I have been both entranced by and disenchanted with Schopenhauer. My initial distaste focused on his conception of will and idea as being in constant struggle with each other. After that I resisted his corollary insistence that we must completely disentangle ourselves from the will to live. (How thoroughly opposed to Nietzsche, who I also have serious problems with.)
I went back and forth about whether I wished to listen to Schopenhauer's often eloquent and insightful writing, or whether I really needed to delete his LibriVox file and listen to Pandora. I stuck it out, though the last few chapters were a challenge.
Then I came to the last section, Fourth Book, Second Aspect, Paragraph 69 and 70, and it all came together. I won't attempt to explain how it does suddenly seem to neatly fit, like a *** that finally falls into place. After all, it takes Schopenhauer 515 pages to get here. Who am I to think I can summarize him in a blog. I leave with two takeaways:
1) It has only been two days since I finished The World as Will and Idea, and I see changes in my behavior that I can only trace to this book. I will conduct two experiments: 1) I will observe my behavior and see if the changes I observe weaken or strengthen. I suspect that I will see one or the other.
2) I will eventually listen to volume two. However, most of that volume is a critique of Kant, and I suspect I do not have sufficient grounding in Kant to make that volume useful to me. My next task is to revisit Plato, going through his dialogues in chronological order. That may be useful, since Schopenhauer's philosophy, while not Platonic, has much in common with Plato. Then, Kant.
A final note: I listened to Schopenhauer's The Art of Controversy (or The Art of Being Right) which leads me to wonder how much of Schopenhauer's argument he believes, and how much he simply uses to convince his reader. This same problem crops up in Plato.
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The
World As Will And Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer
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Title: The World As Will And Idea
(Vol. 1 of 3)
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer
Release Date: December 27, 2011
[Ebook #38427]
