Suffering, Rage, Perseverance
_________________________
To the learned
men and
philosophers of
Europe: for
you, a windbag
like Fichte is
the equal of
Kant, the
greatest
thinker of all
time, and a
worthless
barefaced
charlatan like
Hegel is
considered to
be a profound
thinker. I have
therefore not
written for
you.
_________________________
If Arthur Schopenhauer were alive today, would he be a candidate
for psychotherapy? Absolutely! He was highly symptomatic. In
«About Me» he laments that nature endowed him with an anxious
disposition and a «suspiciousness, sensitiveness, vehemence, and
pride in a measure that is hardly compatible with the equanimity of
a philosopher.»
In graphic language he describes his symptoms.
Inherited from my father is the anxiety which I myself curse
and combat with all the force of my will.... As a young man I
was tormented by imaginary illnesses.... When I was studying
in Berlin I thought I was a consumptive.... I was haunted by
the fear of being pressed into military service.... From Naples I
was driven by the fear of smallpox and from Berlin by the fear
of cholera.... In Verona I was seized by the idea I had taken
poisoned snuff...in Manheim I was overcome by an
indescribable feeling of fear without any external cause.... For
years I was haunted by the fear of criminal proceedings.... If
there was a noise at night I jumped out of bed and seized sword
and pistols that I always had ready loaded.... I always have an
anxious concern that causes me to look for dangers where none
exist: it magnifies the tiniest vexation and makes association
with people most difficult for me.
Hoping to quell his suspiciousness and chronic fear, he
employed a host of precautions and rituals: he hid gold coins and
valuable interest–bearing coupons in old letters and other secret
places for emergency use, he filed personal notes under false
headings to confuse snoopers, he was fastidiously tidy, he
requested that he always be served by the same bank clerk, he
allowed no one to touch his statue of the Buddha.
His sexual drive was too strong for comfort, and, even as a
young man, he deplored being controlled by his animal passions.
At the age of thirty–six a mysterious course of illness confined him
to his room for an entire year. A physician and medical historian
suggested in 1906 that his illness had been syphilis, basing the
diagnosis only upon the nature of the medication prescribed,
coupled with Schopenhauer`s history of unusually great sexual
activity.
Arthur longed to be released from the grip of sexuality. He
savored his moments of serenity when he was able to observe the
world with calm in spite of the lust tormenting his corporeal self.
He compared sexual passion to the daylight which obscures the
stars. As he aged he welcomed the decline of sexual passion and
the accompanying tranquillity.
Since his deepest passion was his work, his strongest and
most persistent fear was that he should lose the financial means
enabling him to live the life of the intellect. Even into old age he
blessed the memory of his father, who had made such a life
possible, and he spent much time and energy guarding his money
and pondering his investments. Accordingly, he was alarmed by
any unrest threatening his investments and became
ultraconservative in his politics. The 1848 rebellion, which swept
over Germany as well as the rest of Europe, terrified him. When
soldiers entered his building to gain a vantage point from which to
fire on the rebellious populace in the street, he offered them his
opera glasses to increase the accuracy of their rifle fire. In his will,
twelve years later, he left almost his entire estate to a fund
established for the welfare of Prussian soldiers disabled fighting
that rebellion.
His anxiety–driven letters about business matters were often
laced with anger and threats. When the banker who handled the
Schopenhauer family money suffered a disastrous financial setback
and, to escape bankruptcy, offered all his investors only a small
fraction of their investment, Schopenhauer threatened him with
such draconian legal consequences that the banker returned to him
70 percent of his money while paying other investors (including
Schopenhauer`s mother and sister) an even smaller portion than
originally proposed. His abusive letters to his publisher eventually
resulted in a permanent rupture of their relationship. The publisher
wrote: «I shall not accept any letters from you which in their divine
rudeness and rusticity suggest a coachman rather than a
philosopher.... I only hope that my fears that by printing your
work I am printing only waste paper will not come true.»
Schopenhauer`s rage was legendary: rage at financiers who
handled his investments, at publishers who could not sell his
books, at the dolts who attempted to engage him in conversations,
at the bipeds who regarded themselves his equal, at those who
coughed at concerts, and at the press for ignoring him. But the real
rage, the white–hot rage whose vehemence still astounds us and
made Schopenhauer a pariah in his intellectual community was his
rage toward contemporary thinkers, particularly the two leading
lights of nineteenth–century philosophy: Fichte and Hegel.
In a book published twenty years after Hegel succumbed to
cholera during the Berlin epidemic, he referred to Hegel as «a
commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive, and ignorant charlatan,
who with unparalleled effrontery, compiled a system of crazy
nonsense that was trumpeted abroad as immortal wisdom by his
mercenary followers.»
Such intemperate outbursts about other philosophers cost
him heavily. In 1837 he was awarded first prize for an essay on the
freedom of the will in a competition sponsored by the Royal
Norwegian Society for Learning. Schopenhauer showed a childlike
delight in the prize (it was his very first honor) and greatly vexed
the Norwegian consul in Frankfurt by impatiently clamoring for
his medal. However, the very next year, his essay on the basis of
morality submitted to a competition sponsored by the Royal
Danish Society for Learning met a different fate. Though the
argument of his essay was excellent and though it was the only
essay submitted, the judges refused to award him the prize because
of his intemperate remarks about Hegel. The judges commented,
«We cannot pass over in silence the fact that several outstanding
philosophers of the modern age are referred to in so improper a
manner as to cause serious and just offense.»
Over the years many have agreed entirely with
Schopenhauer`s opinion that Hegel`s prose is unnecessarily
obfuscating. In fact, he is so difficult to read that an old joke
circulating around philosophy departments is that the most vexing
and awesome philosophical question is not «does life have
meaning?» or «what is consciousness?» but «who will teach Hegel
this year?» Still, the level, the vehemence of Schopenhauer`s rage
set him apart from all other critics.
The more his work was neglected, the shriller he became,
which, in turn, caused further neglect and, for many, made him an
object of mockery. Yet, despite his anxiety and loneliness,
Schopenhauer survived and continued to exhibit all the outward
signs of personal self–sufficiency. And he persevered in his work,
remaining a productive scholar until the end of his life. He never
lost faith in himself. He compared himself to a young oak tree who
looked as ordinary and unimportant as other plants. «But let him
alone: he will not die. Time will come and bring those who know
how to value him.» He predicted his genius would ultimately have
a great influence upon future generations of thinkers. And he was
right; all that he predicted has come to pass.