Και μιας και το όνομα του Thread είναι φιλοσοφία, ας μιλήσουμε λίγο για τον Arthur Schopenhauer:
Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788–September 21, 1860) was a
German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation,
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world. Schopenhauer's most influential work,
The World as Will and Representation, emphasized the role of man's basic motivation, which Schopenhauer called
will. Schopenhauer's analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, Schopenhauer favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of
Buddhism and
Vedanta.
Schopenhauer's
metaphysical analysis of will, his views on human motivation and desire, and his aphoristic writing style influenced many well-known thinkers, including
Friedrich Nietzsche[1],
Richard Wagner,
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Erwin Schrödinger,
Albert Einstein[2],
Sigmund Freud, and
Karl Kraus.
Psychology Schopenhauer was perhaps even more influential in his treatment of man's
psychology than he was in the realm of
philosophy.
Philosophers have not traditionally been impressed by the tribulations of
sex, but Schopenhauer addressed it and related concepts forthrightly:
...one ought rather to be surprised that a thing [sex] which plays throughout so important a part in human life has hitherto practically been disregarded by philosophers altogether, and lies before us as raw and untreated material.[12]
He gave a name to a
force within man which he felt had invariably precedence over reason: the Will to Live (
Wille zum Leben), defined as an inherent
drive within human beings, and indeed all creatures, to stay alive and to
reproduce.
Schopenhauer refused to conceive of love as either trifling or accidental, but rather understood it to be an immensely powerful force lying unseen within man's
psyche and dramatically shaping the
world:
The ultimate aim of all love affairs ... is more important than all other aims in man's life; and therefore it is quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which everyone pursues it.
What is decided by it is nothing less than the composition of the next generation ...[13]
These ideas foreshadowed
Darwin's discovery of evolution and
Freud's concepts of the
libido and the
unconscious mind.
[14]Views on women In Schopenhauer's essay "
Of Women" ("Über die Weiber"), he expressed his opposition to what he called "Teutonico-Christian stupidity" on female affairs. He claimed that "woman is by nature meant to obey", and opposed
Schiller's poem in honor of women, "Würde der Frauen" ("Dignity of Women"). The essay does give two compliments, however: that "women are decidedly more sober in their judgment than [men] are" and are more sympathetic to the suffering of others. However, the latter was discounted as weakness rather than humanitarian virtue.
In 1821, he fell in love with nineteen-year old opera singer, Caroline Richter (called Medon), and had a relationship with her for several years. He discarded marriage plans, however, writing, "Marrying means to halve one's rights and double one's duties", and "Marrying means, to grasp blindfold into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes." At the age of forty-three, in 1831, he again took interest in a younger woman, the seventeen-year-old Flora Weiss, who rejected him.
[19] Schopenhauer had generally liberal views on other social issues: he was strongly against taboos on issues like suicide and homosexuality, and condemned the treatment of African slaves. Schopenhauer held a high opinion of one woman,
Madame de Guyon, whose writings and biography he recommended.
Schopenhauer's controversial writing has influenced many, from
Nietzsche to nineteenth-century
feminists. Schopenhauer's
biological analysis of the difference between the sexes, and their separate roles in the struggle for survival and reproduction, anticipates some of the claims that were later ventured by
sociobiologists and
evolutionary psychologists in the twentieth century.[
citation needed]
After the elderly Schopenhauer sat for a sculpture portrait by
Elisabet Ney, he told Richard Wagner's friend
Malwida von Meysenbug,
"I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man."
[20]Schopenhauer possessed a distinctly hierarchical conception of the human
races, attributing civilizational primacy to the northern, "white races", due to their sensitivity and creativity:
The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmans, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilization.[16]
Despite this, he was adamantly against differing treatment of races, was fervently anti-slavery, and supported the abolitionist movement in the United States. He describes the treatment of "[our] innocent black brothers whom force and injustice have delivered into [the slave-master's] devilish clutches" as "belonging to the blackest pages of mankind's criminal record."[17] Schopenhauer additionally maintained a marked metaphysical and political
anti-Judaism.
Schopenhauer argued that Christianity constituted a revolt against the materialistic basis of Judaism, exhibiting an Indian-influenced ethics reflecting the Aryan-Vedic theme of spiritual "self-conquest." This he saw as opposed to what he held to be the ignorant drive toward earthly utopianism and superficiality of a worldly Jewish spirit:While all other religions endeavor to explain to the people by symbols the metaphysical significance of life, the religion of the Jews is entirely immanent and furnishes nothing but a mere war-cry in the struggle with other nations.[18]
Schopenhauer believed that a person inherited level of intellect through one's mother, and personal character through one's father.[21] Schopenhauer quotes Horace's saying, "From the brave and good are the brave descended" (Odes, iv, 4, 29) and Shakespeare's line from Cymbeline, "Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base" (IV, 2) to reinforce his hereditarian argument.[22] On the question of eugenics, Schopenhauer wrote:
With our knowledge of the complete unalterability both of character and of mental faculties, we are led to the view that a real and thorough improvement of the human race might be reached not so much from outside as from within, not so much by theory and instruction as rather by the path of generation. Plato had something of the kind in mind when, in the fifth book of his Republic, he explained his plan for increasing and improving his warrior caste. If we could castrate all scoundrels and stick all stupid geese in a convent, and give men of noble character a whole harem, and procure men, and indeed thorough men, for all girls of intellect and understanding, then a generation would soon arise which would produce a better age than that of Pericles.[23]
In another context, Schopenhauer reiterated his antidemocratic-eugenic thesis: "If you want Utopian plans, I would say:
the only solution to the problem is the despotism of the wise and noble members of a genuine aristocracy, a genuine nobility, achieved by mating the most magnanimous men with the cleverest and most gifted women. This proposal constitutes my Utopia and my Platonic Republic".[24] Analysts (e.g., Keith Ansell-Pearson) have suggested that Schopenhauer's advocacy of anti-egalitarianism and eugenics influenced the neo-aristocratic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, who initially considered Schopenhauer his mentor.Γενικά ένας συνδυασμός επιθυμητών και μή επιθυμητών χαρακτηριστικών για εμένα. Έχω διαβάσει την Εριστική Διαλεκτική και μπορώ να πω πως τα τεχνάσματα που αναφέρονται εκεί είναι διαχρονικά και πραγματιστικά.
Επίσης μερικά αποφθεύγματα ως τροφή για σκέψη:
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A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
Compassion is the basis of morality.
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.
In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.
Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.
Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.
Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.
Music is the melody whose text is the world.
National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.
Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.
Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.
Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.
Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people.
Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.
Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.
With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is[FONT="] hypocrisy.[/FONT]
Edited by Tadaka, 26 June 2009 - 02:11.
