"His closest relationships are now with a succession of poodles, who he feels have a gentleness and humility humans lack... He acquires a new white poodle and names her Atman, after the world-soul of the Brahmins..." Consolations of Philosophy
Reminds me of...
But he's still fun to read. He's often clever and amusing, and he's frequently right.
Schopenhauer on Hegel:
- “The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”
- “Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”
- “Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”
- "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
- “We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”
- “A sense of humor is the only divine quality of man.”
- “What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams, and we search in vain for their original. Much would have been gained if, through timely advice and instruction, young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.”
- “If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”
The great rational optimist and cynical pessimist, ultimately (like us all) in the same boat. "Shipwreck is a permanent possibility," said William James...
Schopenhauer on Hegel:
“But the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, trans. Haldane-Kemp (The World as Will and Idea, vol. 2), London: Kegan Paul, p. 22.
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William James on Hegel:
Some "Hegelisms" James came up with, when reading Hegel while ingesting nitrous oxide:
What's mistake but a kind of take?
What's nausea but a kind of -ausea?
Sober, drunk, -unk, astonishment.
Everything can become the subject of criticism—how
criticise without something to criticise?
Agreement—disagreement!!
Emotion—motion!!!
Die away from, from, die away (without the from).
Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same!
Good and evil reconciled in a laugh!
It escapes, it escapes!
But——
What escapes, WHAT escapes?
Emphasis, EMphasis; there must be some emphasis in order
for there to be a phasis.
No verbiage can give it, because the verbiage is other.
Incoherent, coherent—same.
And it fades! And it's infinite! AND it's infinite!
If it was n't going, why should you hold on to it?
Don't you see the difference, don't you see the identity?
Constantly opposites united!
The same me telling you to write and not to write!
Extreme—extreme, extreme! Within the extensity that
'extreme' contains is contained the 'extreme' of intensity.
Something, and other than that thing!
Intoxication, and otherness than intoxication.
Every attempt at betterment,—every attempt at otherment,—is a——.
It fades forever and forever as we move.
{297}What's nausea but a kind of -ausea?
Sober, drunk, -unk, astonishment.
Everything can become the subject of criticism—how
criticise without something to criticise?
Agreement—disagreement!!
Emotion—motion!!!
Die away from, from, die away (without the from).
Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same!
Good and evil reconciled in a laugh!
It escapes, it escapes!
But——
What escapes, WHAT escapes?
Emphasis, EMphasis; there must be some emphasis in order
for there to be a phasis.
No verbiage can give it, because the verbiage is other.
Incoherent, coherent—same.
And it fades! And it's infinite! AND it's infinite!
If it was n't going, why should you hold on to it?
Don't you see the difference, don't you see the identity?
Constantly opposites united!
The same me telling you to write and not to write!
Extreme—extreme, extreme! Within the extensity that
'extreme' contains is contained the 'extreme' of intensity.
Something, and other than that thing!
Intoxication, and otherness than intoxication.
Every attempt at betterment,—every attempt at otherment,—is a——.
It fades forever and forever as we move.
There is a reconciliation!
Reconciliation—econciliation!
By God, how that hurts! By God, how it does n't hurt!
Reconciliation of two extremes.
By George, nothing but othing!
That sounds like nonsense, but it is pure onsense!
Thought deeper than speech——!
Medical school; divinity school, school! SCHOOL! Oh my
God, oh God, oh God!
Reconciliation—econciliation!
By God, how that hurts! By God, how it does n't hurt!
Reconciliation of two extremes.
By George, nothing but othing!
That sounds like nonsense, but it is pure onsense!
Thought deeper than speech——!
Medical school; divinity school, school! SCHOOL! Oh my
God, oh God, oh God!
The most coherent and articulate sentence which came was this:—
There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
This phrase has the true Hegelian ring, being in fact a regular sich als sich auf sich selbst beziehende Negativität. And true Hegelians will überhaupt be able to read between the lines and feel, at any rate, what possible ecstasies of cognitive emotion might have bathed these tattered fragments of thought when they were alive. But for the assurance of a certain amount of respect from them, I should hardly have ventured to print what must be such caviare to the general.
William James, On Some Hegelisms
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Arts & Letters Daily search results for “schopenhauer” (5)
2013-07-11 | John Gray against humanism. Influenced by Schopenhauer, Conrad, and an abiding cynicism, the philosopher has lost hope for mankind more »
2014-03-13 | Schopenhauer called noise 'the most impertinent of all forms of interruption,' and he was right. Thus our obsession with silence: the new luxury good more »
2013-10-23 | Schopenhauer dismissed dignity as 'the shibboleth of all perplexed and empty-headed moralists.' But the notion has been revived as a liberal ideal more »
2010-01-01 | 'Hitler kept Schopenhauer''s works in his knapsack through WWI, so he claimed. Too bad that he couldn''t actually spell the philosopher''s name' more »
2018-01-27 | Philosophers haven’t had much to say about middle age, but Schopenhauer is an exception. His view of the futility of desire -- getting what you want can make you unhappy -- illuminates the darkness of midlife more »
HEGEL
2011-01-01 | Darwin has displaced Hegel as a political thinker, suggests Francis Fukuyama. Is this the end of the end of history? more »
2016-08-02 | A philosophy of education. Influenced by Hegel and Darwin, John Dewey launched a revolution that overthrew the methods of the day. Hannah Arendt was not pleased more »
2017-07-26 | The tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Habermas has given way to slick performers. Is German philosophy exchanging profundity for popularity? more »
2014-12-04 | For an apostle of alienation, Herbert Marcuse sure was a media star. To think his unsettling blend of Hegel, Marx, and Freud ended up in Playboy more »
2011-01-01 | Hegel goes west. In the 1870s, an odd idea took hold on the American frontier: History had a direction, and it pointed toward St. Louis more »
2018-05-12 | For Plato, uprightness made us human; for Kant, people were inherently bent; Hegel worried about stiffness. Why does posture attract such philosophical attention? more »
2017-05-12 | Since Hegel, philosophers have declared the end of art, meaning that no further progress is possible. In that sense, it’s a good thing: Art is now free to be anything more »
KANT
2018-05-12 | For Plato, uprightness made us human; for Kant, people were inherently bent; Hegel worried about stiffness. Why does posture attract such philosophical attention? more »
2014-07-08 | What would Kant do? His maxims, applied to ethical quandaries, seem contradictory, incoherent, a mess. But there's another way more »
2012-11-29 | Harvard wants to enroll the next Homer, Kant, Dickinson. But how likely is it that future philosophers, critics, and artists will be admitted? more »
2015-02-23 | At least since Kant said the 'true strength of virtue is a tranquil mind,' anxiety has been something to avoid. Was he wrong? more »
2015-04-09 | Feeling distracted, as if advertisers, Facebook, and Apple had colonized your mental space? Is silence ever harder to find? Blame Kant more »
2015-08-21 | Kant is associated with optimism, ambition, progress. But he suffered from depression and “general morbid feelings.” His last word: “Enough” more »
2018-08-15 | Kant believed that beautiful art “must always show a certain dignity in itself.” Alfred Brendel disagrees. He believes in musical jokes more »
2018-09-14 | In 1791, a depressed Austrian woman wrote to Kant seeking advice. She later killed herself. Oh, the folly of asking philosophers for practical advice more »
2015-04-18 | John Searle has a bone to pick with Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and Kant. He blames them for the basic mistake of modern epistemology more »
2017-01-14 | Because the study of logic ended with Aristotle, Kant believed, the field had run its course. But what was logic for in the first place? more »
2016-04-22 | Philosophy has been overrun by Kant and by moralistic rules. We need a version that appeals to people — we need a return to Hume more »
2018-09-06 | Hobbes, Hume, and Kant alike sympathetic to the thought that “there must be something more,” and sensitive to the limits of speculating about God more »
2015-05-13 | From the Greek philosophers to Kant and beyond, theories of the cosmos have been proposed and discarded. Has the expansive debate finally slowed? more »
2016-05-20 | Kant declared fashion "foolish." To Kierkegaard, outer garments kept us from ascertaining inner truth. But clothes are a form of thought, freighted with meaning more »
2017-07-26 | The tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Habermas has given way to slick performers. Is German philosophy exchanging profundity for popularity? more »
2017-11-02 | Kant thought entire civilizations incapable of philosophy. Derrida said China had no philosophy, only thought. Why did Western philosophy turn its back on the world? more »
BENTHAM
2018-02-17 | The comprehensive John Stuart Mill. He was out to combine Bentham with poetry, the Enlightenment with Romanticism, and to span the entire philosophy of his time more »
2015-09-25 | The science of well-being is a pernicious project based on a mistaken assumption: that we can engineer our own happiness. Blame Jeremy Bentham more »
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