The Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer is a German philosopher, usually famous for his pessimism about life as “a pendulum that swings between pain and boredom.” Schopenhauer actually lived alone and immersed for the greater part of his life, but his loneliness or personal suffering was not, as some think, a primary reason for formulating his pessimistic views of life. On the contrary, Schopenhauer's life - at least in its beginning - was not as bad as we might imagine, and it can be said that many opportunities were available to him to live a quiet academic and bourgeois life that satisfies the masses of people. of modern and ancient languages, as he went to dance and theater parties in his youth, His mother Joanna also set up a salon attended by many intellectuals, including the great German poet Goethe, but Arthur was constantly at odds with his mother, especially after his father's death. Schopenhauer later obtained his doctorate from the University of Berlin, and he was destined to have a quiet teaching career had he not chosen - stubbornly, courageous and perhaps naive - to give his lectures at the same time during which the most prominent German philosopher at the time, Georg Hegel, was giving his lectures, no one listened to Schopenhauer Who decided to retire from teaching and devote himself to writing. Schopenhauer offered his extremely insightful views on many issues, from epistemology and philosophy of science to philosophy of ethics and art, and he was careful in his thinking, following the example of the German philosopher Kant the “Great” as he liked to describe him, particularly in his strict self-criticism of his ideas. He also remained loyal to philosophy, resenting those who make it an "instrument of state purposes from above, and personal purposes from below". And he was firm in his conviction that he had accomplished his philosophical work not for his contemporaries or for the people of his country, but for humanity, because of his belief that everything of value needed a long time to gain its legitimacy. of moral authority) even daring to describe the latter as a “charlatan” and “mentally degenerate.”