The Wisdom of a Pessimist - Arthur Schopenhauer

access transcripts of our videos as well as galleries of the art we use in the videos by visiting academyof ideas. com there is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view in looking upon the world as a kind of hell and in confining one's efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire at the age of 21 the philosopher Friedrich nche was browsing a bookstore when he stumbled upon Arthur schopenhauer's philosophical treaty the world as will and representation the chance discovery of this book would radically change n's life or as he wrote I don't know what demon whispered to me take this book home back at home I threw myself into the corner of a sofa with my new treasure and began to let that Dynamic dismal genius work on me nche was not the only great thinker influenced by schopenhauer at an early age in his late teenage years Carl Young searched for thinkers who could satisfy his intense thirst for knowledge and in his autobiography memories dreams and Reflections he wrote that the great find resulting from my researches was schopenhauer he was the first to speak of the suffering of the world which visibly and glaringly surrounds us and of confusion passion evil here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundaments of the universe he spoke neither of the all good and all wise Providence of a Creator nor of the harmony of the cosmos but stated bluntly that a fundamental flaw underlay the sorrowful course of human history and the cruelty of nature in this video we explore schopenhauer's pessimistic view of the world and his thoughts on how to respond to the sufferings and evils of Life subject to the limitation of human knowledge My Philosophy is the real solution of the Enigma of the world wrote schopenhauer shopen how's philosophical goal was a lofty one in his words he wanted to lay bare the true nature of the World by obtaining knowledge of the ultimate and foundational reality underlying all phenomena this transcendental reality which is posited to exist beyond space and time and to eternally underwrite all that exists is often referred to by philosophers as the ground of being the reason schopenhauer wanted to uncover the true nature of reality is because he thought that in doing so he could understand why our world is full of so much misery and evil or as he wrote not merely that the world exists but still more that it is such a miserable and Melancholy world is the tormenting problem of metaphysics the problem that confronts us when we tackle metaphysical questions is that our experience of the world is confined to our sense perceptions when we perceive a tree a bird a mountain or another human being we see only outer appearances and not the Inner Essence or foundational reality that manifests them our Perceptions in other words cannot penetrate beyond the surface of things because of this problem the philosopher Emanuel Kant proposed that it is impossible for us to arrive at knowledge of the true nature of reality or in his terminology we cannot obtain knowledge of things in themselves what things may be in themselves I know not because a thing is never presented to me otherwise than as an appearance explained Kant in critique of pure reason or as Roger scrutin wrote in Kant a brief Insight how can I know the world as it is I can have knowledge of the World As It Seems since that is merely knowledge of my present perceptions but can I have knowledge of the world that is not just knowledge of how it seems to put the question in slightly more general form can I have knowledge of the world that is not just knowledge of my own point of view according to schopenhauer kant's error in the fact that he overlooked that there is one object in the world whose inner nature we directly experience that being ourselves when we look at ourselves in a mirror we perceive our body in the same way we perceive other objects as a mere appearance but we also experience our mind and body from within and this experience in the words of schopenhauer is infinitely more familiar and more intimate than anything else to obtain knowledge of the true nature of reality we should therefore direct our focus in Inward and explore the nature of our inner reality or as schopenhauer wrote on the path of objective knowledge we shall never get Beyond appearances we shall therefore remain at the outside of things we shall never be able to penetrate into their inner nature and investigate what they are in themselves so far I agree with Kant but we ourselves are the thing in itself consequently a way from within stands open to us to that real inner nature of things to which we cannot penetrate from without it is so to speak a Subterranean passage which places us at once within the Fortress which it was impossible to take by assault from without when we look within what we discover is that our inner nature is characterized by what schopenhauer called an endless striving we want need wish long and yearn for one thing after the other whether conscious or unconscious Desiring and striving constitute the essence of our being lies at the foundation of all our actions and according to shopen Hower all our desires exist in the service of two ends survival and reproduction our drive to survive spawns the desires for well-being Health pleasure and comfort while our drive to propagate ourselves produces sexual desire and a striving for status recognition money and fame or as schopenhauer States the human being Wills unconditionally to preserve his existence wills it unconditionally free of pain Wills the greatest possible amount of well-being and wills every pleasure of which he is capable in observing the behavior of other organisms it is apparent that their Essence too is defined by an endless striving for survival and reproduction as schopenhauer wrote what nature aims at and attains in man is indeed essentially the same and not more than what is also its goal in the brutes nourishment and propagation or as he put it elsewhere in the case of the plant in insect animal as well as the human being willing and striving constitute their entire Essence schopenhauer went as far as to argue that a sort of Proto willing and striving can be observed in the inorganic realm for example in the processes of gravitation magnetism and Crystal formation the elementary forces and energies that make up inorganic objects he therefore proposed share the same inner nature as human beings and all other organisms or as he wrote now let us consider attentively and observe the powerful irresistible impulse with which masses of water rush downwards the persistence in determination with which the magnet always turns back to the North Pole the Keen Desire with which iron flies to the magnet the vehemence with which the poles of the electric current strive for reunion if we observe all this it will not cost us a great effort of the imagination to recognize once more our own inner nature even at so great a distance it is that which in US pursues its Ends by the light of knowledge but here in the feeblest of its phenomena only strives blindly in a dull one-sided and unalterable manner as schopenhauer concluded that all things in this world have willing and striving as their Inner Essence he proposed that the ground of being or foundational reality which transcends and manifests this world is a metaphysical Force which has endless willing and striving as a fundamental Essence he called this Force the will to live or simply the will and in his words the will is the being in itself of everything in the world and is the sole kernel of every phenomenon or as he further theorized everything presses and strives towards existence let anyone consider this Universal desire for life let him see the infinite willingness facility and exuberance with which the will to live presses impetuously into existence under a million forms everywhere and at every moment in such phenomena then it becomes visible that I am right in declaring that the will to live is that which cannot be further explained but lies at the foundation of all explanation While others have proposed that the ground of being which transcends and creates this world is conscious or intelligent schopenhauer described the will as unconscious or as he put it it is a blind impulse to live to exist or as Christopher janway further clarifies the will the world manifests itself endlessly as individuals which endlessly strive nothing in the world strives or tends as it does for any ultimate reason it is not to fulfill any rational purpose or because there is a good end state to be attained that plants or crystals grow or that objects gravitate towards the Earth and since throughout nature the striving for existence is blind not essentially mediated by consciousness this must apply also to my Essence the true core of the personality is not the self-conscious eye or subject of knowledge but rather the will which is fundamentally blind and without knowledge we each exist as an individual organism that blindly and for no good reason gravitates towards survival and sexual reproduction the individual human being perseveres in living and has an urge to bring further individuals into life but does not really know why as everything in this world is a manifestation of the will schopenhauer argued that individuality and separateness is an illusion in reality all is one or as the philosopher Frederick ceston wrote influenced by Indian thought he read a Latin translation of a Persian version of the upanishads schopenhauer declared that the multiplicity of phenomena is only appearance Maya they are the mere appearances of the one will which is in truth the sole reality yet as all organisms are trapped in the confines of Maya instead of perceiving that all is one egoism is the natural state from its own perspective every organism is situated at the center of the universe and instinctively feels that its own Survival and well-being is more important than the survival and well-being of everything else this disposition of egoism is essential to everything in nature wrote schopenhauer or as he put it elsewhere the human being makes himself the center of the world in considers his own existence and well-being before everything else in fact from the natural standpoint he is ready for this to sacrifice everything else he is ready to annihilate the world in order to maintain his own self that drop in the ocean a little longer as the resources needed for survival and reproduction are limited in their state of egoism all organisms are locked in constant conflict as the ancient Greek philosopher heraclitus put it war is the father of all to survive every organism must kill and consume some other life form be it plant insect or animal and in the competition to secure reproductive mates violence and deception are the norm as schopenhauer put it every organism competes with the others for matter space and time it speaks to the genius of schopenhauer that he penned his ideas nearly half a century before Charles Darwin spoke of the struggle for existence and of the competition and conflict that drives natural andx ual selection or as Carl Young wrote schopenhauer's philosophy was confirmed not only by the early observations I had made of diseased and dying fishes of mangy foxes Frozen or starved birds of the pitiless tragedies concealed in a flowery Meadow insects that tore each other apart piece by piece and so on my experiences with human beings too had taught me anything rather than belief in man's original goodness and decency from our egoistic perspective all this conflict and cruelty is the product of individual organisms preying upon one another however since every organism is a manifestation of the will in reality what is unfolding in this world is the one will pressing itself into existence under the guise of different life forms only to then fight and feed on itself the will must live on itself wrote schopenhauer for there exists nothing beside it and it is a hungry will in this world the will is both the Hunter and the prey the torturer and the tortured the deceiver and the deceived the Killer and the killed or as Julian young writes the world will is the perpetrator of all this horror so it is evil but since it is the world it is also the victim of its own evil it Bears all the suffering it itself creates since every part of the world is part of the world organism every time an animal sinks its teeth in the flesh of another the world will sinks its teeth in its own flesh as this world is full of so much cruelty evil and suffering the idea that it was created by a moral and loving God is for schopenhauer absurd the will wrote schopenhauer is not Divine but demonic although the will is a blind and amoral force and not a being if one were to personify it as a deity one would in the words of schopenhauer have to admit that a God who should presume to transform himself into such a world would certainly have been inevitably troubled and tormented by the devil or as he continued for whence did Dante get the material for his hell if not from this actual world of ours the world is hell and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it but it is not only in the struggle to survive and reproduce that the wretchedness of Life presents itself for in our daily existence the endless striving and Desiring that constitutes the essence of our being predestines us to suffer every desire is an Express of something we want need or lack and thus every desire is accompanied by some degree of dissatisfaction frustration or pain if we fail to satisfy a desire it continues to make us suffer but if we satisfy it our only reward is a brief period of respite before other desires arise to fill the temporary void but even in those rare moments We Exist absent any desire instead of experiencing peace of mind all too often we experience anxiety unrest or boredom because we are at Essence beings who endlessly desire and strive lasting satisfaction or happiness is an impossibility suffering and dissatisfaction is our default state or as schopenhauer explained all willing Springs from lack from deficiency and thus from suffering fulfillment brings this to an end yet for one wish that is fulfilled there remain at least 10 that are denied further Desiring lasts a long time demands and requests go on to Infinity fulfillment is short and meded out sparingly but even the final satisfaction itself is only apparent the wish fulfilled at once makes way for a new one no attained object of willing can give satisfaction that lasts and no longer declines therefore so long as our Consciousness is filled by our will so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with its constant hopes and fears so long as we are the subject of willing we never obtain lasting happiness for peace to make our situation even worse the final goal which awaits Us in this Perpetual cycle of Desiring and striving is death be it by the slow decay of our mind and body or an unexpected illness or accident seen as a whole even the best lived life is a tragedy life is deeply steeped in suffering and we cannot escape from it writes schopenhauer our entrance to it takes place amid tears at bottom its course is always tragic and its end and is even more so for those who resonate with this pessimistic vision of the world and the Human Condition schopenhauer advised there is only one thing to do we must remove ourselves from the cycle of endless Desiring and striving that condemns us to a life of suffering one way to do this is through aesthetic appreciation for when we experience Something Beautiful be it a work of art a natural landscape a song or a philosophical idea we are temporarily torn away from our egotistical preoccupation with desire and for a brief time liberated from our default dissatisfied state or as schopenhauer wrote in the world as will and representation aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful consists to a large extent in the fact that we are raised for the moment above all willing above all desires and cares we are so to speak rid of ourselves and we know that these moments when delivered from the fierce pressure of the will we emerge as it were from the heavy atmosphere of the Earth are the most Blissful that we experience from this we can infer how blessed must be the life of a man whose will is silenced not for a few moments as in the enjoyment of the beautiful but forever indeed completely extinguished except for the last glimmering spark that maintains the body and is extinguished with it if you would like to support our work become an aoi supporting member and access over 100 videos exclusive to members sign up for $5. 99 a month or $49.

99 a year at academyof ideas. com members while aesthetic appreciation provides brief respite from the torment of endless striving according to schopenhauer True Liberation lies in ethical renunciation this involves embracing a life of asceticism and self-denial rejecting the world and detaching ourselves from our desires by relinquishing the pursuit of their fulfillment schopenhauer referred to this aesthetic path as the denial of the will to live and in his words it involves ceasing to will anything guarding against attaching one's will to anything and seeking to confirm in oneself the greatest indifference to everything as the sexual impulse is the strongest and most powerful manifestation of the will the one that perpetuates this Earthly scene of horror schopenhauer maintained that voluntary and complete Chastity is the first step in asceticism or the denial of the will to live embracing a life of voluntary poverty renouncing material possessions and subsisting on the smallest and simplest of rations are also essential aspects of the aesthetic path the more one rejects desires and refrains from striving the closer one comes to attaining the only form of Peace possible in this world or as schopenhauer wrote of the aesthetic nothing can worry him anymore nothing more can excite him because he has cut all the Thousand threads of willing that keep us bound to the world and which as craving fear envy and anger drag us here and there in constant pain or as he continues every fulfillment of our wishes won from the world is only like the alms that keep the beggar alive today so that he may starve again tomorrow resignation on the other hand is like the inherited estate it frees its owner from All Care and anxiety forever schopenhauer's aestheticism is not an unrealizable philosophical ideal for throughout history there have existed individuals who have renounced this world and to varying degrees removed themselves from the endless cycle of Desiring and striving in search of lasting peace or as schopenhauer acknowledged what I have here described with a feeble tongue and only in general terms is no philosophical Fable invented by myself and only of today no it was the enviable life of so many Saints and beautiful souls among Christians and still more among Hindus and Buddhists and also among the Believers of other religions show sher's aesthetic solution however is unlikely to resonate with most of us Carl Young For example wrote that schopenhauer's somber picture of the world had my undivided approval but not the solution of the problem most of us do not want to reject this world and live absent goals and desires rather we want to cultivate the ability to embrace and affirm it and to throw ourselves headlong into life even with a full awareness of its sufferings tragedies and evils in in the next video we are going to explore n's response to schopenhauer and his ideas on how it is possible to live with an awareness of the terrible truths of existence and still say yes to life I had to struggle almost solely with my great teacher schopenhauer wrote n the goal of Academy of ideas is to empower the individual and promote Freedom become a supporting member to help us in our mission and access over 100 videos exclusive to members including our latest membership video on how to cultivate the discipline of great suffering sign up for $5. 99 a month or $49.

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