Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of an audience if he knew that they were nearly all deaf, and that, to conceal their infirmity, they set to work to clap vigorously as soon as ever they saw one or two persons applauding?
arthur Schopenhauerquotes
1788 - 1860
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), called the “pessimistic philosopher,” significantly influenced existential philosophy and modern psychology with his writings rooted in the philosophies of Plato and Immanuel Kant.
Born to wealthy German parents in Poland, Schopenhauer was raised to take over his father’s merchant business. When his father died, the lure of scholarly pursuits was too strong for Schopenhauer to ignore, and he left his business apprenticeship for the University of Gottingen to study natural sciences and philosophy.
After earning his doctorate of philosophy from the University of Jena with his dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, he began a career as professor at the University of Berlin. There, his rivalry with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel began and it endured through their lives.
During this time, he published his most famous work, The World as Will and Idea, which established him as a foremost philosopher. In it, Schopenhauer discusses the self-centeredness of mankind and the aimlessness of human direction. Influenced also by Hindu mysticism and Buddhism, Schopenhauer reflected that desire was the root of pain and suffering.
Fearing the cholera epidemic in Berlin, Schopenhauer renounced his professorship and moved to Frankfurt where he lived as a recluse for the next 28 years before his death. He kept the company of poodles and cats, maintained a lasting friendship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and continued to clarify and affirm the original philosophical system laid out in The World as Will and Idea with multiple new editions.
The differences which come under the first head are those which nature herself has set between man and man.
differences / man / nature
What a man has: that is, property and possessions of every kind.
The more clearly you become conscious of the frailty, vanity and dream-like quality of all things, the more clearly will you also become conscious of the eternity of your own inner being; because it is only in contrast to this that the aforesaid quality of things becomes evident, just as you perceive the speed at which a ship is going only when looking at the motionless shore, not when looking into the ship itself.
No rose without a thorn. But many a thorn without a rose.
Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.
We sometimes forget even what we have done, so how much more what we have thought.
Not the least of the torments which plague our existence is the constant pressure of time, which never lets us so much as draw breath but pursues us all like a taskmaster with a whip. It ceases to persecute only him it has delivered over to boredom.
The negativity of well-being and happiness, in antithesis to the positivity of pain.
antithesis / Happiness / negativity / pain / positivity
It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives itself up entirely to the present moment that contributes so much to the delight we take in our domestic pets. They are the present moment personified, and in some respects they make us feel the value of every hour that is free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our thoughts and preoccupations, mostly disregard.
delight / moment / personified / pets / present