Some Reflections on Last Evening's Discussion

Kudos to our sixteen discussants who braved chilly March winds to attend last night's Schopenhauer discussion.

The group had a mixed verdict on "Schopy." Based on the biographical information given in the reader (for example, when he died Schopenhauer left a substantial legacy to his poodle), many felt his philosophy was too metaphysical and ignored our need for human attachments.

We talked quite a bit about fear of death vs. the knowledge of death. The former is what animals possess as a basic instinct, the latter a realization humans attain through our mental faculty. The knowledge of death sets us apart from the animals and creates what many call "the human condition."

Our reading was an excerpt from the chapter "On Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility of our Inner Nature," from Schopenhauer's voluminous philosophical tract The World as Will and Representation.

Schopenhauer considered the will, and specifically the "will-to-live" to be a powerful motivating factor in our lives. The capstone question of our discussion was "What, according to Schopenhauer, should be our proper attitude to the will-to-live, since we all have to die?" The group concluded that Schopenhauer's answer would be we give up the will-to-live, just as it gives us up. We thereby achieve a state of nothingness, nonbeing, extinction, nirvana.

Is there consolation in this grim scenario? One of our participants took heart from Schopenauer's lovely ode-in-prose to the cycles of nature. We are each of us like a leaf on a tree, he says, "[f]ading in the autumn and about to fall, this leaf grieves over its own extinction, and will not be consoled by looking forward to the fresh green which will clothe the tree in spring, but says as a lament: 'I am not these! These are quite different leaves' Oh foolish leaf! Whither do you want to go? And whence are the others supposed to come? Where is the nothing, the abyss of which you fear? Know your own inner being, precisely that which is so filled with the thirst for existence; recognize it once more in the inner, mysterious, sprouting force of the tree."

My next-door neighbor puts it another way. Every year he stands on his back deck and makes what I call "the announcement":

"Spring, sprang, sprung!"

Discussion Questions for "The Indestructibility of Our Inner Nature," by Schopenhauer

Interpretive Questions

Does Schopenhauer contradict himself when he says (p.1) that lower animals don't have a "knowledge of death," but then says (p. 3) they and we also have a fear of death?

What does he mean (p.2) when he says that "according to natural consciousness" man fears death more than anything? What is "natural consciousness"?

Is our "whole being-in-itself" the "will to live" (p.4)?

How does knowledge conflict with will (p.5)?

Do you agree that "to mourn for the time when we shall no longer exist is just as absurd as it would be to mourn for the time when we did not as yet exist" (p.6)?

How about with the notion that death is terrible because it represents the death of the will? (p.7)

Is the moment of dying really "similar to that of waking from a heavy nightmare" (p. 9)?

Does the life force endure after death (pp. 9-12)?

If we saw "deeply enough," would we agree with nature and "regard life or death as indifferently as does she" (p. 13)?

Does nature (p.12) really consider the life and death of the individual to be of absolutely no consequence?

Schopenhauer writes (p.17), "In spite of time, death, and decay, we are still all together." What does he mean?

What of the man (p.18) who says of the game "I no longer like it."?

Who is "the lord of the worlds" (p.19)?

What is "the grand disillusionment"?

Why is the death of every good person "peaceful and gentle"? (p.20)


Evaluative Questions

Are all "religions and philosophical systems," as Schopenhauer writes (p. 1), aimed at consoling us concerning death?

Why does he state that "one" religion will enable man to look death calmly in the face, but then speaks of two different religions, Brahmanism (Hinduism) and Buddhism.

On p. 4 he writes, "If we knocked on the graves and asked the dead whether they would like to rise again, they would shake their heads." Agree or disagree?

Schopenhauer writes (p. 1), "Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason Socrates defined philosophy as 'preparation for death'. Indeed, without death there would hardly have been any philosophizing." Is he really saying that death inspires philosophy, or that philosophy "inspires" death.

"Arthur, Arthur!"

Our featured author this month is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), a German philosopher known for his pessimistic view of life. The reading selection, "On the Indestructibility of our Inner Nature," comes from his magnum opus The World as Will and Representation, first published in 1819. The World as Will and Representation did not reach a wide audience at the time.

Schopenhauer did, however, attain literary fame with his 1851 book Parerga and Paralipomena (loosely translated from the Greek as "Bits and Pieces"). It contains a multi-part essay, "The Art of Literature," with subsections entitled "On Authorship," "On Style," "On Thinking for Oneself," and "On Books and Reading." In "The Art of Literature," Schopenhauer critiques the dilettantish literary culture of his day. He spares neither the producers nor the consumers of that culture. He berates readers who read so much they never have time to think, for example. Such men, he says, "read themselves stupid."

Could the author of The World as Will and Representation, which weighs in at 700+ pages, have come to believe that thoughtful reading of expository prose was not a worthy pursuit? Schopenhauer's real beef is with those who live entirely inside a book of text instead of what he calls the "book of nature." The former are mere "men of learning," whereas the latter "have enlightened the world and carried humanity further on its way."

Still and all, Schopenhauer gives us license to indulge the reading habit, but with a caveat.

In "On Books and Reading," Schopenhauer enjoins "[B]e careful to limit your time for reading and devote it exclusively to the works of those great minds of all times and countries, who o'ertop the rest of humanity, those whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone educate and instruct. You can never read bad literature too little, nor good literature too much. Bad books are intellectual poison ; they destroy the mind. Because people always read what is new instead of the best of all ages, writers remain within the narrow circle of the ideas which happen to prevail in their time; and so the period sinks deeper and deeper into its own mire."

Was Schopenhauer a pessimist with a capital "P" or just a curmudgeon? Read "On the Indestructibility of Our Inner Nature," which examines the theme of death we found last month in Tolstoy's "The Death of Iván Illých," and decide for yourself.