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The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, a Dialogue, Etc. By: Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) |
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RELIGION: A DIALOGUE, ETC. TRANSLATED BY T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A. CONTENTS.
PREFATORY NOTE RELIGION: A DIALOGUE A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM ON BOOKS AND READING ON PHYSIOGNOMY PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM
PREFATORY NOTE
Schopenhauer is one of the few philosophers who can be generally
understood without a commentary. All his theories claim to be drawn
direct from the facts, to be suggested by observation, and to interpret
the world as it is; and whatever view he takes, he is constant in his
appeal to the experience of common life. This characteristic endows his
style with a freshness and vigor which would be difficult to match in
the philosophical writing of any country, and impossible in that of
Germany. If it were asked whether there were any circumstances apart
from heredity, to which he owed his mental habit, the answer might be
found in the abnormal character of his early education, his acquaintance
with the world rather than with books, the extensive travels of his
boyhood, his ardent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and without
regard to the emoluments and endowments of learning. He was trained in
realities even more than in ideas; and hence he is original, forcible,
clear, an enemy of all philosophic indefiniteness and obscurity; so that
it may well be said of him, in the words of a writer in the Revue
Contemporaine, ce n'est pas un philosophe comme les autres, c'est un
philosophe qui a vu le monde . It is not my purpose, nor would it be possible within the limits of a
prefatory note, to attempt an account of Schopenhauer's philosophy, to
indicate its sources, or to suggest or rebut the objections which may be
taken to it. M. Ribot, in his excellent little book, [Footnote: La
Philosophie de Schopenhauer , par Th. Ribot.] has done all that is
necessary in this direction. But the essays here presented need a word
of explanation. It should be observed, and Schopenhauer himself is at
pains to point out, that his system is like a citadel with a hundred
gates: at whatever point you take it up, wherever you make your
entrance, you are on the road to the center. In this respect his
writings resemble a series of essays composed in support of a single
thesis; a circumstance which led him to insist, more emphatically even
than most philosophers, that for a proper understanding of his system it
was necessary to read every line he had written. Perhaps it would be
more correct to describe Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung as his
main thesis, and his other treatises as merely corollary to it. The
essays in this volume form part of the corollary; they are taken from a
collection published towards the close of Schopenhauer's life, and by
him entitled Parerga und Paralipomena , as being in the nature of
surplusage and illustrative of his main position. They are by far the
most popular of his works, and since their first publication in 1851,
they have done much to build up his fame. Written so as to be
intelligible enough in themselves, the tendency of many of them is
towards the fundamental idea on which his system is based. It may
therefore be convenient to summarize that idea in a couple of sentences;
more especially as Schopenhauer sometimes writes as if his advice had
been followed and his readers were acquainted with the whole of his
work. All philosophy is in some sense the endeavor to find a unifying
principle, to discover the most general conception underlying the whole
field of nature and of knowledge. By one of those bold generalizations
which occasionally mark a real advance in Science, Schopenhauer
conceived this unifying principle, this underlying unity, to consist in
something analogous to that will which self consciousness reveals to
us. Will is, according to him, the fundamental reality of the world,
the thing in itself; and its objectivation is what is presented in
phenomena. The struggle of the will to realize itself evolves the
organism, which in its turn evolves intelligence as the servant of the
will... Continue reading book >>
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Philosophy |
Religion |
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