mother, Johanna,
because if the father gave him the money and
the depression, the mother gave him the neurosis
and, well, the misogyny. It's a relationship
that Freud would have had a field day with. Johanna
Schopenhauer was a remarkable woman, actually.
When she moved to Weimar, she reinvented herself.
She became a literary celebrity. She was a novelist.
a very successful romance novelist. Her books
were bestsellers across Europe. She ran the hottest
salon in town. Goethe, the Goethe, the most famous
man in Germany, was a regular guest at her tea
parties. She was optimistic, social, fun, and
very modern. And then you have Arthur. Enter
Arthur. He catches up with her in Weimar, and
he is the polar opposite. He's gloomy. He's critical.
He's arrogant. He walks into her parties and
starts lecturing people on the misery of existence
and how shallow they all are. That must have
gone over well. Like a lead balloon. They moved
in together for a while, right? Which sounds
like a sitcom premise, The Pessimist and The
Socialite. I'd watch that show. It was a disaster.
It lasted only a short time before they realized
they couldn't stand each other. We have letters
where Johanna just unloads on him. She wrote,
Ouch. She told him that all his intelligence
was worthless because he had no grace. She said
his propensity to pick holes in people overshadowed
everything else. She essentially told him, you're
smart, but you're a jerk and nobody likes you.
Wow. That is brutal coming from your mom. But
the tension really exploded with the famous argument
over his dissertation. The rubbish argument.
This is legendary. So Arthur completes his first
major philosophical work. It has this incredibly
clunky academic title on the fourfold root of
the principle of sufficient reason. Catchy. I
can see the movie poster now. Right. He brings
a copy to Johanna. Now, remember, she writes
light romantic fiction. She's a pop culture icon
of her day. She picks up this dense philosophical
text, looks at the title and just sneers. She
makes fun of it. openly mocks him she says the
fourfold root what is the something for apothecaries
is it a turnip is it a root crop she's just belittling
his life's work and arthur being arthur doesn't
just take it he doesn't say mom it's a metaphor
no he snaps back with incredible venom he says
my work will be read long after your rubbish
is rotting in the recycling bin of history talk
about a mic drop yeah but the crazy thing is
he was right he was 100 accurate Today, nobody
reads Johanna Schopenhauer's romance novels unless
they are studying Arthur's biography. But the
fourfold root is standard reading in any doctoral
philosophy program. He won the War of Legacy,
but he lost the mother. That exchange pretty
much ended the relationship, didn't it? It was
the final nail. She eventually threw him out.
She took a lover, a man named Gerstenberg, who
was significantly younger than her. Arthur, who
idolized his father, saw this as a betrayal of
his father's memory. He viewed it as disgusting.
So you just cut her off. Completely. He left
Weimar in disgust and basically never spoke to
his mother again. She lived for another 24 years
and he didn't even go to her funeral. So let's
take stock here. He's alienated his mother. His
father is dead by suicide. He has no job, no
wife, no kids. He is completely alone with his
money and his dark thoughts. Yeah. This seems
like the perfect laboratory for a philosophy
about how the world is a miserable, lonely place.
It certainly set the emotional stage, but we
have to give him credit. He didn't just wallow
in his apartment. He took that isolation and
channeled it into one of the most ambitious systems
of thought ever built. He moved to Dresden, and
between 1814 and 1818, he wrote The World as
Will and Representation. Okay, let's unpack this
book. The World as Will and Representation. It
sounds intimidating, but the core concept is
actually very graspable if we take it step by
step. Where do we start? We have to start with
Immanuel Kant. Schopenhauer worshipped Kant.
He thought everyone else was an idiot, but Kant
was a genius. He saw himself as Kant's only true
heir. So you need to get Kant to get Schopenhauer.
You need the basic Kantian distinction, Kant
said. We don't see the world as it actually is.
We only see phenomena. This is the rose -colored
glasses idea, right? Or maybe VR headset is a
better modern analogy. A VR headset is a perfect
analogy. Kant argued that our brains are not
passive mirrors reflecting reality. We have built
in software specifically space, time and causality.
So our brains are actively building the world
we see. Constantly. Everything we experience,
the microphone in front of me, the wall over
there, the flow of seconds on the clock, we only
experience because our brain formats it that
way. It imposes that structure. So the real microphone,
the thing that exists independently of my brain.
processing it, I can never know it. Exactly.
Kant called that the noumena or the thing in
itself. Ding and switch. And for Kant, the noumena
is locked away. We are trapped in our own simulation.
We can never take the headset off. We can never
know what reality is like outside of space and
time. And this is where Schopenhauer steps in
and says, hold my beer. He does. He says, Kant,
you were right about the simulation. You were
right about the headset, but you missed a back
door. Schopenhauer argues there is one object
in the entire universe that we experience from
two different angles. Ourselves. Our own bodies.
Think about your hand. You can look at your hand.
You can see it in space. You can move it. You
can measure it. In that sense, it's just an object
like a tool or a cup. That is the representation
part. The outside view. The world of phenomena.
Right. But you also feel your hand. You feel
it from the inside out. I have an internal experience
of it. Precisely. You experience it from the
inside. When you decide to pick up a coffee cup,
you don't calculate the geometry or the firing
of neurons. You feel a strive, an urge, an intent.
You want the coffee. Schopenhauer calls this
inner experience will. Will. Now we need to be
really careful with this word will. Because when
I hear will, I think of free will. I think of
making a rational choice. I will go to the gym
today or I will write this report. And that is
the biggest trap for new readers. Schopenhauer
does not mean rational free will. He means the
exact opposite. He means a blind, unconscious
driving force. It's a hunger. It's a craving.
It's the feeling of thirst before you even think
the word water. Like an impulse. Yes. It's the
impulse that makes you pull your hand away from
a hot stove before you've even processed the
pain. It's pre -rational. It's the engine, not
the driver. Okay, so deep down, the core of me,
the thing that powers the robot, is just this
desperate, blind... Striving. Yes. That is the
thing in itself of the human being. But here
is the massive leap. This is the moment Schopenhauer
goes cosmic, he says. If the inside of me is
will, and my body is just a physical object made
of atoms like everything else. Then the inside
of everything else must be will too. Then the
inside of everything else must be will too. Everything.
Like the dog. Right. The tree outside. The rock.
Everything. He argues that the force that makes
a crystal grow into a specific shape. The magnetic
force that pulls iron, the gravity that pulls
a stone to the earth, and the desire that drives
a tiger to kill a gazelle. It is all the same
stuff. It's all will. It's one singular, undifferentiated
force. So the universe isn't a rational clockwork
machine like Newton thought. And it's not a divine
plan like the Christians thought. It's a monster.
a blind hungry thing it's a seething boiling
ocean of energy he calls this metaphysical volunteerism
he argues that the intellect our ability to think
do math record this deep dive is just a tiny
flicker it's a tool that the will evolved to
help it get what it wants it's a servant we think
we are in charge we think we are the writers
but we are just the horse the will is the writer
or maybe better We are the lame man riding on
the shoulders of a blind giant. The giant is
the will and we're just the guide trying to steer
it away from cliffs. That is a spooky thought.
It makes gravity sound almost alive. The rock
wants to go down. He explicitly makes that connection.
He uses the analogy of a blind man feeling a
cube. The blind man feels the resistance of the
object. That resistance, that refusal to be pushed
aside, is the object's will asserting its existence.
Gravity is just the will of the earth reaching
out to pull things toward its center. Wow. Okay,
so we have this picture of the universe. It's
one giant, blind, hungry force called the will.
And we're just little fragments of it, thinking
we are individuals. This leads us directly to
why he is the godfather of pessimism. Because
if the universe is made of wanting, that's a
huge problem. It is a catastrophe. Because what
does it mean to want? To strive. It means you
lack something. You are in a state of deficiency.
I want that sandwich because I'm hungry. I want
that promotion because I feel unappreciated.
I want a new car because mine is old. The wanting
comes from a negative state. Right. So as long
as you are willing, which is always, because
you are in pain. You are suffering the pain of
lack. But let's say you get the sandwich. You
get the promotion. What happens then? You feel
good. You celebrate. For a bit. For how long?
Ten minutes. Maybe a day. If it's a really good
sandwich, maybe 20 minutes. Exactly. Schopenhauer
says satisfaction is negative. It's not a real
thing added to you. It's just the removal of
the pain. It's like scratching an itch. It feels
good only because the itch was annoying. But
once the itch is gone, you don't stay happy.
No, you just look for the next thing or you just
sit there and feel empty. And that sitting there
is what Schopenhauer calls the second enemy,
boredom. If you aren't suffering from wanting,
you are suffering from boredom. The will has
nothing to chew on, so it starts eating itself.
This is the famous pendulum analogy. I have it
here in the notes. I love this. Yes, it's one
of his most powerful images. He writes, life
swings like a pendulum backward and forward between
pain and boredom. That's it. That's the whole
human condition in one sentence. When you want
something, you are in pain. When you get it,
you are bored. And then you invent a new want
to escape the boredom. And you are back in pain.
It's an endless cycle. That is incredibly bleak.
It basically says happiness is impossible. Or
at least sustainable happiness is impossible.
He argues that happiness is a mirage. It's just
the fleeting moment of transition when the pain
stops before the boredom sets in. And because
of this, he does this grim accounting. He treats
life like a business balance sheet. Life is a
business that does not cover its costs. That's
the line. He argues that the quantity of suffering
in the world so vastly outweighs the quantity
of pleasure that non -existence would be preferable.
He challenges the listener. If you want to know
if pleasure or pain is stronger, compare the
feelings of an animal eating another animal to
the feelings of the animal being eaten. Wow.
Yeah, the pleasure of the tiger does not match
the terror of the gazelle. Not even close. Exactly.
The tiger eats for 10 minutes. The gazelle loses
its entire existence in agony. So the net result
of the universe is suffering. This sounds a lot
like antinatalism, the idea that we shouldn't
have kids. Was he an antinatalist? Philosophically,
yes. He didn't go out and pick at maternity wards,
but his logic led there. He argued that if procreation
was done out of pure reason instead of the blinding
sexual impulse, which is the will at its most
powerful, the human race would die out. Because
no rational person would choose to create more
suffering. He asks, would a truly compassionate
person force the burden of existence onto someone
else? He says we cold -bloodedly impose life
on our children. But wait, if life is a bad business
deal, if the costs are higher than the revenue,
did he advocate suicide? Because that seems like
the logical conclusion to his accounting. This
is a very common misconception, and it's a really
important one to clear up. People assume Schopenhauer
says kill yourself, but he actually condemned
suicide. Why? If the store is losing money, why
not close it down? Because Schopenhauer looked
at the motivation. He said the person who commits
suicide doesn't hate life itself. They hate their
life. They hate the pain. They actually want
a better life. They want happiness. They're just
frustrated. They can't get it. So it's an act
of frustrated desire. It's an act of will, a
massive act of will. It's a tantrum of the will.
You are destroying the body because you are frustrated.
You can't satisfy the will. You haven't silenced
the desire. You've just broken the machine. So
you can't rage quit the game. You have to. Beat
it or transcend it. Exactly. You have to transcend
it. You have to deny the will, not destroy the
body. Okay, so we are trapped on this pendulum.
The universe is a blind monster. Please tell
me he offers a way out. Or is this deep dive
just going to end with us staring into the abyss?
Don't worry. He does offer an escape. Two escapes,
actually. A temporary one and a more permanent
one. Let's start with the temporary one. I think
we all need a break right now. The temporary
escape is art. Schopenhauer had a profound theory
of aesthetics. He believed that when we truly
get lost in a work of art, a painting, a tragedy,
a symphony, something neurological shifts, for
a moment we stop asking, how can I use this?
Or what can I get from this? We stop striving.
We stop striving. We stop wanting. We just perceive.
We become, in his words, a pure, will -less subject
of cognition. That's the phrase. He calls it
a holiday from the will. A holiday from the prison
of our own desires. Think about a beautiful sunset.
If you are a real estate developer, you look
at it and think, I could build condos here and
make millions. That is the will. That is striving.
You are trapped in the business of life. What
if you're not trying to profit from it? But if
you are an artist or just a lover of beauty,
you look at it and you see the colors, the form,
the idea. You want nothing from it. You don't
want to eat the sun or own the sky. And in that
moment, the pain stops. He had a specific love
for Dutch Golden Age still lifes, right? which
I always found funny, those paintings of lemons
and dead pheasants and shiny goblets. It seems
mundane, but he loved them because they were
mundane. He said these artists took insignificant
objects, things that usually trigger our appetite,
our will, and painted them with such objective
beauty that we stop thinking about eating the
fruit and just look at the form. It calms the
beast inside us. It proves that we can detach
from our cravings. But painting was lower on
the ladder for him. He had a whole hierarchy
of art. He did. And at the very top, above all
else, was music. Right. This is crucial for understanding
his influence on culture. He argued that other
arts, sculpture, painting, poetry, they copy
the ideas of nature. They copy the platonic forms,
which are themselves just objectifications of
the will. They're one step removed. They're a
copy of a copy. A copy of a copy. But music,
music is different. Music is a copy of the will
itself. What does that mean? How is music a copy
of the will? It means music bypasses the intellect.
It bypasses the visual world. It speaks directly
to the gut, to the emotions, to the striving.
Think about a melody. It starts. It wanders.
It builds tension. It gets to striving. It hits
a dissonance. That's the pain. And then it resolves
into a chord. And that's the satisfaction. And
then it starts again. It moves again. Music mimics
the ebb and flow of desire perfectly. It's the
emotional soundtrack to existence. That makes
so much sense. You can look at a painting and
feel detached. But a piece of music can make
you cry before you even know why. It hits you
viscerally. Exactly. He said music is the language
of the engine room of the universe. While other
arts show you the movie, music shows you the
projector. It's a direct line to the thing in
itself. Okay, so art gives us a holiday. It's
a nice weekend break. But holidays end. What
is the permanent solution? How do we stop the
pendulum for good? This is where we have to travel
east. And we have to talk about how weird Schopenhauer
was for his time. In the early 19th century,
European philosophy was very, well, European.
It was Christian or it was Greek. But Schopenhauer
was obsessed with Indian philosophy. He didn't
just dabble, right? He didn't just read a summary.
No, he was a devotee. He had a Latin translation
of the Upanishads called the Upnakat. He read
a few pages of it every single night before bed,
like a Bible. He called it the solace of my life
and the solace of my death. That is incredibly
high praise for a German atheist in the 1800s.
What did he find in these ancient Sanskrit texts
that the Germans were missing? He found confirmation.
He realized that the Hindu sages had figured
out his system thousands of years before them.
Specifically, he latched on to the concept of
Maya and Tattvamasi. Let's break those down.
Start with Maya. Maya is the illusion of the
physical world. The idea that this world of separate
objects and separate people is a veil, a trick
of the light. Schopenhauer connected this directly
to Kant's phenomena. So our mental software space
and time, that's the illusion. He said space
and time are the veil of Maya. They are the scissors
that chop the world up into little pieces. They
make me think I am me and you are you. They create
the illusion of individuality. But that is the
illusion. Right. Because in the noumena, in the
will, there is no space. There is no time. And
if there is no space, there can be no separation.
There is just the one. The single, unified will.
That leads to Tattiva Masi. That art thou. It's
the profound realization that you are the other.
You are the universe. Schopenhauer argued that
individuality is a joke. It's a temporary ripple
in the ocean. The ripple thinks it's special,
but it's just water. So deep down, I am you and
I am the listener and I'm the poodle we're going
to talk about. Precisely. We are all the same
actor in different costumes. The will is playing
hide and seek with itself. And this metaphysical
realization isn't just trippy stoner talk. For
Schopenhauer, it is the basis of his entire system
of ethics. This is the part of Schopenhauer I
find. genuinely moving. For a guy who is so grumpy
in real life, his theory of morality is incredibly
beautiful. It is, and it's a direct attack on
Kant. He hated the way Kant did ethics. Kant
was all about rules, the categorical imperative.
You do the right thing because it's your rational
duty. It's a cold, logical calculation. Schopenhauer
said that's nonsense. You don't help an old lady
across the street because you solved a logic
puzzle or because you want to follow a rule.
You do it because you feel something. You feel
mitleid. compassion, literally suffering with,
Schopenhauer asks. How is it possible for me
to feel another person's pain? It shouldn't be
possible if we are separate, isolated entities.
If I pinch you, I shouldn't feel it. But we do
feel it. When we see a child fall, we wince.
When we see a disaster on the news, we cry. Schopenhauer
says that wince is the metaphysics breaking through.
For a split second, the veil of Maya slips. You
realize on a gut level that the child is you.
The barrier of individuality dissolves. That
is why you help. Compassion isn't a rule. It's
an insight into the true nature of reality. It's
the moment you realize you are hurting yourself.
And this naturally extended to animals. And this
is where Schopenhauer was light years ahead of
his time. Light years. You have to remember the
prevailing view in the West, coming from Descartes
and the church, was that animals were biological
machines. Automata. They had no souls. If a dog
cried out in pain, it was just like a gear grinding
in a clock. Schopenhauer hated that view. He
called it revolting and barbarous. He said it
was a stain on Western civilization. He pointed
out that in the East, animals were respected.
He hated how the English language uses the pronoun
it for animals. He wanted to use he or she. Yes.
He said using it treats them like objects when
in fact they are subjects. They are manifestations
of the will just like us. He saw the will in
them just as clearly as in humans. He writes
these heartbreaking descriptions. The source
mentions him looking at a baby elephant whose
mother had been killed by a hunter. He saw the
grief and said, that is the same suffering I
feel. That is the same will. And he walked the
walk. We have to talk about the poodles. Finally.
The poodles. Schopenhauer was never without a
poodle. For his entire adult life, he usually
named them Atman. Which is the Sanskrit word
for world soul. Exactly. Or sometimes he called
them butts. which is a more common German dog
name. But imagine walking in the park in Frankfurt
in 1850. You see this wild -haired, terrifying
philosopher who scares the local children just
cooing over a poodle named World Soul. Why poodles
specifically? Was there a reason? He thought
they were incredibly intelligent, but more importantly,
he felt dogs were better companions than humans.
He said dogs live entirely in the present. They
don't torture themselves with the past or the
future. They are transparent. He said looking
into a dog's eyes was a relief from the duplicity
and acting of human society. I think a lot of
our listeners can relate to that. Be the person
your dog thinks you are. Schopenhauer would say
you can't be that person because you are human
and therefore tortured by intellect, but you
can learn from the dog. Okay, so we have this
image of this saintly poodle lover who believes
all life is one. It sounds great, but we have
to pivot. We have to talk about the other guy.
The guy who lived down the hall from a certain
seamstress. The contradiction. The man versus
the philosophy. This is the juicy stuff. So set
the scene. It's the 1820s. He's living in a boarding
house in Berlin. Right. He's young. He's arrogant.
And he's incredibly sensitive to noise. He values
silence above all else for his thinking. He once
wrote a whole essay called On Noise, where he
just complains about the cracking of whips in
the street. A man after my own heart. and there
is a seamstress named caroline louise marquet
she is standing in the entryway of his apartment
chatting loudly with a friend and schopenhauer
comes out and asks her to leave she refuses they
argue he goes back inside comes out again she's
still there still chatting and then the great
philosopher of compassion the man who says we
are all one grabs her and physically throws her
out of the entryway And she falls. She falls.
She claims she is permanently injured, paralyzed
on one side. She sues him. And she wins. She
wins. The court accepts that he caused her injury.
They order Schopenhauer to pay her a quarterly
pension for the rest of her life. He had to pay
her for 20 years. It was a constant financial
reminder of his failure to live up to his own
ideals. But it's his reaction to her death that
really shows the disconnect. It's what he wrote
on the death certificate. Yes. When she finally
died, years later, Schopenhauer received the
certificate, and he wrote a note on it in Latin.
Obit anus, abit onus? Translate that for us.
The old woman dies, the burden departs. Wow.
Cold. That is ice cold. Incredibly cold. It shows
that while he understood compassion intellectually
as the basis of the universe, he struggled to
practice it with actual human beings. He was
a misanthrope. He didn't like people. And he
was deeply paranoid. Paranoid how? Oh, deeply.
He slept with loaded pistols next to his bed.
He kept a sword nearby. He hid his valuables
and secret hollows in his furniture. He lived
in constant fear of thieves and revolutionaries.
He trusted no one. He would check the register
at hotels to see who else was staying there before.
he checked in. It's such a strange duality. He
loves humanity in the abstract. He weeps for
the baby elephant, but he hates his neighbor.
It's a common failing of intellectuals, I think,
to love the idea but despise the particular.
But his ego was also a massive problem. We have
to talk about the Hegel rivalry. This is one
of the funniest failures in academic history.
This is the mean girls of 19th century philosophy.
It really is. So Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
was the absolute rock star of German philosophy
at the time. He was the state philosopher. Everyone
loved Hegel. His lectures were packed. Hundreds
of students, standing room only, people hanging
from the rafters. And he was an optimist, right?
Totally. He was explaining history as the rational
march of progress, the world spirit coming to
self -consciousness. It was optimistic. It was
patriotic. The Prussian government loved it.
Schopenhauer arrives at the University of Berlin
as a young lecturer. He's just written The World
is Will. He thinks he is the next messiah of
thought. And he decides, out of pure spite and
arrogance, to schedule his lectures at the exact
same time as Hegel's. He wanted a showdown, a
philosophical cage match. He thought once the
students hear the truth of the will, they will
abandon the charlatan Hegel. He really believed
the students would choose the difficult truth
over the popular trend. And what happened? Hegel
had 200 students. Schopenhauer had five. Five.
That is humiliating. It was devastating. He taught
the semester to an essentially empty room, and
then he just quit academia entirely. He took
his ball and went home. He spent the rest of
his life hating university philosophy professors.
He called them sophists who just wanted a paycheck.
He called Hegel a clumsy charlatan and said his
writing was presumptuously scribbled nonsense.
I mean, have you read Hegel? He's not entirely
wrong about the nonsense part. Hegel is hard.
Hegel is notoriously difficult, but Schopenhauer's
hatred was personal. He felt ignored, and for
most of his life, he was. That's the sad part
of the story. He wrote his masterpiece in his
20s, and then nothing. Silence. Decades of silence.
The world is Will was a commercial flop. At one
point, the publisher told him they were pulping
the unsold copies to use as waste paper. Imagine
hearing that your life's work is being turned
into scrap. It made him bitter. He settled in
Frankfurt and became this eccentric village elder
figure. He lived a rigid routine. He woke up,
had coffee, wrote, played the flute. He played
the flute every day, usually Rossini, which is
surprisingly cheerful music for a pessimist.
I find that hilarious. And then went to the Englischer
Hof for dinner every evening. Yeah, people would
come to watch him eat. Like a tourist attraction.
Towards the end of his life, yes. Because, and
this is the twist, he eventually became famous.
It took a long time, though. What was the catalyst?
It took until 1851. He was in his 60s. He published
a collection of essays called Parerga and Paralapomena.
Appendices and Omissions. Another great title.
Terrible title. Great book. It was wittier, more
accessible. It had essays on ghosts, on dueling,
on women, which were terrible, we should mention.
Absolutely misogynistic. Right. He viewed them
as big children, probably stemming from his mother
issues. Almost certainly. But the book was a
hit. And suddenly, the zeitgeist caught up with
him. The 1848 revolutions had failed. European
optimism was dead. People were ready for pessimism.
They were ready to hear that the world wasn't
getting better. And Schopenhauer became a celebrity.
He loved it. For a guy who claimed to deny the
will and seek nothingness, he really enjoyed
the ego boost. He read every review. He told
his friends to cut out articles about him. The
Buddha of Frankfurt finally got his due. Let's
talk about that legacy, because even if he was
a flawed man, the ideas exploded. Who did he
influence? The list is staggering. First, the
artists. We mentioned music earlier. Richard
Wagner became a total devotee. He sent Schopenhauer
a copy of his opera The Reign. Schopenhauer didn't
really write back. He preferred Mozart and Rossini.
Still with the Rossini. But Magner said Schopenhauer's
philosophy was the only thing that made sense
of his music. Tristan and Isolde is basically
Schopenhauer set to music unending longing that
can only be resolved in death. And writers. Tolstoy
called him the greatest genius. Thomas Mann,
Marcel Proust, Thomas Hardy, even Jorge Luis
Borges, they all love that dark, realistic view
of human psychology. Schopenhauer was the first
to really say, we are not rational creatures.
And that leads us to the scientists. This is
the connection that always surprises me. Einstein.
Einstein kept a portrait of Schopenhauer in his
study right next to Faraday and Maxwell. He said
Schopenhauer's writing was a continual consolation
in the face of the hardships of life. I think
Einstein liked the idea that the world works
according to these vast, impersonal forces. It
wasn't a personal god judging you. It was a magnificent,
coherent system. It helped Einstein detach from
the chaos of politics and focus on the laws of
nature. And Schrodinger. Yeah. The quantum mechanics
guy. Berwyn Schrodinger, yes. He was deeply influenced
by the one will idea. He used it to think about
the unity of consciousness. The idea that I and
the universe are not separate. That's very Schopenhauerian.
In fact, Schrodinger's interest in the Upanishads
came directly through Schopenhauer. And we can't
forget Freud. It seems so obvious. Freud basically
took Schopenhauer's will and renamed it the id.
Think about it. An unconscious, driving sexual
force that dominates our rational mind. That
is pure Schopenhauer. Freud claimed he discovered
it independently, but the resemblance is suspicious.
Schopenhauer drew the map of the unconscious.
Ford just colonized it. So as we wrap up this
deep dive into the abyss, what is a takeaway?
Why should a modern listener who maybe isn't
depressed care about this 19th century curmudgeon?
I think Schopenhauer offers a very powerful antidote
to the toxic positivity of our culture. We are
constantly told that if we just buy the right
thing, achieve the right goal, find the perfect
partner, we will be permanently happy. Manifest
your best life. Good vibes only. Exactly. And
Schopenhauer says, stop. That is a lie. You will
never be permanently satisfied. Suffering and
dissatisfaction are features, not bugs. They're
the default setting. That sounds depressing,
but it's also a relief. But it's liberating.
If you accept that life is difficult and that
winning is impossible, you can stop beating yourself
up. You can step off the treadmill. You can lower
your expectations and actually enjoy the small
things. You can find solace in art. You can cultivate
compassion for others because you know they are
struggling just as hard as you are in this penal
colony of existence. It's a strange kind of comfort.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are
looking at the stars. Or at least looking at
a nice painting of a lemon. Precisely. His solution
wasn't to change the world. He thought the world
was unfixable. His solution was to change the
self, to deny the will, to find moments of peace.
I want to leave the listeners with a final image.
Schopenhauer died in 1860. He was sitting on
his couch. His heart just stopped. And his grave
is in Frankfurt. It's a very simple grave, a
heavy slab of granite. And on it, there is no
date of birth, no date of death, no epitaph,
no here lies a philosopher. Just the name. Arthur
Schopenhauer. As if to say, I am the will. I
am inevitable. You know who I am. Or perhaps,
as he suggested in his philosophy, the individual
details don't matter. The dates don't matter.
The form has dissolved. He has returned to the
one. Here is a provocative thought to end on.
Schopenhauer said life is like a dream we were
all sharing. If that's true. then your curiosity,
you listening to this right now, is just the
universe trying to understand itself. Maybe the
will isn't just blind hunger. Maybe it's also
blind curiosity. I like that. A little optimistic
for Schopenhauer, but I like it. He's not here
to argue with me. Thanks for listening to The
Deep Dive. We'll see you next time.