200-414: Arthur Schopenhauer ( / ˈ ʃ oʊ p ən h aʊər / SHOH -pən-how-ər ; German: [ˈaʁtuːɐ̯ ˈʃoːpn̩haʊɐ] ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the manifestation of a blind and irrational noumenal will. Building on
400-556: A Protestant background, neither of them was very religious; both supported the French Revolution , were republicans , cosmopolitans and Anglophiles . When Gdańsk became part of Prussia in 1793, Heinrich moved to Hamburg —a free city with a republican constitution. His firm continued trading in Danzig where most of their extended families remained. Adele , Arthur's only sibling, was born on 12 July 1797. In 1797, Arthur
600-501: A polyamorous relationship that he called "tetragamy". He had an on-and-off relationship with a young dancer, Caroline Richter (she also used the surname Medon after one of her ex-lovers). They met when he was 33 and she was 19 and working at the Berlin Opera. She had already had numerous lovers and a son out of wedlock, and later gave birth to another son, this time to an unnamed foreign diplomat (she soon had another pregnancy but
800-621: A prophetic dream that urged him to escape from the city. As he arrived in his new home in Frankfurt , he supposedly had another supernatural experience , an apparition of his dead father and his mother, who was still alive. This experience led him to spend some time investigating paranormal phenomena and magic . He was quite critical of the available studies and claimed that they were mostly ignorant or fraudulent, but he did believe that there are authentic cases of such phenomena and tried to explain them through his metaphysics as manifestations of
1000-467: A "charlatan". In the English language, this work is known under three different titles. Although English publications about Schopenhauer played a role in the recognition of his fame as a philosopher in later life (1851 until his death in 1860) and a three volume translation by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, titled The World as Will and Idea , appeared already in 1883–1886, the first English translation of
1200-461: A "presentation" of objects in the theatre of our own mind. Vorstellung can refer to what is presented or to the process of presenting it. Schopenhauer argues that what does the "presenting" – what sets the world as 'presentation' before one – is the cognizant subject itself. The primary sense of Vorstellung used by Schopenhauer, Aquila writes, is that of what is presented to a subject: the presented object ( qua presented, as opposed to what it
1400-477: A "terrible Procrustean bed into which he violently forces everything in the world and everything that happens in humans." The second volume consisted of several essays expanding topics covered in the first. Most important are his reflections on death and his theory on sexuality , which saw it as a manifestation of the whole will making sure that it will live on and depriving humans of their reason and sanity in their longing for their loved ones. Less successful
1600-460: A Buddhist text he regarded Buddhism as the most distinguished religion. His studies on Hindu and Buddhist texts were constrained by the lack of adequate literature, and the latter were mostly restricted to Theravada Buddhism . He also claimed that he formulated most of his ideas independently, and only later realized the similarities with Buddhism. Schopenhauer read the Latin translation and praised
1800-672: A Christian to come to God through Christ without human mediation. He also maintained that this principle recognizes Christ as prophet , priest, and king and that his priesthood is shared with his people. Protestants who adhere to the Nicene Creed believe in three persons ( God the Father , God the Son , and the God the Holy Spirit ) as one God. Movements that emerged around the time of
2000-465: A Journey in the Years 1803, 1804, and 1805 , a description of their family tour of Europe, which quickly became a hit. She found his dissertation incomprehensible and said it was unlikely that anyone would ever buy a copy. In a fit of temper Arthur told her that people would read his work long after the "rubbish" she wrote was totally forgotten. In fact, although they considered her novels of dubious quality,
2200-529: A bad dream from which we are, thankfully, awaking." Schopenhauer concludes the Fourth Book with the following statement: "...to those in whom the will has turned and denied itself, this very real world of ours, with all its Suns and Milky Ways , is—nothing." In a footnote, Schopenhauer associates this 'nothing' with the Prajñāpāramitā of Buddhism: the point where subject and object no longer exist. At
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#17327724417662400-595: A broader sense, referring to a member of any Western church which subscribed to the main Protestant principles. A Protestant is an adherent of any of those Christian bodies that separated from the Church of Rome during the Reformation, or of any group descended from them. During the Reformation, the term protestant was hardly used outside of German politics. People who were involved in the religious movement used
2600-690: A civil servant twelve years younger than her; he considered the relationship an act of infidelity to his father's memory. He settled for a while in Rudolstadt , hoping that no army would pass through the small town. He spent his time in solitude, hiking in the mountains and the Thuringian Forest and writing his dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason . Schopenhauer completed his dissertation at about
2800-515: A demonstration for the a priori nature of causality. Kant openly admitted that it was Hume 's skeptical assault on causality that motivated the critical investigations in Critique of Pure Reason and gave an elaborate proof to show that causality is a priori . After G. E. Schulze had made it plausible that Kant had not disproven Hume's skepticism, it was up to those loyal to Kant's project to prove this important matter. The difference between
3000-604: A distance because Johanna warned him about her son's depressive and combative nature, or because Goethe was then on bad terms with Arthur's language instructor and roommate, Franz Passow . Schopenhauer was also captivated by the beautiful Karoline Jagemann , mistress of Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach , and he wrote to her his only known love poem. Despite his later celebration of asceticism and negative views of sexuality, Schopenhauer occasionally had sexual affairs—usually with women of lower social status, such as servants, actresses, and sometimes even paid prostitutes. In
3200-483: A friendly welcome to Austrian soldiers who wanted to shoot revolutionaries from his window and as they were leaving he gave one of the officers his opera glasses to help him monitor rebels. The rebellion passed without any loss to Schopenhauer and he later praised Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz for restoring order. He even modified his will, leaving a large part of his property to a Prussian fund that helped soldiers who became invalids while fighting rebellion in 1848 or
3400-641: A great honor to a young philosopher, who was finally acknowledged by his intellectual hero. They mostly discussed Goethe's newly published (and somewhat lukewarmly received) work on color theory . Schopenhauer soon started writing his own treatise on the subject, On Vision and Colors , which in many points differed from his teacher's. Although they remained polite towards each other, their growing theoretical disagreements—and especially Schopenhauer's extreme self-confidence and tactless criticisms—soon made Goethe become distant again and after 1816 their correspondence became less frequent. Schopenhauer later admitted that he
3600-474: A human's most familiar designation for the concept that can also be signified by other words such as desire , striving , wanting , effort and urging . Schopenhauer's philosophy holds that all nature, including man, is the expression of an insatiable will . It is through the will, the in-itself of all existence, that humans find all their suffering. Desire for more is what causes this suffering. He argues that only aesthetic pleasure creates momentary escape from
3800-591: A less critical reading of the Bible developed in the United States—leading to a " fundamentalist " reading of Scripture. Christian fundamentalists read the Bible as the "inerrant, infallible " Word of God, as do the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches, but interpret it in a literalist fashion without using the historical-critical method . Methodists and Anglicans differ from Lutherans and
4000-494: A letter to his friend Anthime he claims that such affairs continued even in his mature age and admits that he had two out-of-wedlock daughters (born in 1819 and 1836), both of whom died in infancy. In their youthful correspondence Arthur and Anthime were somewhat boastful and competitive about their sexual exploits—but Schopenhauer seemed aware that women usually did not find him very charming or physically attractive, and his desires often remained unfulfilled. He left Weimar to become
4200-512: A lower-quality version of Kant's and considering it useful only because Fichte's poor arguments unintentionally highlighted some failings of Kantianism. He also attended the lectures of the famous Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher , whom he also quickly came to dislike. His notes and comments on Schleiermacher's lectures show that Schopenhauer was becoming very critical of religion and moving towards atheism . He learned by self-directed reading; besides Plato, Kant and Fichte he also read
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#17327724417664400-414: A necessary connection to the one before, presupposing only that the reader has remembered it ... although we need to dissect our one and only thought into many discussions for the purpose of communication, this is an artificial form and in no way essential to the thought itself. Presentation and comprehension are both made easier by the separation of four principal perspectives into four Books, connecting what
4600-462: A philosopher, and even in Berlin he attended more lectures in sciences than in philosophy. During his days at Göttingen, he spent considerable time studying, but also continued his flute playing and social life. His friends included Friedrich Gotthilf Osann , Karl Witte , Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen , and William Backhouse Astor Sr. He arrived at the newly founded University of Berlin for
4800-403: A pleasure tour, Heinrich used the opportunity to visit some of his business associates abroad. Heinrich presented Arthur with a choice: he could either stay at home to begin preparations for university or travel with them to further his merchant education. Arthur chose to travel with them. He deeply regretted his choice later because the merchant training was very tedious. He spent twelve weeks of
5000-465: A poem to Staatsminister von Voigt, 27 September 1816. The opening sentence of Schopenhauer's work is Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung : "the world is my representation" (alternatively, "idea" or "presentation"). In the first book, Schopenhauer considers the world as representation. Specifically, the first book deals with representation subject to the principle of sufficient reason (German: Satz vom Grunde ). In Book III, Schopenhauer returns to considering
5200-415: A posthumous impact across various disciplines, including philosophy, literature, and science. His writing on aesthetics , morality , and psychology have influenced many thinkers and artists. Arthur Schopenhauer's paternal grandfather, Andreas Schopenhauer [ de ] (1720–1793), was a wealthy merchant in Danzig. Arthur Schopenhauer's paternal grandmother, Anna Renata Schopenhauer (1726–1804),
5400-405: A prerequisite for an academic career. His mother moved away, with her daughter Adele, to Weimar —then the centre of German literature —to enjoy social life among writers and artists. Arthur and his mother did not part on good terms. In one letter, she wrote: "You are unbearable and burdensome, and very hard to live with; all your good qualities are overshadowed by your conceit, and made useless to
5600-472: A priest with possessions, such as a pope, was in such grave sin), may have translated the Bible into vernacular English , and preached anticlerical and biblically centred reforms. His rejection of a real divine presence in the elements of the Eucharist foreshadowed Huldrych Zwingli's similar ideas in the 16th century. Wycliffe's admirers came to be known as " Lollards ". Beginning in the first decade of
5800-782: A revolt erupted. Hussites defeated five continuous crusades proclaimed against them by the Pope . Later theological disputes caused a split within the Hussite movement. Utraquists maintained that both the bread and the wine should be administered to the people during the Eucharist. Another major faction were the Taborites , who opposed the Utraquists in the Battle of Lipany during the Hussite Wars . There were two separate parties among
6000-402: A satirical poem about one of the schoolmasters. Although Arthur claimed that he left voluntarily, his mother's letter indicates that he may have been expelled. Arthur spent two years as a merchant in honor of his dead father. During this time, he had doubts about being able to start a new life as a scholar. Most of his prior education was as a practical merchant and he had trouble learning Latin;
6200-482: A special relationship to the will. Other artworks objectify the will only indirectly by means of the Ideas (the adequate objectification of the will), and our world is nothing but the appearance of the Ideas in multiplicity resulting from those Ideas entering into the principium individuationis . Music, Schopenhauer asserts, passes over the Ideas and is therefore independent of the phenomenal world. He writes: Thus music
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6400-885: A student at the University of Göttingen in 1809. There are no written reasons about why Schopenhauer chose that university instead of the then more famous University of Jena , but Göttingen was known as more modern and scientifically oriented, with less attention given to theology. Law or medicine were usual choices for young men of Schopenhauer's status who also needed career and income; he chose medicine due to his scientific interests . Among his notable professors were Bernhard Friedrich Thibaut , Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren , Johann Friedrich Blumenbach , Friedrich Stromeyer , Heinrich Adolf Schrader , Johann Tobias Mayer and Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck . He studied metaphysics , psychology and logic under Gottlob Ernst Schulze ,
6600-416: A third and final edition with 136 more pages in 1859, one year before his death. In the preface to the latter, Schopenhauer noted: "If I also have at last arrived, and have the satisfaction at the end of my life of seeing the beginning of my influence, it is with the hope that, according to an old rule, it will last longer in proportion to the lateness of its beginning." Schopenhauer used the word will as
6800-437: A third of his—was near bankruptcy. Arthur offered to share his assets, but his mother refused and became further enraged by his insulting comments. The women managed to receive only thirty percent of their savings while Arthur, using his business knowledge, took a suspicious and aggressive stance towards the banker and eventually received his part in full. The affair additionally worsened the relationships among all three members of
7000-524: A while he contemplated marriage to a rich Italian noblewoman—but, despite his mentioning this several times, no details are known and it may have been Schopenhauer exaggerating. He corresponded regularly with his sister Adele and became close to her as her relationship with Johanna and Gerstenbergk also deteriorated. She informed him about their financial troubles as the banking house of A. L. Muhl in Danzig—in which her mother invested their whole savings and Arthur
7200-641: A whole. The English word traces its roots back to the Puritans in England, where Evangelicalism originated, and then was brought to the United States . Martin Luther always disliked the term Lutheran , preferring the term evangelical , which was derived from euangelion , a Greek word meaning "good news", i.e. " gospel ". The followers of John Calvin , Huldrych Zwingli , and other theologians linked to
7400-466: A world that can be considered to exist in itself (i.e., independently of how it appears to the subject's mind). One's knowledge of objects is thus knowledge of mere phenomena rather than things in themselves. Schopenhauer identifies the thing-in-itself — the inner essence of everything — as will : a blind, unconscious, aimless striving devoid of knowledge, outside of space and time, and free of all multiplicity. The world as representation is, therefore,
7600-456: A worldwide scope and distribution of church membership , while others are confined to a single country. A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of Protestant denominational families; Adventists , Anabaptists , Anglicans/Episcopalians , Baptists , Calvinist/Reformed , Lutherans , Methodists , Moravians , Plymouth Brethren , Presbyterians , and Quakers . Nondenominational , charismatic and independent churches are also on
7800-478: Is Jovinian , who lived in the fourth century AD. He attacked monasticism , ascetism and believed that a saved believer can never be overcome by Satan. In the 9th century, the theologian Gottschalk of Orbais was condemned for heresy by the Catholic Church. Gottschalk believed that the salvation of Jesus was limited and that his redemption was only for the elect. The theology of Gottschalk anticipated
8000-514: Is "in itself"). Aquila argues that translating Vorstellung as 'representation' fails to "bring out the dual notion of that which is 'set before' a cognizant subject as its object, and the presentational activity of the subject therein engaged" and is potentially misleading from Schopenhauer's principal point. Schopenhauer demands that his doctoral dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason , which appeared in 1813, be read before WWR as an introduction. Referring to On
8200-471: Is an appendix containing Schopenhauer's detailed Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy . Taking the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant as his starting point, Schopenhauer argues that the world humans experience around them—the world of objects in space and time and related in causal ways—exists solely as "representation" ( Vorstellung ) dependent on a cognizing subject, not as
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8400-433: Is as immediate an objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself is, indeed as the Ideas are, the multiplied phenomenon of which constitutes the world of individual things. Therefore music is by no means like the other arts, namely a copy of the Ideas, but a copy of the will itself , the objectivity of which are the Ideas. For this reason the effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than
8600-476: Is free from striving or suffering. For Schopenhauer, human "willing"—desiring, craving, etc.—is at the root of suffering . A temporary way to escape this pain is through aesthetic contemplation. Here one moves away from ordinary cognizance of individual things to cognizance of eternal Platonic Ideas —in other words, cognizance that is free from the service of will. In aesthetic contemplation, one no longer perceives an object of perception as something from which one
8800-429: Is his theory of genetics : he argued that humans inherit their will, and thus their character, from their fathers, but their intellect from their mothers and he provides examples from biographies of great figures to illustrate this theory. The second volume also contains attacks on contemporary philosophers such as Fichte , Schelling , and Hegel . The contents of Volume II are as follows. First Half: The Doctrine of
9000-405: Is merely a secondary phenomenon that does not distinguish humanity from the rest of nature at the fundamental, essential level. The advanced cognitive abilities of human beings, Schopenhauer argues, serve the ends of willing—an illogical, directionless, ceaseless striving that condemns the human individual to a life of suffering unredeemed by any final purpose. Schopenhauer's philosophy of the will as
9200-822: Is merely the end of one particular phenomenon of the Will, which is subsequently rearranged. By asceticism , the ultimate denial of the will as practiced by eastern monastics and by saints, one can slowly weaken the individual will in a way that is far more significant than violent suicide, which is, in fact, in some sense an affirmation of the will. Schopenhauer's praise for asceticism led him to think highly of Buddhism and Vedanta Hinduism , as well as some monastic orders and ascetic practices found in Catholicism . He expressed contempt for Protestantism , Judaism , and Islam , which he saw as optimistic, devoid of metaphysics and cruel to non-human animals. According to Schopenhauer,
9400-467: Is no longer an individual who suffers as a result of servitude to one's individual will but, rather, becomes a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of cognition". The pure, will-less subject of cognition is cognizant only of Ideas, not individual things: this is a kind of cognition that is unconcerned with relations between objects according to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (time, space, cause and effect) and instead involves complete absorption in
9600-511: Is related and homogeneous with the utmost of care. Nonetheless, the material does not by any means allow for a linear progression, as is the case with history, but rather requires a more intricate presentation. Thus it is necessary to study the book repeatedly, since this alone will clarify the connection of each part to the other; only then will they all reciprocally illuminate each other and become perfectly clear. His belated fame after 1851 stimulated renewed interest in his seminal work, and led to
9800-449: Is separated; rather "it is as if the object alone existed without anyone perceiving it, and one can thus no longer separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one, the entirety of consciousness entirely filled and occupied by a single perceptual image". Subject and object are no longer distinguishable, and the Idea comes to the fore. From this aesthetic immersion, one
10000-515: Is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence. In Book IV, Schopenhauer returns to considering the world as will. He claims in this book to set forth a purely descriptive account of human ethical behavior, in which he identifies two types of behavior: the affirmation and denial of the ' will to life ' ( Wille zum Leben ), which constitutes the essence of every individual. Schopenhauer subsequently elucidated his ethical philosophy in his two prize essays: On
10200-447: Is the guiding principle of the work of Luther and the later reformers. Because sola scriptura placed the Bible as the only source of teaching, sola fide epitomizes the main thrust of the teaching the reformers wanted to get back to, namely the direct, close, personal connection between Christ and the believer, hence the reformers' contention that their work was Christocentric. The other solas, as statements, emerged later, but
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#173277244176610400-467: Is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone." Lutheran and Reformed Christians differ from Methodists in their understanding of this doctrine. The universal priesthood of believers implies the right and duty of the Christian laity not only to read the Bible in
10600-441: Is therefore not an empirical concept drawn from objective perceptions, as Hume had maintained; instead, as Kant had said, objective perception presupposes knowledge of causality. By this intellectual operation, comprehending every effect in our sensory organs as having an external cause, the external world arises. With vision, finding the cause is essentially simplified due to light acting in straight lines. We are seldom conscious of
10800-462: Is titled The World as Will and Representation (Volume 1: 2010, Volume 2: 2018). There is some debate over the best way to convey, in English, the meaning of Vorstellung, a key concept in Schopenhauer's philosophy that is used in the title of his main work. Schopenhauer uses Vorstellung to describe whatever comes before in the mind in consciousness (as opposed to the will, which is what
11000-475: Is true and excellent in his theories in a pure form, freed from these errors." Schopenhauer saw the human will as our one window to the reality behind the world as representation, i.e. the external world as we experience it through our mental faculties. According to Schopenhauer, the will is the 'inner essence' of the entire world, i.e. the Kantian thing-in-itself ( Ding an sich ), and exists independently of
11200-543: Is why Schopenhauer refers to them as the principium individuationis . The will, as thing-in-itself, lies outside of the principle of sufficient reason (in all its forms) and is thus groundless (though each of the will's phenomena is subject to that principle). The will, lying outside the principium individuationis , is free from all plurality (though its phenomena, existing in space and time, are innumerable). All phenomena embody essential striving: electricity and gravity , for instance, are described as fundamental forces of
11400-458: Is will ( Wille ). The empirical world that appears to us as representation has plurality and is ordered in a spatio-temporal framework. The world as thing in-itself must exist outside the subjective forms of space and time. Although the world manifests itself to our experience as a multiplicity of objects (the "objectivation" of the will), each element of this multiplicity has the same blind essence striving towards existence and life. Human rationality
11600-706: The Upanishads (he called them "the production of the highest human wisdom", and believed that they contained superhuman concepts) and the Buddha , and put them on a par with Plato and Kant. He continued his studies by reading the Bhagavad Gita , an amateurish German journal Asiatisches Magazin , and Asiatick Researches by the Asiatic Society . Schopenhauer held a profound respect for Indian philosophy ; and loved Hindu texts . Although he never revered
11800-525: The Brockhaus publishing firm held her in high esteem because they consistently sold well. Hans Brockhaus (1888–1965) later claimed that his predecessors "saw nothing in this manuscript, but wanted to please one of our best-selling authors by publishing her son's work. We published more and more of her son Arthur's work and today nobody remembers Johanna, but her son's works are in steady demand and contribute to Brockhaus' reputation." He kept large portraits of
12000-705: The Catholic Church . On 31 October 1517, known as All Hallows' Eve , Martin Luther allegedly nailed his Ninety-five Theses , also known as the Disputation on the Power of Indulgences, on the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg , Germany, detailing doctrinal and practical abuses of the Catholic Church, especially the selling of indulgences . The theses debated and criticized many aspects of
12200-547: The Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church under King Henry VIII began Anglicanism , bringing England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement, under the leadership of reformer Thomas Cranmer , whose work forged Anglican doctrine and identity. Protestantism is diverse, being divided into various denominations on the basis of theology and ecclesiology , not forming a single structure as with
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#173277244176612400-598: The Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities , who issued a protest (or dissent) against the edict of the Diet of Speyer (1529) , were the first individuals to be called Protestants. The edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier . The term protestant , though initially purely political in nature, later acquired
12600-547: The Holy Spirit and personal closeness to God. The belief that believers are justified , or pardoned for sin, solely on condition of faith in Christ rather than a combination of faith and good works . For Protestants, good works are a necessary consequence rather than cause of justification. However, while justification is by faith alone, there is the position that faith is not nuda fides . John Calvin explained that "it
12800-521: The Protestant Reformation and summarize the reformers' basic differences in theological beliefs in opposition to the teaching of the Catholic Church of the day. The Latin word sola means "alone", "only", or "single". The use of the phrases as summaries of teaching emerged over time during the Reformation, based on the overarching Lutheran and Reformed principle of sola scriptura (by scripture alone). This idea contains
13000-464: The Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two evangelical groups, others began to refer to the two groups as Evangelical Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed . The word also pertains in the same way to some other mainline groups, for example Evangelical Methodist . As time passed by, the word evangelical was dropped. Lutherans themselves began to use the term Lutheran in
13200-941: The Unitas Fratrum —"Unity of the Brethren"—which was renewed under the leadership of Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf in Herrnhut , Saxony , in 1722 after its almost total destruction in the Thirty Years' War and the Counterreformation ("Catholic Reformation") . Today, it is usually referred to in English as the Moravian Church and in German as the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine . In the 15th century, three German theologians anticipated
13400-401: The empirical world is merely a complex of appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our mental representations . Schopenhauer did not deny that the external world existed empirically but followed Kant in claiming that our knowledge and experience of the world is always in some sense dependent on us . For Schopenhauer in particular, the spatiotemporal form and causal structure of
13600-662: The letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical . In the 16th century , Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark–Norway , Sweden , Finland , Livonia , and Iceland . Calvinist churches spread in Germany, Hungary , the Netherlands , Scotland , Switzerland , France , Poland , and Lithuania by Protestant Reformers such as John Calvin , Huldrych Zwingli and John Knox . The political separation of
13800-638: The transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Schopenhauer developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of German idealism . Schopenhauer was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy , such as asceticism , denial of the self , and the notion of the world-as-appearance . His work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism . Though his work failed to garner substantial attention during his lifetime, he had
14000-410: The vernacular , but also to take part in the government and all the public affairs of the Church. It is opposed to the hierarchical system which puts the essence and authority of the Church in an exclusive priesthood, and which makes ordained priests the necessary mediators between God and the people. It is distinguished from the concept of the priesthood of all believers, which did not grant individuals
14200-453: The "objectification" of the will. Aesthetic experiences release one briefly from one’s endless servitude to the will, which is the root of suffering . True redemption from life, Schopenhauer asserts, can only result from the total ascetic negation of the " will to life ". Schopenhauer notes fundamental agreements between his philosophy, Platonism , and the philosophy of the ancient Indian Vedas . The World as Will and Representation marked
14400-436: The 'differentiation between phenomena and the thing-in-itself ( noumena ), based on the proof that between everything and us there is always a perceiving mind.' In other words, Kant's primary achievement is to demonstrate that instead of being a blank slate where reality merely reveals its character, the mind, with sensory support, actively participates in constructing reality. Thus, Schopenhauer believed that Kant had shown that
14600-549: The (1840) prize despite being the only contestant. The Society was appalled that several distinguished contemporary philosophers were mentioned in a very offensive manner, and claimed that the essay missed the point of the set topic and that the arguments were inadequate. Schopenhauer, who had been very confident that he would win, was enraged by this rejection. He published both essays as The Two Basic Problems of Ethics . The first edition, published September 1840 but with an 1841 date, again failed to draw attention to his philosophy. In
14800-512: The 15th century, Jan Hus —a Catholic priest, Czech reformist and professor—influenced by John Wycliffe's writings, founded the Hussite movement. He strongly advocated his reformist Bohemian religious denomination. He was excommunicated and burned at the stake in Constance , Bishopric of Constance , in 1415 by secular authorities for unrepentant and persistent heresy. After his execution,
15000-654: The August 1821 incident are unknown. He claimed that he had just pushed her from his entrance after she had rudely refused to leave, and that she had purposely fallen to the ground so that she could sue him. She claimed that he had attacked her so violently that she had become paralyzed on her right side and unable to work. She immediately sued him, and the process lasted until May 1827, when a court found Schopenhauer guilty and forced him to pay her an annual pension until her death in 1842. Schopenhauer enjoyed Italy, where he studied art and socialized with Italian and English nobles. It
15200-607: The Bible as the highest source of authority for the church. The early churches of the Reformation believed in a critical, yet serious, reading of scripture and holding the Bible as a source of authority higher than that of church tradition . The many abuses that had occurred in the Western Church before the Protestant Reformation led the Reformers to reject much of its tradition. In the early 20th century,
15400-869: The Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy . Protestants adhere to the concept of an invisible church , in contrast to the Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East , and the Ancient Church of the East , which all understand themselves as the one and only original church—the " one true church "—founded by Jesus Christ (though certain Protestant denominations, including historic Lutheranism, hold to this position). Some denominations do have
15600-601: The Catholic Church. By 1215, the Waldensians were declared heretical and subject to persecution. Despite that, the movement continues to exist to this day in Italy, as a part of the wider Reformed tradition . In the 1370s, Oxford theologian and priest John Wycliffe —later dubbed the "Morning Star of Reformation"—started his activity as an English reformer. He rejected papal authority over secular power (in that any person in mortal sin lost their authority and should be resisted:
15800-470: The Church and the papacy, including the practice of purgatory , particular judgment , and the authority of the pope. Luther would later write works against the Catholic devotion to Virgin Mary , the intercession of and devotion to the saints, mandatory clerical celibacy, monasticism, the authority of the pope, the ecclesiastical law, censure and excommunication , the role of secular rulers in religious matters,
16000-489: The English term 'representation'. In the introduction, they point out that Schopenhauer uses Vorstellung the same way Kant uses it — 'representation' "stands for anything that the mind is conscious of in its experience, knowledge, or cognition of any form — something that is present to the mind. So our first task in The World as Will and Representation is to consider the world as it presents itself to us in our minds." In
16200-406: The Fourfold Root , Schopenhauer states in the preface to the first edition of WWR that it is "absolutely impossible to truly understand the present work unless the reader is familiar with this introduction and propaedeutic , and the contents of that essay are presupposed here as much as if they had been included in the book". Furthermore, Schopenhauer states at the beginning that his book assumes
16400-510: The Freedom of the Will (1839) and On the Basis of Morality (1840). According to Schopenhauer, the will conflicts with itself through the egoism that every human and animal is endowed with. Compassion arises from a transcendence of this egoism (the penetration of the illusory perception of individuality, so that one can empathise with the suffering of another) and can serve as a clue to
16600-534: The Hussites: moderate and radical movements. Other smaller regional Hussite branches in Bohemia included Adamites , Orebites , Orphans , and Praguers. The Hussite Wars concluded with the victory of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund , his Catholic allies and moderate Hussites and the defeat of the radical Hussites. Tensions arose as the Thirty Years' War reached Bohemia in 1620. Both moderate and radical Hussitism
16800-456: The Kantian philosophy ", in which Schopenhauer rejects most of Kant's ethics and significant parts of his epistemology and aesthetics . As Schopenhauer explains: "However much I take the achievements of the great Kant as my point of departure, a serious study of his works has nonetheless enabled me to discover significant errors, and I have had to separate these errors out and show them to be unsound so that I could then presuppose and apply what
17000-706: The Protestant Reformation, but are not a part of Protestantism (e.g. Unitarianism ), reject the Trinity . This often serves as a reason for exclusion of the Unitarian Universalism , Oneness Pentecostalism , and other movements from Protestantism by various observers. Unitarianism continues to have a presence mainly in Transylvania , England, and the United States. The Five solae are five Latin phrases (or slogans) that emerged during
17200-418: The Protestant reformation. Ratramnus also defended the theology of Gottschalk and denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; his writings also influenced the later Protestant reformation. Claudius of Turin in the 9th century also held Protestant ideas, such as faith alone and rejection of the supremacy of Peter. In the late 1130s, Arnold of Brescia , an Italian canon regular became one of
17400-407: The Reformation and put heavy stress of holiness and piety, Starting in 1475, an Italian Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was calling for a Christian renewal. Later on, Martin Luther himself read some of the friar's writings and praised him as a martyr and forerunner whose ideas on faith and grace anticipated Luther's own doctrine of justification by faith alone. Some of Hus' followers founded
17600-651: The Reformed on this doctrine as they teach prima scriptura , which holds that Scripture is the primary source for Christian doctrine, but that "tradition, experience, and reason" can nurture the Christian religion as long as they are in harmony with the Bible ( Protestant canon ). "Biblical Christianity" focused on a deep study of the Bible is characteristic of most Protestants as opposed to "Church Christianity", focused on performing rituals and good works, represented by Catholic and Orthodox traditions. However, Quakers , Pentecostalists and Spiritual Christians emphasize
17800-983: The Representation of Perception (through § 1 – 7 of Volume I) Second Half: The Doctrine of the Abstract Representation or of Thinking The first decades after its publication The World as Will and Representation was met with near silence. Exceptions were Goethe and Jean Paul . Goethe immediately started to read the magnum opus of Schopenhauer when it arrived and "read it with an eagerness as she [ Ottilie von Goethe ] had never before seen in him". Goethe told his daughter-in-law that he had now pleasure for an entire year, because he would read it completely, contrary to his custom of sampling pages to his liking. The influence of Schopenhauer can be read in Gespräche mit Goethe and Urworte. Orphisch [ de ] . In
18000-529: The Schopenhauer family. He shortened his stay in Italy because of the trouble with Muhl and returned to Dresden. Disturbed by the financial risk and the lack of responses to his book he decided to take an academic position since it provided him with both income and an opportunity to promote his views. He contacted his friends at universities in Heidelberg, Göttingen and Berlin and found Berlin most attractive. He scheduled his lectures to coincide with those of
18200-506: The University of Leipzig sponsored an essay contest about Schopenhauer's philosophy, which was won by Rudolf Seydel 's very critical essay. Schopenhauer's friend Jules Lunteschütz made the first of his four portraits of him—which Schopenhauer did not particularly like—which was soon sold to a wealthy landowner, Carl Ferdinand Wiesike, who built a house to display it. Schopenhauer seemed flattered and amused by this, and would claim that it
18400-580: The Upanishads in his main work, The World as Will and Representation (1819), as well as in his Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), and commented In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death. As the relationship with his mother fell to a new low, in May 1814 he left Weimar and moved to Dresden . He continued his philosophical studies, enjoyed
18600-443: The abandonment of the method of cognition bound to the principle of sufficient reason (the only mode appropriate to the service of the will and science ). During the aesthetic experience, we gain momentary relief from the pain that accompanies our striving. Like many other aesthetic theories, Schopenhauer's centers on the concept of genius . Genius, according to Schopenhauer, is possessed by all people in varying degrees and consists of
18800-404: The approaches of Kant and Schopenhauer was this: Kant simply declared that the empirical content of perception is "given" to us from outside, an expression with which Schopenhauer often expressed his dissatisfaction. He, on the other hand, was occupied with the questions: how do we get this empirical content of perception; how is it possible to comprehend subjective sensations "limited to my skin" as
19000-729: The arrogant request to schedule lectures at the same time as his own, Hegel still voted to accept Schopenhauer to the university. Only five students turned up to Schopenhauer's lectures, and he dropped out of academia . A late essay, "On University Philosophy", expressed his resentment towards the work conducted in academies. After his trying in academia, he continued to travel extensively, visiting Leipzig , Nuremberg , Stuttgart , Schaffhausen , Vevey , Milan and spending eight months in Florence. Before he left for his three-year travel, Schopenhauer had an incident with his Berlin neighbor, 47-year-old seamstress Caroline Louise Marquet. The details of
19200-461: The author of Aenesidemus , who made a strong impression and advised him to concentrate on Plato and Immanuel Kant . He decided to switch from medicine to philosophy around 1810–11 and he left Göttingen, which did not have a strong philosophy program: besides Schulze, the only other philosophy professor was Friedrich Bouterwek , whom Schopenhauer disliked. He did not regret his medicinal and scientific studies; he claimed that they were necessary for
19400-524: The body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. They disagreed with one another concerning the presence of Christ and his body and blood in Holy Communion. Protestants reject the Catholic doctrine of papal supremacy , and have variant views on the number of sacraments , the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist , and matters of ecclesiastical polity and apostolic succession . Many of
19600-455: The book after it was published in December 1818. In September 1818, while waiting for his book to be published and conveniently escaping an affair with a maid that caused an unwanted pregnancy, Schopenhauer left Dresden for a year-long vacation in Italy. He visited Venice , Bologna , Florence , Naples and Milan , travelling alone or accompanied by mostly English tourists he met. He spent
19800-419: The capacity for aesthetic experience. Those who have a high degree of genius can be taught to communicate these aesthetic experiences to others, and objects that communicate these experiences are works of art. We consider objects to be beautiful that best facilitate contemplation that is purely objective by a will-less consciousness and express 'elevated' Ideas (such as those of humanity). Schopenhauer compares
20000-418: The child was stillborn). As Schopenhauer was preparing to escape from Berlin in 1831, due to a cholera epidemic, he offered to take her with him on the condition that she left her young son behind. She refused and he went alone; in his will he left her a significant sum of money, but insisted that it should not be spent in any way on her second son. Schopenhauer claimed that, in his last year in Berlin, he had
20200-659: The church as a body works), they had a different understanding of the process in which truths in scripture were applied to life of believers, compared to the Catholics' idea that certain people within the church, or ideas that were old enough, had a special status in giving understanding of the text. The second main principle, sola fide (by faith alone), states that faith in Christ is sufficient alone for eternal salvation and justification. Though argued from scripture, and hence logically consequent to sola scriptura , this
20400-561: The cultural life, socialized with intellectuals and engaged in sexual affairs. His friends in Dresden were Johann Gottlob von Quandt , Friedrich Laun , Karl Christian Friedrich Krause and Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl, a young painter who made a romanticized portrait of him in which he improved some of Schopenhauer's unattractive physical features. His criticisms of local artists occasionally caused public quarrels when he ran into them in public. Schopenhauer's main occupation during his stay in Dresden
20600-404: The deep truth of the matter is that in cases of the over-affirmation of the will—that is, cases where one individual exerts his will not only for its own fulfillment but for the improper domination of others—he is unaware that he is really identical with the person he is harming, so that the Will in fact constantly harms itself, and justice is done in the moment in which the crime is committed, since
20800-572: The development of his theories and, particularly in the context of aesthetics, speaks of the Platonic forms as existing on an intermediate ontological level between the representation and the Will. The reader will be at an even further advantage if they are already familiar with the ancient Indian philosophy contained within the Upanishads . The development of Schopenhauer's ideas took place very early in his career (1814–1818) and culminated in
21000-476: The discovery of The World as Will and Representation as a revelation. Nietzsche commented, "I belong to those readers of Schopenhauer who know perfectly well, after they have turned the first page, that they will read all the others, and listen to every word that he has spoken". Charles Darwin quoted The World as Will and Representation in The Descent of Man . Some read ideas in it that can be found in
21200-458: The editor of the first collected works of Schopenhauer. In 1848, Schopenhauer witnessed violent upheaval in Frankfurt after General Hans Adolf Erdmann von Auerswald and Prince Felix Lichnowsky were murdered. He became worried for his own safety and property. Even earlier in life he had had such worries and kept a sword and loaded pistols near his bed to defend himself from thieves. He gave
21400-409: The end of Book 4, Schopenhauer appended a thorough discussion of the merits and faults of Kant's philosophy. Schopenhauer's Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie opens with the following quote from Voltaire from The Age of Louis XIV : " C'est le privilège du vrai génie, et surtout du génie qui ouvre une carrière, de faire impunément de grandes fautes ('It is the privilege of true genius, and above all
21600-506: The essential reality behind the world as representation is often called metaphysical voluntarism . For Schopenhauer, understanding the world as will leads to ethical concerns (see the ethics section below for further detail), which he explores in the Fourth Book of The World as Will and Representation and again in his two prize essays on ethics, On the Freedom of the Will and On the Basis of Morality . No individual human actions are free, Schopenhauer argues, because they are events in
21800-509: The everyday world of experience, and indeed the entire material world related to space and time, is merely 'appearance' or 'phenomena,' entirely distinct from the thing-in-itself.' In Book Two of The World as Will and Representation , Schopenhauer considers what the world is beyond the aspect of it that appears to us—that is, the aspect of the world beyond representation, the world considered " in-itself " or " noumena ", its inner essence. The very being in-itself of all things, Schopenhauer argues,
22000-589: The excommunication of Luther and condemnation of the Reformation by the Pope, the work and writings of John Calvin were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. After the expulsion of its Bishop in 1526, and the unsuccessful attempts of the Bern reformer William Farel , Calvin was asked to use the organizational skill he had gathered as
22200-457: The expanded edition of this work under this title The World as Will and Representation appeared by E. F. J. Payne (who also translated several other works of Schopenhauer) as late as in 1958 (paperback editions in 1966 and 1969). A later English translation by Richard E. Aquila in collaboration with David Carus is titled The World as Will and Presentation (2008). The latest translation by Judith Norman, Alistair Welchman, and Christopher Janaway
22400-469: The experience of aesthetic contemplation. When we contemplate something aesthetically, we have knowledge of the object not as an individual thing but rather as a universal Platonic Idea ( die Platonische Idee ). The individual is then able to lose himself in the object of aesthetic contemplation and, for a brief moment, escape the cycle of unfulfilled desire as a "pure, will-less subject of knowledge" ( reinen, willenlosen Subjekts der Erkenntniß ). This entails
22600-415: The experience of something as beautiful to the experience of something as sublime ( das Erhabene )—in the latter case, we struggle over our natural hostility to the object of contemplation and are elevated above it. An aesthetic experience does not arise from the object stimulating our will; hence Schopenhauer criticized depictions of nude women and appetizing food, as these stimulate desire and thus hinder
22800-407: The external world are contributed to our experiences of it by the brain as it renders perceptions. Schopenhauer reiterates this in the first sentence of his main work: "The world is my representation ( Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung )". Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to
23000-435: The families of soldiers who died in battle. As Young Hegelians were advocating change and progress, Schopenhauer claimed that misery is natural for humans and that, even if some utopian society were established, people would still fight each other out of boredom, or would starve due to overpopulation. In 1851, Schopenhauer published Parerga and Paralipomena , which contains essays that are supplementary to his main work. It
23200-410: The family. Despite his hardship, Schopenhauer liked his father and later referred to him in a positive light. Heinrich Schopenhauer left the family with a significant inheritance that was split in three among Johanna and the children. Arthur Schopenhauer was entitled to control of his part when he reached the age of majority. He invested it conservatively in government bonds and earned annual interest that
23400-546: The famous philosopher G. W. F. Hegel , whom Schopenhauer described as a "clumsy charlatan". He was especially appalled by Hegel's supposedly poor knowledge of natural sciences and tried to engage him in a quarrel about it already at his test lecture in March 1820. Hegel was also facing political suspicions at the time, when many progressive professors were fired , while Schopenhauer carefully mentioned in his application that he had no interest in politics. Despite their differences and
23600-554: The first theologians to attempt to reform the Catholic Church. After his death, his teachings on apostolic poverty gained currency among Arnoldists , and later more widely among Waldensians and the Spiritual Franciscans , though no written word of his has survived the official condemnation. In the early 1170s, Peter Waldo founded the Waldensians. He advocated an interpretation of the Gospel that led to conflicts with
23800-418: The first. His views had not changed substantially. Schopenhauer states in the preface to the first edition that The World as Will and Representation aims to "convey a single thought." The resulting structure of the work is therefore, in his words, "organic rather than chainlike," with all of the book's earlier parts presupposing the later parts "almost as much as the later ones presuppose the earlier." Each of
24000-408: The forms of the principle of sufficient reason that govern the world as representation. Schopenhauer believed that while we may be precluded from direct knowledge of the Kantian noumenon , we may gain knowledge about it to a certain extent (unlike Kant, for whom the noumenon was completely unknowable). This is because, according to Schopenhauer, the relationship between the world as representation and
24200-486: The four main doctrines on the Bible: that its teaching is needed for salvation (necessity); that all the doctrine necessary for salvation comes from the Bible alone (sufficiency); that everything taught in the Bible is correct (inerrancy); and that, by the Holy Spirit overcoming sin, believers may read and understand truth from the Bible itself, though understanding is difficult, so the means used to guide individual believers to
24400-401: The genius who opens a new path, to make great errors with impunity.') Schopenhauer asserts that Kant's greatest merit was the distinction between appearance [ Erscheinung ] and the thing-in-itself [ Ding an sich ], proving that the intellect always stands between us and things, and thus we cannot have knowledge of things as they may be in themselves. Among Kant's defects, Schopenhauer argues, is
24600-426: The goal of reforming the Catholic Church from perceived errors, abuses, and discrepancies . The Reformation began in the Holy Roman Empire in 1517, when Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses as a reaction against abuses in the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church, which purported to offer the remission of the temporal punishment of sins to their purchasers. The term, however, derives from
24800-486: The independence of spatially separated systems, the principium individuationis , influenced Einstein , who called him a genius. Schrödinger put the Schopenhauerian label on a folder of papers in his files "Collection of Thoughts on the physical Principium individuationis". Protestantism Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes justification of sinners through faith alone ,
25000-414: The individual ideas that were taken up by various reformers had historical pre-cursors; however, calling them proto-reformers is controversial, as often their theology also had components that are not associated with later Protestants, or that were asserted by some Protestants but denied by others, or that were only superficially similar. One of the earliest persons to be praised as a Protestant forerunner
25200-487: The intellect produces the world as representation. He set out his theory of perception for the first time in On Vision and Colors , and, in the subsequent editions of Fourfold Root , an extensive exposition is given in § 21. Schopenhauer saw his philosophy as an extension of Kant's, and used the results of Kantian epistemological investigation ( transcendental idealism ) as starting point for his own. Kant had argued that
25400-416: The introduction to his translation with David Carus (first published 2008), Richard Aquila argues that the reader will not grasp the details of the philosophy of Schopenhauer properly without rendering Vorstellung as "presentation". It is the notion of a performance or theatrical presentation – of which one is the spectator – that is key in this interpretation. The world that we perceive can be understood as
25600-554: The middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists . The German word reformatorisch , which roughly translates to English as "reformational" or "reforming", is used as an alternative for evangelisch in German, and is different from English reformed ( German : reformiert ), which refers to churches shaped by ideas of John Calvin , Huldrych Zwingli , and other Reformed theologians. Derived from
25800-579: The most active early followers was Julius Frauenstädt , who wrote numerous articles promoting Schopenhauer's philosophy. He was also instrumental in finding another publisher after Brockhaus declined to publish Parerga and Paralipomena , believing that it would be another failure. Though Schopenhauer later stopped corresponding with him, claiming that he did not adhere closely enough to his ideas, Frauenstädt continued to promote Schopenhauer's work. They renewed their communication in 1859 and Schopenhauer named him heir for his literary estate. Frauenstädt also became
26000-787: The neglect of a thoughtless multitude". This neglect came to an end in the last years of his life. Schopenhauer would become the most influential philosopher in Germany until World War I . Especially artists were attracted to the work. No philosopher had given so much importance to art: one fourth of The World as Will and Representation is concerned with aesthetics . To be mentioned are Wagner ( Influence of Schopenhauer on Tristan und Isolde ), Schoenberg , Mahler , who cites The World as Will and Representation as "the most profound writing on music he had ever encountered", Thomas Mann , Hermann Hesse , Jorge Luis Borges , Tolstoy , D. H. Lawrence and Samuel Beckett . The philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Philipp Mainländer both described
26200-493: The object. The World as Will and Representation The World as Will and Representation ( WWR ; German : Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung , WWV ), sometimes translated as The World as Will and Idea , is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer . The first edition was published in late 1818, with the date 1819 on the title page. A second, two-volume edition appeared in 1844: volume one
26400-415: The objective perception of things that lie "outside" of me? The sensations in the hand of a man born blind, on feeling an object of cubic shape, are quite uniform and the same on all sides and in every direction: the edges, it is true, press upon a smaller portion of his hand, still nothing at all like a cube is contained in these sensations. His Understanding draws the immediate and intuitive conclusion from
26600-472: The pains of existence that result from the will's ceaseless striving. "Schopenhauer tells us that when the will is denied, the sage becomes nothing, without actually dying." When willing disappears, both the willer and the world become nothing. "...[T]o one who has achieved the will-less state, it is the world of the willer that has been disclosed as 'nothing'. Its hold over us, its seeming reality, has been 'abolished' so that it now stands before us as nothing but
26800-469: The pair in his office in Leipzig for the edification of his new editors. Also contrary to his mother's prediction, Schopenhauer's dissertation made an impression on Goethe, to whom he sent it as a gift. Although it is doubtful that Goethe agreed with Schopenhauer's philosophical positions, he was impressed by his intellect and extensive scientific education. Their subsequent meetings and correspondence were
27000-479: The pinnacle of Schopenhauer's philosophical thought; he spent the rest of his life refining, clarifying and deepening the ideas presented in this work without any fundamental changes. The first edition was met with near-universal silence. The second edition of 1844 similarly failed to attract any interest. At the time, post-Kantian German academic philosophy was dominated by the German idealists —foremost among them G. W. F. Hegel , whom Schopenhauer bitterly denounced as
27200-461: The possibility of going beyond desire and the will. Schopenhauer categorically denies the existence of the "freedom of the will" in the conventional sense, and only adumbrates how the will can be affirmed or negated, but is not subject to change, and serves as the root of the chain of causal determinism . Schopenhauer discusses suicide at length, noting that it does not actually destroy the Will or any part of it in any substantial way, since death
27400-669: The preface to the second edition, in 1860, he was still pouring insults on the Royal Danish Society. Two years later, after some negotiations, he managed to convince his publisher, Brockhaus, to print the second, updated edition of The World as Will and Representation . That book was again mostly ignored and the few reviews were mixed or negative. Schopenhauer began to attract some followers, mostly outside academia, among practical professionals (several of them were lawyers) who pursued private philosophical studies. He jokingly referred to them as "evangelists" and "apostles". One of
27600-416: The process that interprets the double sensation in both eyes as coming from one object, that inverts the impressions on the retinas, and that uses the change in the apparent position of an object relative to more distant objects provided by binocular vision to perceive depth and distance. Schopenhauer stresses the importance of the intellectual nature of perception; the senses furnish the raw material by which
27800-409: The publication of the first volume of Will and Representation in 1819. This first volume consisted of four books—covering his epistemology, ontology , aesthetics and ethics, in order. Much later in his life, in 1844, Schopenhauer published a second edition in two volumes, the first a virtual reprint of the original, and the second a new work consisting of clarifications to and additional reflections on
28000-489: The purposes of architectonic symmetry. Schopenhauer argues that there are three a priori forms by which our minds render our experience of the world intelligible to ourselves: time , space , and causality . Schopenhauer also states in his introduction that the reader will be at his best prepared to understand the theories in The World as Will and Representation if he has lingered in the school of "the divine Plato ": Schopenhauer frequently acknowledges Plato's influence on
28200-452: The reader's prior knowledge of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant . Schopenhauer asserted that his philosophy was the natural continuation of Kant's, and is regarded by some as remaining more faithful to Kant's metaphysical system of transcendental idealism , expounded in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), than any of the other later German idealists . However, The World as Will and Representation contains an appendix entitled " Critique of
28400-748: The reformation: Wessel Gansfort , Johann Ruchat von Wesel , and Johannes von Goch . They held ideas such as predestination , sola scriptura , and the church invisible , and denied the Roman Catholic view on justification and the authority of the Pope, also questioning monasticism . Wessel Gansfort also denied transubstantiation and anticipated the Lutheran view of justification by faith alone. Electors of Saxony Holy Roman Emperors Building Literature Theater Liturgies Hymnals Monuments Calendrical commemoration The Protestant Reformation began as an attempt to reform
28600-452: The relationship between Christianity and the law, good works, and the sacraments. The Reformation was a triumph of literacy and the new printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg . Luther's translation of the Bible into German was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy, and stimulated as well the printing and distribution of religious books and pamphlets. From 1517 onward, religious pamphlets flooded much of Europe. Following
28800-539: The resistance felt, that this resistance must have a cause, which then presents itself through that conclusion as a hard body; and through the movements of his arms in feeling the object, while the hand's sensation remains unaltered, he constructs the cubic shape in Space. If the representation of a cause and of Space, together with their laws, had not already existed within him, the image of a cube could never have proceeded from those successive sensations in his hand. Causality
29000-653: The rest of his life, except for a few short journeys. He lived alone except for a succession of pet poodles named Atman and Butz. In 1836, he published On the Will in Nature . In 1838, he sent his essay " On the Freedom of the Will " to the contest of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences in 1838 and won the prize in 1839. He sent another essay, " On the Basis of Morality ", to the Royal Danish Society of Sciences in 1839, but did not win
29200-410: The right to interpret the Bible apart from the Christian community at large because universal priesthood opened the door to such a possibility. There are scholars who cite that this doctrine tends to subsume all distinctions in the church under a single spiritual entity. Calvin referred to the universal priesthood as an expression of the relation between the believer and his God, including the freedom of
29400-421: The rise, having recently expanded rapidly throughout much of the world, and constitute a significant part of Protestantism. These various movements, collectively labeled "popular Protestantism" by scholars such as Peter L. Berger , have been called one of the contemporary world's most dynamic religious movements. As of 2024 , Protestantism has a total of approximately 625 million followers. Six princes of
29600-431: The same metaphysical individual is both the perpetrator and the victim. According to Schopenhauer, denial of the will to live is the way to salvation from suffering. Salvation can only result from the recognition that individuality is nothing more than an illusion—the world in itself cannot be divided into individuals—which 'tranquilizes' the will. The human who comprehends this would 'negate' his will and thus be freed from
29800-457: The same time as Hegel's—also failed, as did his inquiries about relocating to other universities. During his Berlin years, Schopenhauer occasionally mentioned his desire to marry and have a family. For a while he was unsuccessfully courting 17-year-old Flora Weiss, who was 22 years younger than himself. His unpublished writings from that time show that he was already very critical of monogamy but still not advocating polygyny —instead musing about
30000-642: The same time as the French army was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig . He became irritated by the arrival of soldiers in the town and accepted his mother's invitation to visit her in Weimar. She tried to convince him that her relationship with Gerstenbergk was platonic and that she had no intention of remarrying. But Schopenhauer remained suspicious and often came in conflict with Gerstenbergk because he considered him untalented, pretentious, and nationalistic . His mother had just published her second book, Reminiscences of
30200-460: The teaching that salvation comes by unmerited divine grace , the priesthood of all believers , and the Bible as the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. The five solae summarize the basic theological beliefs of mainstream Protestantism. Protestants follow the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation , a movement that began in the 16th century with
30400-553: The term is used by Protestant bodies in the German-speaking area , such as the Protestant Church in Germany . Thus, the German word evangelisch means Protestant, while the German evangelikal , refers to churches shaped by Evangelicalism . The English word evangelical usually refers to evangelical Protestant churches, and therefore to a certain part of Protestantism rather than to Protestantism as
30600-459: The theory of evolution, for example, that sexual instinct is a tool of nature to ensure the quality of the offspring. Schopenhauer argued in favor of transformism by pointing to one of the most important and familiar evidences of the truth of the theory of descent, the homologies in the inner structure of all the vertebrates. Schopenhauer's discussions of language and ethics were a major influence on Ludwig Wittgenstein . Schopenhauer's views on
30800-428: The thing-in-itself. Schopenhauer pointed out that anything outside of time and space could not be differentiated, so the thing-in-itself must be one. All things that exist, including human beings, must be part of this fundamental unity. The manifestation of the single will into the multiplicity of objects we experience is the will's objectivation. Plurality exists and has become possible only through time and space, which
31000-510: The thinking they represent was also part of the early Reformation. The Protestant movement began to diverge into several distinct branches in the mid-to-late 16th century. One of the central points of divergence was controversy over the Eucharist . Early Protestants rejected the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation , which teaches that the bread and wine used in the sacrificial rite of the Mass lose their natural substance by being transformed into
31200-494: The title Senilia . In the spring of 1860 his health began to decline, and he experienced shortness of breath and heart palpitations; in September he suffered inflammation of the lungs and, although he was starting to recover, he remained very weak. The last friend to visit him was Wilhelm Gwinner; according to him, Schopenhauer was concerned that he would not be able to finish his planned additions to Parerga and Paralipomena but
31400-520: The tour attending school in Wimbledon , where he was confused by strict and intellectual Anglicans who he described as shallow. He continued to sharply criticize Anglican religiosity later in life despite his general Anglophilia. He was also under pressure from his father, who became very critical of his educational results. In 1805, Heinrich drowned in a canal near their home in Hamburg. Although it
31600-515: The true teaching is often mutual discussion within the church (clarity). The necessity and inerrancy were well-established ideas, garnering little criticism, though they later came under debate from outside during the Enlightenment . The most contentious idea at the time though was the notion that anyone could simply pick up the Bible and learn enough to gain salvation. Though the reformers were concerned with ecclesiology (the doctrine of how
31800-518: The untenable manner in which Kant chose to introduce the thing-in-itself in his Critique of Pure Reason . Schopenhauer also argued that Kant failed to distinguish between intuitive and abstract cognition—that is, intuitive representations from concepts thought merely in the abstract—which gave rise to grave confusions and errors. Criticizing Kant's preference for arranging his philosophical system according to an elegant architectonic symmetry, Schopenhauer at one point describes Kant's twelve categories as
32000-408: The usual social life such as balls, parties and theater. By that time Johanna's famous salon was well established among local intellectuals and dignitaries, the most celebrated of them being Goethe . Arthur attended her parties, usually when he knew that Goethe would be there—although the famous writer and statesman seemed not even to notice the young and unknown student. It is possible that Goethe kept
32200-491: The viewer from becoming "the pure, will-less subject of knowledge." The rest of the Third Book contains an account of a variety of art forms, including architecture , landscape gardening , landscape painting , animal painting , historical painting , sculpture , the nude , literature ( poetry and tragedy ), and lastly, music . Music occupies a privileged place in Schopenhauer's aesthetics, as he believed it to have
32400-408: The weather and always getting enough sleep. He had a great appetite and could read without glasses, but his hearing had been declining since his youth and he developed problems with rheumatism . He remained active and lucid, continued his reading, writing and correspondence until his death. The numerous notes that he made during these years, amongst others on aging, were published posthumously under
32600-474: The whole world as representation is only the visibility of the will, then art is the elucidation of this visibility, the camera obscura which shows the objects more purely, and enables us to survey and comprehend them better. It is the play within the play, the stage on the stage in Hamlet . Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation , Vol. 1, Book III, §52 In Book III, Schopenhauer explores
32800-456: The whole, comprehends its essence, and finds that it is constantly passing away, caught up in vain strivings, inner conflict, and perpetual suffering". The negation of the will, in other words, stems from the insight that the world in-itself (free from the forms of space and time) is one. Ascetic practices, Schopenhauer remarks, are used to aid the will's "self-abolition", which brings about a blissful, redemptive "will-less" state of emptiness that
33000-447: The will as thing in-itself is free, as it exists beyond the realm of representation and thus is not constrained by any of the forms of necessity that are part of the principle of sufficient reason. According to Schopenhauer, salvation from our miserable existence can come through the will's being "tranquillized" by the metaphysical insight that reveals individuality to be merely an illusion. The saint or 'great soul' intuitively "recognizes
33200-698: The will. Upon his arrival in Frankfurt, he experienced a period of depression and declining health. He renewed his correspondence with his mother, and she seemed concerned that he might commit suicide like his father. By now Johanna and Adele were living very modestly. Johanna's writing did not bring her much income, and her popularity was waning. Their correspondence remained reserved, and Arthur seemed undisturbed by her death in 1838. His relationship with his sister grew closer and he corresponded with her until she died in 1849. In July 1832, Schopenhauer left Frankfurt for Mannheim but returned in July 1833 to remain there for
33400-461: The will. Human capacity for cognition , Schopenhauer asserts, is subordinate to the demands of the will. Moreover, everything that wills necessarily suffers. Schopenhauer presents a pessimistic picture on which unfulfilled desires are painful, and pleasure is merely the sensation experienced at the instant one such pain is removed. However, most desires are never fulfilled, and those that are fulfilled are instantly replaced by more unfulfilled ones. If
33600-583: The will. Schopenhauer's concept of desire has strong parallels in Buddhist thought . Buddhism identifies the individual's pervasive sense of dissatisfaction as driving craving, roughly similar to what Schopenhauer would call the will to life. Both assert that remedies for this condition include contemplative, ascetic activities. The epigraph to volume one is a quotation from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Ob nicht Natur zuletzt sich doch ergründe? ('Might not nature finally fathom itself?'). The quotation comes from
33800-568: The winter months in Rome , where he accidentally met his acquaintance Karl Witte and engaged in numerous quarrels with German tourists in the Caffè Greco , among them Johann Friedrich Böhmer , who also mentioned his insulting remarks and unpleasant character. He enjoyed art, architecture, and ancient ruins, attended plays and operas, and continued his philosophical contemplation and love affairs. One of his affairs supposedly became serious, and for
34000-535: The winter semester of 1811–12. At the same time, his mother had just begun her literary career; she published her first book in 1810, a biography of her friend Karl Ludwig Fernow , which was a critical success. Arthur attended lectures by the prominent post-Kantian philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte , but quickly found many points of disagreement with his Wissenschaftslehre ; he also found Fichte's lectures tedious and hard to understand. He later mentioned Fichte only in critical, negative terms—seeing his philosophy as
34200-530: The word evangelical ( German : evangelisch ). For further details, see the section below. Gradually, protestant became a general term, meaning any adherent of the Reformation in the German-speaking area. It was ultimately somewhat taken up by Lutherans, even though Martin Luther himself insisted on Christian or evangelical as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed faith in Christ. French and Swiss Protestants instead preferred
34400-589: The word reformed ( French : réformé ), which became a popular, neutral, and alternative name for Calvinists. The word evangelical ( German : evangelisch ), which refers to the gospel , was widely used for those involved in the religious movement in the German-speaking area beginning in 1517. Evangelical is still preferred among some of the historical Protestant denominations in the Lutheran, Calvinist, and United (Lutheran and Reformed) Protestant traditions in Europe, and those with strong ties to them. Above all
34600-472: The word "Reformation", the term emerged around the same time as Evangelical (1517) and Protestant (1529). Many experts have proposed criteria to determine whether a Christian denomination should be considered part of Protestantism. A common consensus approved by most of them is that if a Christian denomination is to be considered Protestant, it must acknowledge the following three fundamental principles of Protestantism. The belief, emphasized by Luther, in
34800-497: The work's four main parts function as "four perspectives [ Gesichtspunkte ], as it were, on the one thought." Thus Schopenhauer counsels reading the book more than once, with considerable patience the first time. Schopenhauer addresses the structure of the work in the following passage from Book IV, section 54: Since, as we have said, this whole work is just the unfolding of a single thought, it follows that all its parts are bound together most intimately; each one does not just stand in
35000-486: The works of Schelling , Fries , Jacobi , Bacon , Locke , and much current scientific literature. He attended philological courses by August Böckh and Friedrich August Wolf and continued his naturalistic interests with courses by Martin Heinrich Klaproth , Paul Erman , Johann Elert Bode , Ernst Gottfried Fischer , Johann Horkel , Friedrich Christian Rosenthal and Hinrich Lichtenstein (Lichtenstein
35200-450: The world as it is 'in itself' can be understood by investigating the relationship between our bodies (material objects, i.e. representations, existing in space and time) and our will. Another important difference between the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Kant is Schopenhauer's rejection of Kant's doctrine of twelve categories of the understanding. Schopenhauer claims that eleven of Kant's categories are superfluous "blind windows" meant for
35400-484: The world as representation; this time, he focuses on representation independent of the principle of sufficient reason (i.e. the Platonic Idea, the immediate and adequate objecthood of the will, which is the object of art). Schopenhauer begins WWR by examining the world as it shows itself to us in our minds: objects ordered necessarily by space and time and by cause-and-effect relationships. In our experience,
35600-442: The world is ordered according to the principle of sufficient reason. We perceive a multiplicity of objects related to one another in necessary ways. In Book II, Schopenhauer argues that will is the Kantian thing-in-itself: the single essence underlying all objects and phenomena. Kant believed that space and time were merely the forms of our intuition by which we must perceive the world of phenomena, and these factors were absent from
35800-552: The world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. In Book One of The World as Will and Representation , Schopenhauer considers the world from this angle—that is, insofar as it is representation. Kant had previously argued that we perceive reality as something spatial and temporal not because reality is inherently spatial and temporal, but because that is how our minds operate in perceiving an object. Therefore, understanding objects in space and time represents our 'contribution' to an experience. For Schopenhauer, Kant's 'greatest service' lay in
36000-454: The world of appearance and thus are subject to the principle of sufficient reason: a person's actions are a necessary consequence of motives and the given character of the individual human. Necessity extends to the actions of human beings just as it does to every other appearance, and thus we cannot speak of freedom of individual willing. Albert Einstein quoted the Schopenhauerian idea that "a man can do as he will, but not will as he will." Yet
36200-1071: The world simply because you cannot restrain your propensity to pick holes in other people." His mother, Johanna, was generally described as vivacious and sociable. She died 24 years later. Some of Arthur's negative opinions about women may be rooted in his troubled relationship with his mother. Arthur moved to Hamburg to live with his friend Jean Anthime, who was also studying to become a merchant. He moved to Weimar but did not live with his mother, who even tried to discourage him from coming by explaining that they would not get along very well. Their relationship deteriorated even further due to their temperamental differences. He accused his mother of being financially irresponsible, flirtatious and seeking to remarry, which he considered an insult to his father's memory. His mother, while professing her love to him, criticized him sharply for being moody, tactless, and argumentative, and urged him to improve his behavior so that he would not alienate people. Arthur concentrated on his studies, which were now going very well, and he also enjoyed
36400-498: The world that appears to us as Vorstellung is in itself). In ordinary usage, Vorstellung could be rendered as "idea" (thus the title of Haldane and Kemp's translation). However, Kant uses the Latin term repraesentatio when discussing the meaning of Vorstellung ( Critique of Pure Reason A320/B376). Thus, as is commonly done, one might use the English term 'representation' to render Vorstellung (as done by E. F. J. Payne in his translation). Norman, Welchman, and Janaway also use
36600-497: The years where the work was largely ignored, Jean Paul praised it as "a work of philosophical genius, bold, universal, full of penetration and profoundness—but of a depth often hopeless and bottomless, akin to that melancholy lake in Norway, in whose deep water, beneath the steep rock-walls, one never sees the sun, but only stars reflected", on which Schopenhauer commented: "In my opinion the praise of one man of genius fully makes good
36800-540: Was also a friend whom he met at one of his mother's parties in Weimar). Schopenhauer left Berlin in a rush in 1813, fearing that the city could be attacked and that he could be pressed into military service as Prussia had just joined the war against France . He returned to Weimar but left after less than a month, disgusted by the fact that his mother was now living with her supposed lover, Georg Friedrich Konrad Ludwig Müller von Gerstenbergk [ de ] (1778–1838),
37000-407: Was an edited version of the 1818 edition, while volume two consisted of commentary on the ideas expounded in volume one. A third expanded edition was published in 1859, the year before Schopenhauer's death. In 1948, an abridged version was edited by Thomas Mann . In the summer of 1813, Schopenhauer submitted his doctoral dissertation— On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason —and
37200-510: Was at peace with dying. He died of pulmonary-respiratory failure on 21 September 1860 while sitting at home on his couch. He died at the age of 72 and had a funeral conducted by a Lutheran minister. In November 1813 Goethe invited Schopenhauer to help him on his Theory of Colours . Although Schopenhauer considered colour theory a minor matter, he accepted the invitation out of admiration for Goethe. Nevertheless, these investigations led him to his most important discovery in epistemology: finding
37400-634: Was awarded a doctorate from the University of Jena . After spending the following winter in Weimar , he lived in Dresden and published his treatise On Vision and Colours in 1816. Schopenhauer spent the next several years working on his chief work, The World as Will and Representation . Schopenhauer asserted that the work is meant to convey a "single thought" from various perspectives. He develops his philosophy over four books covering epistemology , ontology , aesthetics , and ethics . Following these books
37600-494: Was becoming less interested in intellectual fights, but encouraged his disciples to do so. His private notes and correspondence show that he acknowledged some of the criticisms regarding contradictions, inconsistencies, and vagueness in his philosophy, but claimed that he was not concerned about harmony and agreement in his propositions and that some of his ideas should not be taken literally but instead as metaphors. Academic philosophers were also starting to notice his work. In 1856,
37800-854: Was farmer in Petershagen and son of Simon Schopenhauer (1580–1660) and grandson of Salomon Schopenhauer (born 1550). Arthur Schopenhauer was born on 22 February 1788, in Gdańsk (then part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ; later in the Kingdom of Prussia Danzig ) on Św. Ducha 47 (in Prussia Heiliggeistgasse), the son of Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer [ de ] (1747–1805) and his wife Johanna Schopenhauer (née Trosiener; 1766–1838), both descendants of wealthy German patrician families. While they came from
38000-408: Was greatly hurt by this rejection, but he continued to praise Goethe, and considered his color theory a great introduction to his own. Another important experience during his stay in Weimar was his acquaintance with Friedrich Majer—a historian of religion , orientalist and disciple of Herder —who introduced him to Eastern philosophy (see also Indology ). Schopenhauer was immediately impressed by
38200-539: Was his first chapel. As his fame increased, copies of paintings and photographs of him were being sold and admirers were visiting the places where he had lived and written his works. People visited Frankfurt's Englischer Hof to observe him dining. Admirers gave him gifts and asked for autographs. He complained that he still felt isolated due to his not very social nature and the fact that many of his good friends had already died from old age. He remained healthy in his own old age, which he attributed to regular walks no matter
38400-566: Was his first successful, widely read book, partly due to the work of his disciples who wrote praising reviews. The essays that proved most popular were the ones that actually did not contain the basic philosophical ideas of his system. Many academic philosophers considered him a great stylist and cultural critic but did not take his philosophy seriously. His early critics liked to point out similarities of his ideas to those of Fichte and Schelling, or to claim that there were numerous contradictions in his philosophy. Both criticisms enraged Schopenhauer. He
38600-719: Was his last visit to the country. He left for Munich and stayed there for a year, mostly recuperating from various health issues, some of them possibly caused by venereal diseases (the treatment his doctor used suggests syphilis ). He contacted publishers, offering to translate Hume into German and Kant into English, but his proposals were declined. Returning to Berlin, he began to study Spanish so he could read some of his favorite authors in their original language. He liked Pedro Calderón de la Barca , Lope de Vega , Miguel de Cervantes , and especially Baltasar Gracián . He also made failed attempts to publish his translations of their works. A few attempts to revive his lectures—again scheduled at
38800-420: Was his seminal philosophical work, The World as Will and Representation , which he started writing in 1814 and finished in 1818. He was recommended to the publisher Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus by Baron Ferdinand von Biedenfeld, an acquaintance of his mother. Although Brockhaus accepted his manuscript, Schopenhauer made a poor impression because of his quarrelsome and fussy attitude, as well as very poor sales of
39000-470: Was increasingly persecuted by Catholics and Holy Roman Emperor's armies. In the 14th century, a German mysticist group called the Gottesfreunde criticized the Catholic church and its corruption. Many of their leaders were executed for attacking the Catholic church and they believed that God's judgement would soon come upon the church. The Gottesfreunde were a democratic lay movement and forerunner of
39200-615: Was more than double the salary of a university professor. After quitting his merchant apprenticeship, with some encouragement from his mother, he dedicated himself to studies at the Ernestine Gymnasium, Gotha , in Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg . While there, he also enjoyed social life among the local nobility, spending large amounts of money, which deeply concerned his frugal mother. He left the Gymnasium after writing
39400-617: Was possible that his death was accidental, his wife and son believed that it was suicide. He was prone to anxiety and depression , each becoming more pronounced later in his life. Heinrich had become so fussy, even his wife started to doubt his mental health. "There was, in the father's life, some dark and vague source of fear which later made him hurl himself to his death from the attic of his house in Hamburg." Arthur showed similar moodiness during his youth and often acknowledged that he inherited it from his father. There were other instances of serious mental health problems on his father's side of
39600-454: Was sent to Le Havre to live with the family of his father's business associate, Grégoire de Blésimaire. He seemed to enjoy his two-year stay there, learning to speak French and fostering a life-long friendship with Jean Anthime Grégoire de Blésimaire. As early as 1799, Arthur started playing the flute. In 1803, he accompanied his parents on a European tour of Holland , Britain, France, Switzerland , Austria and Prussia . Viewed as primarily
39800-713: Was the daughter of a Dutch merchant and the Dutch ambassador to the Hanseatic city of Danzig Hendrik Soermans (1700–1775). Arthur Schopenhauer's maternal grandfather, Christian Heinrich Trosiener [ de ] (1730–1797) was a merchant in Danzig and a councilor from the middle class. Arthur Schopenhauer's maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Trosiener (1745–1818), was daughter of pharmacist Georg Lehmann (died 1762) and his wife Susanna Concordia Lehmann, née Neumann (born 1718). Arthur Schopenhauer's paternal great-grandfather, Johann Schopenhauer [ de ] (1670–after 1724),
40000-672: Was the mentioned merchant in Gdansk. Arthur Schopenhauer's paternal great-grandmother, Marie Elizabeth Schopenhauer, née Lessig, was a daughter of merchant Andreas Lessig (1658–1713). Arthur Schopenhauer's paternal great-grandfather through paternal grandmother, Hendrik Soermans [ de ] (1700–1775), was a Dutch merchant, Ambassador of the Netherlands in Gdansk, son of pastor Johannes Soermans (1670–1754) and grandson of Martinus Soermans (1638–1705). Arthur Schopenhauer's paternal great-greatgrandfather, Johann Schopenhauer (1630–1701),
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