The Genius that is Arthur Schopenhauer

The World as Will and Representation, by Arthur Schopenhauer

When I told my friend, my favourite philosopher was Arthur Schopenhauer, he said ‘ah the philosopher for smack heads.’ Alas I am not a smack head, but perhaps there is something in the notion. For Schopenhauer is a troubling read. He sees the world as it really is, behind the tyranny of modern existence, many people live lives that are embodiments of pain and heartache. As such I prefer the term liberator, for such philosophers, emancipate us from the bondage of the living condition into the sublime world of pure thought. In turn they show us a glimpse of recognition and understanding, even across the vast distance of space and time.

Jung says of Schopenhauer: ‘He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us [...] Here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundamentals of the universe.’ 

Schopenhauer was not, like Nietzsche (who, incidentally, seems to be one of the most disgusting individuals who ever lived). He was a nihilist and he didn’t hate the world, he pitied it and spoke with the indignation of someone who has suffered from it. Alas, there is a method to his madness, and this is why I call him a liberator, for he was willing to plug life to the depths, and go deep down in the mire, in order to rescue it.

Nevertheless he was a strange character. He would give lectures to empty university halls, carry around a pet poodle, and repeat obsessively the same walk every day for approximately sixty years. Clearly a mind, that has reached the end of its tether but I love him for it!

And now what exactly did Schopenhauer say? First we must remember he was a follower of Plato and Kant. He believed the ‘allegory of the cave’, and of Kant’s ‘thing-in-itself.’ As such he is a shining star in the tradition of idealism. 

In more simple terms, he believed behind the appearance of reality, there exists a greater spiritual one. His opening lines: ‘The world is my representation,’ means precisely this: The world is whatever I see it to be at any given moment. Everything in existence is really only a cheap imitation and poor copy, of an unborn, uncreated, and unconditioned archetype, which exists beyond the veil.

In today’s terms, this is idealism is quite unpopular. We tend to think as ‘Positivists’, meaning we think in terms of concrete physicality. Materialism is the only world that exists. There is no God, no Spirit, no Forms or Archetypes. In fact, the veil is a crude metaphor for something which doesn’t exist. We have one life and thats that.

Schopenhauer, on the other hand, did see something behind existence, and behind the everyday appearance of things. However, to him it was something diabolical and a constant thorn humanity had to deal with.

He called it ‘Will’ or in longer terms: ‘The Will-to-Live.’  He claimed behind the mere tapestry of phenomena was a blind and unified necessity, which compelled universe to life. A Buddhist would label it ‘Desire’ and it is fundamental core of existence. We can imagine it as a sort of unconscious energy which robs us of freewill, and only causes blind, hopeless striving. Another metaphor, would be, humanity as a blindfolded rider, and ‘Will’ is the out of control horse on which he is astride.

Why are we born? why do we procreate? why do the stars shine? why does the bird fly? why do plants grow? why do clouds arise? Why did the galaxies form, and the universe beget? The answer: ‘Will’, the ‘will-to-live’. A hidden magic which makes everything in existence blindly desire and compel it to life.

They are difficult concepts to get one’s head around but Schopenhauer makes things clear. It is his emotive and pristine language which is one of his chief appeals, not to mention his courageous attempts to pin down the world for what it is. 

He states: ‘It is really incredible how meaningless and insignificant when seen from without, and how dull and senseless when felt from within, is the course of the great majority of men [...] It is weary longing and worrying, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages [....] We are like clockwork that is wound up and goes without knowing why. Every time a man is begotten and born the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement, and measure by measure with insignificant variations. Every individual every human apparition and its course of life is only one more short dream of the endless spirit of nature the persistent will-to-live is only one more fleeting form playfully sketched by it on its infinite page, space and time [....] All these fleeting forms these empty fancies must be paid for by the whole Will to live in all its intensity, with many deep sorrows, and finally with bitter death [...] If [we were] Finally, we were to bring to the sight of everyone the terrible suffering and afflictions to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized with horror.’

For Schopenhauer, because appearance is ‘representation’ and essence is ‘Will’ he came to some thoroughly alarming conclusions about life itself. If we are nothing more than bodies which imbibe the blind striving of an anonymous, incognate and insensate ‘Will’, then really, we are condemned to suffer, because desire also specifies a lack, and fulfillment a negation.

As such he states:

‘We see striving everywhere, struggling and fighting, and hence always as suffering. Thus there is no ultimate aim of striving, means that there is no measure or end of suffering’ and life swings ‘like a pendulum to a fro between pain and boredom’

There is only one cure for the world and it is not Christian eternity, but the opposite. It is the Buddhist concept of extinction, or more philosophically, renunciation, because in the long run, only by the voluntary divestment of power and life, can the cycle of birth, death and reincarnation end. Renunciation will extinguish the Will-to-Live, and also with it, the endless treadmill of suffering man is trapped on. This is not a call to suicide, but a call to the lofty heights of stoical compassion, and detachment. The supreme examples would be Buddha or Christ. 

So Schopenhauer was a Pessimist, but to me, his conclusions are logically correct, and I would tend to agree with him on the quiet when he says:

‘Optimism...where it not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbour nothing but words under their foreheads, seem to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of mankind.’ It is Schopenhauer’s chief merit, that before anyone else, he realized that often life is the bitterest pill to swallow. 

Once in a while it is important to remember who we are:

We are like Buddha, who left the luxury world of royalty, pomp and glitz, to travel outside the palace walls, only to encounter old age, sickness, and death, yet somehow aimed to redeem suffering and turn it into truth and goodness.

As such, we need these liberators, to follow through such knowledge to its final end, and somehow rescue humanity from the jaws of destruction. 

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

Tomorrow is the 75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht, also known as the ‘Night of Broken Glass.’  Over the course of only two days, in Winter 1938, the SA paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party devastated the German-Jewish community. Businesses were smashed, homes destroyed, and civilians killed. It was a sign of things to come. 

Markus Zusak’s Book Thief, is a stout reminder of such a time, but also how the lives of ordinary Germans were intwined with the fate of their Jewish Neighbors. 

Liesel Meminger is the hero of the novel, and more particularly she is a stealer of stories. After witnessing the death of her younger brother, and being abandoned to foster parents, she increasingly learns to explore the world of family, friendship, and her country, by books and words. They become, a blessing and a curse.

The Book Thief, has a rich tapestry of colourful characters. Hans Hubermann and his wife Rosa Hubermann are the doting family Liesel grows up under. Hans paints, plays the accordion, and rolls cigarettes. Rosa berates and scolds, while being a washer-woman, but underneath she has a soft heart. On the same street, is Liesel’s best friend Rudy Steiner, a boy who wants to run like Jesse Owens. And Hidden in her basement is Max Vandeburg, a Jewish Fist Fighter, who is writing down his life story, and hiding out.

Navigating the perils of adolescence is hard enough, but for Liesel it will involve dealing with the Nazi state. In fact, in time, the whole of her street, will all have to come to terms, with the fate of their country, and its collective actions during the war.

For myself, the novel reminds me of the best work of Dickens. The characters are larger than life, and instantly lovable. The stories they share are timeless, because they are about the most important things in this life: Growing up, the bonds of friendship, family, and the depth and limit of human kindness. 

To me, the most interesting aspect of the novel is the narrator. None other than Death himself! On the surface, the Grip Reaper appears as a kind undertaker, conscripted into a job he hates, and with a boss who has unaccountably vanished! In Nazi Germany his workload is unprecedentedly high. It is busy time, but more to point, Death is haunted by his line of work. As an old friend, who does his duty, he benevolently carries off human beings, from their plight, into eternity, and mourns their loss after they’re gone.

However, in my opinion, there is something shady about this character Death. While he waxes poetically about the loss of life, and the terrible burden he is made to bear, there is something sentimental, even glib, in his manner. Beneath all the beautiful syntax and philosophical musings, Death is a greedy sensualist, who chooses form over substance.  

For example, he has an uncanny ability to talk of individuals as if they were inanimate objects. ‘Rosa Hubermann, looked like a small wardrobe,’ Liesel has ‘wire shins’ and ‘coat hanger arms,’ and Max Vandeburg appears like ‘a struck match.’

 In opposition, he refers to the landscape itself as if it were a human being. The street ‘is shaped like a broken arm [...] These houses were almost like lepers’ and they are, ‘infected sores on the German terrain.’

As much as he is ‘haunted by humans,’ we, should be even more haunted by his appetite for colours. Although he claims to like them all, there are only three he feels intensely. ‘They fall on top of each other. The scribbled signature Black, onto the blinding global White, onto the thick soupy Red.’ In other words, the colours and design of Nazi flag and Swastika!

Zusak’s Book Thief is a timeless tale of the human spirit. It is also told with linguistic flare and creativity. Like Liesel we will be impressed and awed by the power of words. It is a novel which, asks some important questions about responsibility and choice, and carries a hidden depth, which means it can be reread over and over again. More so, than anything else, it shows the innocence of adolescence, and burden of adulthood which all children must inherit. 

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn 

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, is a novel about survival. As soon as the narrator is awoken by the military reveille, in the freezing cold lice-infested bunk, he recalls some advice he has been given:

‘A man can live here, just like anywhere else. Know who pegs out first? The guy who licks out the bowls, puts his faith in the sickbay, or squeals to the Godfather.’

As such, there are to be no heroes and villains. Instead the story, meticulously documents the monotony of life in a Russian labour camp. 

In fact, in a canon that rests between the twin giants of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn’s novel is unusual in its restraint. The scope is myopic, style plain, and the theme subtle. The protagonist, is a witness rather than interpreter, and he only focuses on the daily task of living, hour-by-hour. 

Nevertheless, the deprivation is striking and the starvation unforgiving. Coupled with manual labour and sadistic overseers, it is incrementally devastating. By degrees, the reader becomes aware, just what a struggle it is, to pass twenty-four hours in such a camp.

Most of all, there is the banality of hunger. Denisovich notes: ‘Standing there to be counted through the gate of an evening, back in camp, after a whole day of buffeting wind, freezing cold, and an empty belly, the zek longs for his ladleful of scalding hot watery evening soup as for rain in a time of drought [...] For a moment the ladleful means more to him than freedom, more than his whole past life, more than whatever life is left to him.’ Inevitably, the notion arrives, ‘Damn this life of ours.’  

Solzhenitsyn’s shows the Gulag, as distinctly apolitical. The significance of the prisoners sentence is lost in the task of staying alive. There is however, a basic economy.

 A prisoner: ‘Could stitch covers for somebody’s mittens from a piece of old lining. Take some rich foreman his felt boots [...] Rush round the store room looking for odd jobs.’ Despite this, ‘there were too many volunteers, swarms of them.’ Bribery is the result: ‘A bit for the warder, a bit for the team foreman [...] There’ll be a little something for the bathhouse man [...] Then theres the barber [...] then they’ll be someone in the CES [...] You’re bound to give some to your neighbour.’ ‘Thieving on the site, thieving in the camp, and there was thieving even before the food left the store.’ A Darwinian struggle and hierarchy, and although unremarkable, some prisoners often end up on the loosing end, with their throat cut in the night.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an important book. Written by a former Red Army commander, and Soviet prisoner, it is an authentic testimony of the Russian Gulag and its banal horrors. Furthermore it is a stunning read.

Despite the title, the novel isn’t really about a prisoner called Ivan. His story, like that of his fellow inmates, is swallowed up by the dehumanizing beast which has locked them down and reduced them to animals. 

The brutality of its twenty-four hours, is enough to last an eternity.