SCHOPENHAUER, ARTHUR (1788-1860). Schopenhauer almost became an Englishman when his father, a citizen of Danzig, then in Poland, fearing the annexation of his native town by Prussia (which in fact was immanent), intended to take his wife, who was expecting a baby, to England, so that his son would not be a subject of the hated Prussian monarchy. However, the son was born before the parents could reach the land of their hope.
Arthur Schopenhauer did not share his father's predilection for England or his opposition to Prussian despotism. But he nevertheless adopted some English habits, read the London Times regularly, and remained aloof from any political movement in Germany, indifferent to nationalism, yet hating democracy Judaism and Christianity. He preferred animals to his fellow men, and particularly he disliked women. British empiricism did not satisfy him, and his German contemporaries, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, were branded by him as humbugs. He respected Kant from whose criticism he proceeded to his own philosophy. The wisdom and religion of India, the Vedas, Upanishads and Buddhism, aroused his enthusiasm, and he untiringly proclaimed the superiority of Indian thought to the European mind.
Although to his father's satisfaction, Schopenhauer had forgotten the German language during his stay in Paris and London, and he had to learn it again, when, at the age of seventeen, he returned to Germany, he became one of the greatest masters of German prose style. His clear and well-organized sentences proved able to captivate readers who recoil from the language of most of the German philosophers. Goethe, whom Schopenhauer knew personally and highly esteemed both as a poet and thinker, wrote in Schopenhauer's album an epigram, saying: "If you will enjoy the value of your own personality you must enjoy the value of the world." Nothing could be more contrary to Schopenhauer's doctrine, for, according to it, the world is fundamentally evil. Its reality cannot be grasped by reason which is only capable of perceiving delusive appearances of the real things. The only real, metaphysical, cosmic being is the will which comprises both mental acts of the human individual and the drive, urge or instinctive force of the entire organic world. Even the crystallization of the diamond, or the turning of the magnet to the pole, or chemical affinities are regarded by Schopenhauer as utterances of the will which is essential one. The fact that man takes cognizance of his body as much by way of reason as by immediate feeling, enables him to become aware of the will that works within his organism, and thus of the cosmic will which is identical with the former. To Schopenhauer this procedure offers the key to the understanding of the real world.
But, while the world of appearances or ideas is delusive, the world of the will is fundamentally evil. Will is the source of crime and suffering. The only salvation available to mankind is mortification of the will, complete resignation, extinction of the self.
Schopenhauer's pessimism had many followers. Of even greater influence was his doctrine of the superiority of instinct, the will, the unconscious drive to reason and knowledge, after Nietzsche had dissolved its connection with pessimism.