Arthur Schopenhauer, (born February 22, 1788, Danzig, Prussia [now Gdańsk, Poland]—died September 21, 1860, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]), German philosopher, often called the “philosopher of pessimism,” who was primarily important as the exponent of a metaphysical doctrine of the will in immediate reaction against …
What did Arthur Schopenhauer believe?
Schopenhauer argues that the ability to transcend the everyday point of view and regard objects of nature aesthetically is not available to most human beings. Rather, the ability to regard nature aesthetically is the hallmark of the genius, and Schopenhauer describes the content of art through an examination of genius.
Does Schopenhauer believe in God?
Schopenhauer does not oppose or deny the existence of god. His mind was too naturally developed, think of the natural power of curiosity as it takes the mind, to take religions of the western world seriously. He was classic example of the atheist that can’t deny there is something bigger than us.
Was Schopenhauer a nihilist?
Schopenhauer would not have called himself a nihilist and most philosophers would not call his philosophy nihilism. His best known philosophical book was his 1818 work, The World as Will and Representation published when he was 30 years old.
Did Schopenhauer get married?
Schopenhauer considered himself a singular philosopher on love. … Three years after “Metaphysics of Love” was published, the 30-something Schopenhauer met Caroline Richter, with whom he’s thought to have had his longest relationship. The two never married, and their fling was decidedly on again, off again.
Is Schopenhauer religious?
His notes and comments on Schleiermacher’s lectures show that Schopenhauer was becoming very critical of religion and moving towards atheism. He learned by self-directed reading; besides Plato, Kant and Fichte he also read the works of Schelling, Fries, Jacobi, Bacon, Locke, and much current scientific literature.
Did Schopenhauer believe free will?
Schopenhauer means that our motives are determined but we are (in some sense) free to act on our motives. In Schopenhauer’s sense, free will is essentially autonomy, the ability to act according to internal drives without external constraint.
What does Schopenhauer mean by will?
According to Schopenhauer, the will is the ‘inner essence’ of the entire world, i.e. the Kantian thing-in-itself (Ding an sich), and exists independently of the forms of the principle of sufficient reason that govern the world as representation.
Why is Schopenhauer underrated?
If he is underrated it is probably because he is known more for his aphorisms than for his work The World as Will and Representation, and because the clarity of this work makes Schopenhauer more vulnerable to criticism than philosophers like Hegel, Fichte or Heidegger.
Is Kierkegaard a nihilist?
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) posited an early form of nihilism, which he referred to as leveling.
Is Nietzsche a nihilist?
Summary. Nietzsche is a self-professed nihilist, although, if we are to believe him, it took him until 1887 to admit it (he makes the admission in a Nachlass note from that year). No philosopher’s nihilism is more radical than Nietzsche’s and only Kierkegaard’s and Sartre’s are as radical.
Was Wittgenstein married?
The tyrannical family patriarch was Karl Wittgenstein (1847-1913), a steel, banking and arms magnate. He and his timorous wife, Leopoldine, brought nine children into the world. Of the five boys, three certainly or probably committed suicide and two were plagued by suicidal impulses throughout their lives.
Was Thomas Hobbes married?
Aquinas and the philosophers of the middle ages were all churchmen. In the 17th and 18th centuries, virtually all of the canonical figures were domestically unconventional. Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant and Bentham all went unmarried.
Was Aristotle ever married?
Aristotle married Pythias, the niece and adopted daughter of Hermias, and they had one child, a daughter also called Pythias. However, Aristotle’s wife died about 10 years after their marriage.
Was Arthur Schopenhauer a vegetarian?
We are not aware of any evidence that Schopenhauer was himself vegetarian, but his influence on later vegetarians was considerable. ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, the great German philosopher, wrote : “The unpardonable forgetfulness in which the lower animals have hitherto been left by the moralists of Europe is well known.
Did Schopenhauer read Darwin?
Schopenhauer did not read Darwin’s The Origin of the Species which was published in 1859, that is, 1 year before the philosopher’s death, but he had read a journal note about the book (Soria Esteban, 2016).
Do we have free will according to the Bible?
In the Bible
The biblical ground for free will lies in the fall into sin by Adam and Eve that occurred in their “willfully chosen” disobedience to God. “Freedom” and “free will” can be treated as one because the two terms are commonly used as synonyms.
Why is free will an illusion?
Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.
Can predestination and free will coexist?
Predestination has been considered not inevitably contradictory to free will. Sometimes both are held together as paradoxical, yet complementary, aspects of truth; but more classically, free will is understood not as freedom of choice but as voluntary necessity.
What two experiences are central to the sublime According to Young’s account of Schopenhauer?
Although Schopenhauer is not terribly explicit on the phenomenological differences between the beautiful and the sublime, two emerge from his account: (1) the beautiful is characterized by a loss of self-consciousness whereas the sublime is characterized by two moments of self-consciousness; (2) the beautiful is wholly …
Who is known as the father of phenomenology?
Considered the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), a German mathematician-turned-philosopher,…
Who argued that reality was like fire?
Heraclitus, also spelled Heracleitus, (born c. 540 bce, Ephesus, Anatolia [now Selçuk, Turkey]—died c. 480), Greek philosopher remembered for his cosmology, in which fire forms the basic material principle of an orderly universe. Little is known about his life, and the one book he apparently wrote is lost.
Was Nietzsche a student of Schopenhauer?
In 1865, Nietzsche thoroughly studied the works of Arthur Schopenhauer.
Did Schopenhauer believe that this world was the work of an all loving Creator?
The truth was that this world could not have been the work of an all loving Being, but rather that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in their sufferings. … Schopenhauer was very respectful of love, as one might be towards a hurricane or a tiger.
What does Schopenhauer say about human existence?
Is there any meaning to life? Pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in his essay The Vanity of Existence made the point that our lives have no absolute value. He said, “Human life must be some kind of mistake“(1) because our lives consist of dissatisfaction and boredom.
Who are some famous nihilists?
2. Friedrich Nietzsche and Nihilism. Among philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is most often associated with nihilism.
Did Nietzsche read Kierkegaard?
There’s no evidence that Nietzsche read Kierkegaard; the latter had not been translated into German. However, there is strong evidence that Nietzsche knew of Kierkegaard through the secondary literature; furthermore, Georges Brandes was a clear link between the two of them.
What did Nietzsche believe in?
He believed that heaven was an unreal place or “the world of ideas”. His ideas of atheism were demonstrated in works such as “God is dead”. He argued that the development of science and emergence of a secular world were leading to the death of Christianity.
Does Nietzsche believe in God?
Nietzsche was an atheist for his adult life and didn’t mean that there was a God who had actually died, rather that our idea of one had. … Europe no longer needed God as the source for all morality, value, or order in the universe; philosophy and science were capable of doing that for us.
Who founded nihilism?
Nihilism has existed in one form or another for hundreds of years, but is usually associated with Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher (and pessimist of choice for high school kids with undercuts) who proposed that existence is meaningless, moral codes worthless, and God is dead.
Do nihilists believe in God?
Nihilism states that there is no sustainer, such as God, of lasting purpose, meaning, or hope for human life, even if humans create their own transitory purpose, meaning, or hope. … Perhaps God exists but is not promiscuous, casual, or easy in giving divine self-evidence to humans.
Why did Wittgenstein brothers commit suicide?
Rudi committed suicide in a Berlin bar, administering himself cyanide poisoning in 1904, most probably because of homosexuality that he referred to as ‘perverted disposition’ in a suicide note.
Was Wittgenstein a communist?
The principal historical connections lie partly in Wittgenstein’s sympathy for certain aspects of the left in the 1930s—he is said to have described himself as “a communist, at heart”—and partly in the question of the role that Pierro Sraffa’s Marxism might have played in his role as “stimulus for the most …
Was Thomas Hobbes rich or poor?
Thomas Hobbes was born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, on 5 April 1588, the son of a clergyman. His father left the family in 1604 and never returned, so a wealthy uncle sponsored Hobbes’ education at Oxford University. In 1608, Hobbes became tutor to William Cavendish, later earl of Devonshire.
Did Thomas Hobbes have friends?
While in Paris, Hobbes became close friends with the philosopher and astronomer Pierre Gassendi and engaged Rene Descartes in argument; in Florence, he talked with Galileo.