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ab26& Art connects with beauty in general, and Schopenhauerian aesthetics has wide application. When I appreciate art it is because I can see an idea in its completeness. There is phoney art. But that too, as a phenomenon of its age, is open to contemplation. Pop videos are not art in the same way as art videos are, however much better done, interesting or engaging they are. In Schopenhauerian terms, they are pervaded with will. They are mere entertainment, and art as entertainment is not true art. It belongs to the realm that art constantly aspires to overcome. Art is the embodiment of idea. Feminism can produce interesting art just as communism can. As idea, it is then for contemplation…obstinacy of the philosopher, like Schopenhauer's obstinacy. All the power of a mature intellect put to the service of an earlily crystallised motive.
ab322 Schopenhauer, the essential soundness of his orientation. One is born a potential lord of the earth. Fame, wealth, women, pleasure, why should all these things not come as desired? Straightforwardly desiring what would give most pleasure one will encounter frustration, which is very painful and disillusioning. Worse than this directly, is the judgement and interpretation that is put upon one's frustration, not merely morality but all kinds of denigration….The frustration of the will is mollified by acquiescence in various clichés. The ties to the childhood past are ties to a mass of clichés i.e. to a particular interpretation of life. To reinterpret that past, that memory in the light of reality is to be considered strange. In life and memory there is interpretation and there is reality. To the question 'what is aesthetic experience' a possible answer is that it is a confirmation of reality against the oppressive power of alien interpretation.
ab325 Schopenhauerian truth of frustration as against various ideas and interpretations which deny it. Certain of the realities of human life viewed clearly are appalling. This is not to say that satisfaction may not come. They come despite this. Some victories may be gained….Mask the fact of frustration with some optimistic idea, pretend that the object of life has been realised, and it might seem you suppress and destroy the desire which is the necessary source of any possible satisfaction. Blake's Jerusalem, Schopenhauer's philosophy, Buddhist culture.
ab347 What is the meaning and value of Buddhism for the west? Buddhism is study with a value not dissimilar to that of Schopenhauer's philosophy. It is a vast, interesting and valuable field with no end to it. Unlike Christianity it does not immediately embrace the believer. The Anatta element is very strong . The Christian soul may feel cherished and cared for even in its sinful imperfection. The Buddhist does not exist as an individual. Buddhism insists on the need for enlightenment as paramount. Thus though we study it we are still sunk in Maya. i.e. we are not necessarily searching for Buddhist enlightenment. But even within a strictly Buddhist context that does not have to matter.
ab379 Coppleston's history From Fichte to Nietzsche. A very interesting volume. It reveals much of the seemingly arbitrary structure of much post Kantian German philosophy. Even Schopenhauer's will as thing in itself, however attractive, there hardly seems sufficient ground for accepting. Then there is the moral obsession that runs through so much German philosophy from Kant, Fichte and Hegel through to Feuerbach which seems so misguided. The lone voices like Stirner, de Sade and Nietzsche seem so necessary. But then I think of what have been my most obsessive and committed preoccupations. Ideas that I have found most attractive. Various ideas to do with decadence. Gobineau, Sorel, Spengler. And we have to realise that the force with which an idea enraptures us is not to be taken as a criterion of its objective truth.
ac222 Schopenhauer on female infidelity, that it makes perverts of us forcing us to think about other men in sexual congress.
ae148 On feeling, 'the concept denoted by the word feeling has only a negative content, namely that something present in consciousness is not a concept, not abstract knowledge of reason'.
ae153 Schopenhauer's criticism of Euclid
ae186 Goedel's incompleteness theorem as applicable to something like Schopenhauer's ethics, when he says that 'now since on the other hand every existing thing can be observed purely objectively and outside every relation and on the other hand the will appears in everything at some grade of its objectivity and this thing is accordingly the expression of an Idea everything is also beautiful' (p 210). Room for bad trip here. If we are talking about ideas, what right have we to disallow a paradoxical idea to the effect that 'I am not aesthetically assimilable'. I think of Allen Ginsberg's challenge to Walt Whitman, walking around the supermarket. What is to prevent such a logically deliberate hostility to aesthetic assimilation? Of course I am being intellectualist and the ideas are said to be discoverable by intuition. But there can be an intuition as bad as another is good. The Satanism of the will, the place where hell is.
ae193& One doubt I always had about Schopenhauer was that he might interfere with my appreciation of Hindu and Buddhist writings, for so many scholars speak of Schopenhauer when it might be better to allude to Nagasena, Vedanta, Nagarjuna. Schopenhauer's thought is one of a large type. His derives from a peculiar development of western tradition, but most derive from a different source and for general cultural purposes the type is more interesting than are the Kantian origins of Schopenhauer's thought. The principle of sufficient reason Schopenhauer sees as the ground of all differentiation. He feels able to say quite a lot about this, keeping to the proviso that he keeps short of the range of this principle. Plato speaks of the circle of the same and the different, these concepts surely involve differentiation. Without these how is it possible to say anything about will in any shape or form, either conceptually or to point intuitively or even to express any feeling coherent or incoherent? The platonic ideas as stages or phases of the will's objectification. The highest phase as found in the consciousness of man. What of this 'higher and lower'? Doesn't this suggest an anthropocentrism that recalls Hegel?
ae197 Schopenhauer becomes very interesting when he talks of self discovery, acquired character, right use of talents. This sounds very like thelemism, the individual as intelligible destiny. Likewise when he talks of wickedness. This is somehow gripping, perhaps it gives individual destiny a special dramatic interest, or perhaps it offers intimations of magical transformations. His doctrine of the will leads him to assertions that may seem pseudo scientific. or superstitious etc. etc. Indian thought 3 gunas. influence as life negative on Tolstoy.
ae203 He says his whole work is the elaboration of a single thought. But in this elaboration he makes use of a number of different traditions. Influence on Des Esseintes, Hardy, Gissing, Tolstoy.
ae218& Schopenhauer's extreme atheism. The idea that only the present moment exists, the significance of this in Buddhism and Buddhist logic. Any state of present and immediate suffering and frustration becomes intensified into a hell. In such circumstances the vital necessity is to find a means of escape. Buddhism, the philosophy of the bad trip. But also of good trip particularly in some of the Mahayana phases. Spiritual toilet. Resemblance between Buddhism and Christianity. Schopenhauer on Kant. Criticisms of Kant.
ae226& Frustration of ambition that lies the real key to the pessimism of both Schopenhauer and the Buddhists, & the relation of both to the affirmationist philosophies of Nietzsche and Crowley. Psychological reasons for Schopenhauer's pessimism, the greatness of his ambition. In your ambition the whole world is against you. You have no faith in a God to rescue you from your predicament. What appears to you as annihilation may be a new beginning, Schopenhauer suggests at the end of the first volume. What are the premises of ambition and why should it seem an aristocratic philosophy? The ordinary pleasures of life that most people enjoy are not worth the having, because there are desires that are unsatisfied that one has no intention of renouncing. To renounce such desires would strike one as the mark of a contemptible soul. Therefore one sees an underlying frustration in everything. What has the holy man discovered who has passed beyond pessimism? Perhaps he would have discovered means of securing the will. And to have passed beyond atheism to a form of animism. Why? because one needs supernatural help.
ae248 Schopenhauer's advocacy of asceticism, of non resistance. Rather than winding up as enlightened saint one is likely to descend the ladder of being and become an assembly line worker in a factory or wind up on Oscar Wilde's treadmill. You can only interpret this as a drive towards ignorance, unenlightenment, because the view you feel pressured to adopt is one on which you already have a perspective. If you adopted it you would lose the insight you have now and gain nothing.
ae261&& Schopenhauer on those who treat matter as thing in itself. His opposition to Proclus. Anaxagoras. The trouble is that from a conceptual point of view will is not absolutely simple. Certainly it does offer a type of explanation that is different from he mechanical. Will is effective as phenomenon. To claim it is the one ultimate explanation of everything is a form of dogmatism, idolatry. One explains the more clear (a self conscious ego) by the less clear (that driven by a powerful motive).
ae270 Schopenhauer's criticisms of modern science. Of modern atomism, which he traces back to Condillac. Wonder how many of the fundamental assumptions of modern science have actually been proved right and how many have just become part of the language through force of habit.
ae284& Quote p 418 on gothic architecture p 425 on poet's self opinion, p 373 physiognomies of inanimate things, numbers etc. flaw in Schopenhauer, insufficient account of prodigality and wastefulness of nature. He sets up a standard of truth and falsity, but who is successful and who is not is far more a matter of chance than could be displayed in any system. Perhaps posthumous fame will come to those who had true vision perhaps not. And what standard of judgement are we to put in opposition to the world? A marvellous writer, one of the few with whom one would like to converse as Dante with Virgil.
ae296& Schopenhauer's anti democratic position. Greek idea that philosophy could be the ruin of a young man. Idea that the philosopher or the genius neglects the interest of his wife and family. Socrates condemnation for the anti democratic, i.e. proto-fascist anti religious character of his thought. Idea of an intrinsic difference in rank between men. Against this the view of the Australians that one man is as good as another. One does not want to say that either view is intrinsically true or intrinsically false. Each is a possible way of interpreting and ordering experience. Certain thoughts and distinctions are possible on one of these that are not on the other.
af138 The art of the decadent movement was most congenially suited to the philosophy of Schopenhauer, which was essentially Buddhistic (Catholicism as bastard Buddhism). Therefore the aesthetic behind it was very sound. Art as release from the frustration of the will. How should it be that the will should continue to be frustrated? By reason of its ambition. The discontent of the Nietzschean with society around him, much to do with ideas held. Art, desire, rajas. Art contaminated with desire. More potential for frustration in will to power ideal. Image of complete satisfaction.
af141 Affirmation, negation. What is the objection to society as at present constituted? A superabundance of will, Schopenhauer might say. The frustration of my own will, Nietzsche might say. What is Nietzsche's answer? A doctrine, call it the Will to Power. Steadfastness in this to bring confidence. In what sense is this affirmation or denial? Both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer would admit that the experience of art brings a sort of affirmation. Nietzsche would call it of life, Schopenhauer of death. See this as verbal quibbles.
af239 Nietzsche holds Schopenhauer wrong to see the pleasure of art as escape from the will as such. It is escape from the pressure of alien will. Freedom from the alien will enables the life energy of the own will to flow more freely. Schopenhauer identified happiness with escape from the will because escape from the will was the belief with which he identified his own will.
af242 Schopenhauer understands affirmationist philosophy but he thinks he is rejecting it… etc. etc.
af284 Marxism, the black school, Schopenhauerian suicide. It is quite possible for people to embrace values the effect of which is to destroy them. Instead of pursuing aims which further your own power and enjoyment to do things which would tend to reduce it in most respects. How can anyone do this? Because they are under the influence of false magical theories. Schopenhauer's blasphemous praise of the will to extinction. Self mortification. Why should anyone mortify themselves? Because they hope for something good from it in the end, like the Indian ascetic. The intellectual who is willing to see his children become plebeianised. because he is a Marxist, the source of all good to him is the projected new revolutionary order. The will to power still operates but it is complicated by a theory, like a religious theory. To me, to abandon the pursuit of my own self interest is death, for the others it is not, as they expect their own real interest to be served. To me this is folly, their ground for expectation is illusion, they destroy what good things they have in the hope of something better.
ah148 My position as consumer of ideas. I would like to be more of a producer. The idea of a consumer of ideas is Schopenhauerian, Buddhistic. The life of culture. As a Schopenhauerian one might be reconciled to being merely a consumer seeking release from the pressure of the frustrated will.
ah332 Schopenhauer As anti revolution opposed to the naive optimism promoted by many liberal enthusiasts
ah370 Marx's determinism. Marx's reaction to Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's pessimism a frustration at something. Could this be economic?
ai141 Schopenhauer's misogyny springing from his hostile and negative attitude towards life in general. The contempt he had for the idea of the lady. In some respects his misogyny is refreshing, it may seem to break up a seemingly inevitable pattern. But in another sense, as much as we all want to see ourselves as belonging to a superior caste so we want our women, our own women, to share in that superiority. Think of all the patterns that may be formed of superiority and inferiority. Equal rights, the idea that women, or any other group for that matter, are equal as such, remains highly obnoxious.
ai181 Arthur Schopenhauer's English Schooling (Patrick Bridgwater) about the profound effect on his thought of 3 months spent at a Wimbledon boarding school aged 15 in 1803. The headmaster the Reverend Lancaster was a religious prig of the worst stamp.
ai207 Wittgenstein, Tolstoy, the saint, the Tractatus, the bounder. The Tolstoyan derived asceticism is certainly an interesting ideal. One might easily trace it back to Schopenhauer. But there can be pride in it. Also an unhappy homosexuality. When one thinks of the power of sex to cause suicidal feelings one can perhaps see the point of movements like gay lib.
aj226 Schopenhauer and frustration. Why human life appears so terrible to Schopenhauer. Identification of the self with particular and immediate desires. When it comes to be or to seem intolerable that desire should be frustrated. When one refuses to abandon a desire. When one is possessed by its necessity. Normally one may have desires and one may abandon them. The intolerability Schopenhauer feels is one of contemplation. In contemplation because of views of life, one retains the desire. Here the sense of frustration. In contemplation one renounces the desire. The possibility of this comes from scientific detachment. There is an escape from what seemed to be a trap. A stimulation of interest. A different sense of truth. A question of thought.
aj271 Birth of Tragedy Wagner's music as exemplification of Schopenhauerian true thesis.
ak133 Chaudhuri says that Schopenhauer has no understanding of Hinduism. One might equally say he misunderstood Christianity. The philosopher begins with doubt. All things, all values, are put into doubt
ak157& Arrogance of youth, hopes for life. A life of pure hedonism meets obstacles. Why should one embark on philosophy? Why not just imitate any of the other patterns held open to one? Why should not Schopenhauer have gone into trade? Why should not such ordinary life be satisfying? Perhaps because questions are left unanswered. Schopenhauer's mother's letters to him. when she says how you can achieve anything you set your mind to, see how this shallow pushy wisdom must have annoyed him so deeply. Schopenhauer's reaction to Anglicanism. Of course he is absolutely right about the revolting tedium and hypocrisy of it all, the trouble is that there is another side to it which is seductive. What of Hooker and George Herbert? It may be hard to understand but poetic and religious moods and thoughts can arise which seem to be of value
ak169 Schopenhauer's interpretation of music. As music organises emotions, so Schopenhauer organises music.
al232 Schopenhauer's weltschmerz springing from frustration of a particular desire rather than desire in general. What pleasures there are come as consolation and escape. Schopenhauer and the aesthetic. Escape from the individual will into a frame of mind where the will no longer operates. Any pleasure must somehow bypass the frustrated desire.
al325 William Law, of whom Aldous Huxley (in The Perennial Philosophy) writes in the highest terms. A saint, a genius, a master of prose, one who knows what it's all about. My own reservations. Law's life. Spiritual director to a rich woman. Does this not argue quite a pleasant life? Was a real saint someone like Simone Weil, who killed herself working in factories? What is really the virtue of all this mysticism anyway? Isn't the promise just one of extreme delight and enjoyment, i.e. a hedonistic motive? All the selflessness, isn't that a kind of trick 'losing your ego? And insofar as it is not how far is it necessary? Adolescents who are attracted to religion later forsaking it for sex. Sex as alternative to religion. All the religion that appeals to a modern teenager, how can it be so insubstantial? Boys who liked going to communion. Surely the pleasure of that must be mystical. But one can grow out of it. So what of different forms of mysticism? And has not Schopenhauer expressed it better than anyone? He knew about affirmation and negation & I am an affirmationist.
am287 Nietzsche's objection to what he calls romanticism, described as the expression of the idea that it is better not to be than to be. The Schopenhauerian art of the 19th century. And yet could not the Schopenhauerian experience become the Nietzschean with very little modification? Both kinds of art offer release from a certain pressure. There is a quote where he perceives this. Life and death are one.
am293 The difference between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer is not unbridgeable. What Schopenhauer condemns as the will as such Nietzsche abhors as the pressure of the weak against the strong. The democratic force. The values that put all tastes on the same level. Destroying the uniqueness of the individual will.
an138 Appeal of Mallarmé His Schopenhauerianism. Rejection of life in favour of dreams, like his friend Adam. If Schopenhauer mistook his own motivation, then Schopenhauerian art is probably not life negative in the way it might understand. It can easily be given a Nietzschean, or a dissident interpretation.
an166 Pink Floyd's ultra delicacy. They who were so very good, it is hard to criticise. But from The Wall onward, like an excessive sensitivity to suffering. See what Nietzsche means about the bad effects of Schopenhauerianism. And yet.. As he says, there was dishonesty in Schopenhauer. He affirms where he thinks he negates. So the same applies to many artists who think they are Schopenhauerian. The aesthetic interpretation is wrong. So with Baudelaire and Mallarmé. There is no need to create a new Nietzschean art, full of titanic aggression. Art was already Nietzschean, already dissident.
an217 Schopenhauer, writing of the Sufis, even suggests the provisional nature of his own scheme. Affirmation and negation obviously have some significance as polarities, but not as simply as it might appear, Happiness is obviously more important. Affirmationism is a way of expressing oneself, but it is better not because it is happier, that is disingenuous. It means something at a mystical level. It is the viewpoint of Satan as being right. It is the real rejection of an oppressive God, a body of so called truth that demands denial or suppression of the instincts. Negation may coexist with cheerfulness. Etc., etc.
an31 Schopenhauer says of Hegel that his ideas are essentially without meaning, and that his readers are required to give them a meaning. What is the 'Notion', what is the meaning of this teleological principle? Something out of Schelling.
ao16 Edward Von Hartmann. A different form of pessimism to that of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer he condemns as a Quietist, which amounts to no more than an Epicurean. He claims to effect a reconciliation between Schopenhauer and Hegel, which he does, though through a point of view that is utterly fantastic. See how close the movement is to the development of the Mahayana, the bodhisattva instead of the arhat. We are all one, he says, so not only is suicide useless, even individual salvation is too. No individual escape is possible, because we are all one. Our innermost essence, the Unconscious, unites us all. So the extinction that is preferable to existence, is not possible on an individual level. He suggests it is possible, finally and absolutely, when a majority of the will in existence in the universe decides to will annihilation. Lower forms of life and intellect do not so clearly perceive the great truth that nothingness is better than existing. Evolution therefore consists in an advance in misery and pessimism. This is desirable, because it is to bring about the ultimately desirable end, extermination of lower life forms, and the decision for the will to annihilate itself, and therefore everything. Reading that book I see how nineteenth century German metaphysics forms a continuous discussion.
ao75, As the Buddhists say, truly, immediate desire is mostly frustrated. This is one of the things that lead to pessimism. But why is this? Is it because contemplation and willing are somehow illegitimately commingled? Schopenhauer's answer is contemplation, which draws us away from willing. To him it has a negative character. Hotness of desire. You feel that if you get your desire, it will put you in a good mood. But your desire is frustrated. Contemplating yourself, your life seems a failure. But there is another way of looking which can yield a more positive result. To contemplate is to observe & to take pleasure in what is observed. Not a retreat from life and will, but a love of what is, a determination to continue with the struggle. The consolation, the drug, of self complacency. See how this does have apart to play in cheering up. Self contemplation, escaping form the immediacy of hot desire. Of looking for happiness in that direction ….etc etc.
ap87, Schopenhauer's inconsistencies. Him on the Sufis. His brilliance of style can make us overlook his inconsistencies. As if he is merely expressing common-sense.
aq363, What to think of decadent fin de siècle literature? My tendency to look for a philosophy behind it, like Schopenhauer. To see decadent literature as an exemplification of Schopenhauer's true philosophy.
aq366, Axel. Art as an alternative philosophy, and alternative world. Art and craft, art and work. Art as dissidence. As the creation of emotional and sensual support for a philosophy. Distinction between art and propaganda. I think of this Schopenhauerian art less as pure essence of art, than as a religious programme that produces art, like mediaeval Catholicism. See why Axel seems such a classic work. Horror aroused by the Church, together with the full arrogance of its claims. Then the Old man of the forest. Axel, Ludwig II, feudal absolutism. This wonderful reactionary vision. Then the glory of ancient alchemical and hermetic lore. This identified with Schopenhauerianism negation. Such important sources of insight into Schopenhauer. And into negation, and the Nietzschean point that this is really affirmation dishonestly described. See Schopenhauerian philosophy as offering a programme for an artistic culture, for the construction of works of art. The simple enjoyment, the pure enjoyment, as described in, e.g.., Kantian aesthetic, simply ignores something that should not be ignored, i.e. prior conditions that must be satisfied before aesthetic pleasure is possible. …Finberg, the translator, says it is a tragedy. There is an obvious tendency to see it as preaching the unacceptable message of suicide. Here it is a splendid illustration of Schopenhauer's essential message of negation, and the way it should be reversed. This pride this rejection of commonality, this intensely aristocratic work. What is rejected as 'life' is really democratic vulgarity. Schopenhauer's own pride and pique finding further expression. The mystical life as a turning away from the common life. This is only a symbolic death. The rejection is essentially a rejection of symbols. This intense pride that takes to the limit its rejection its shocking rejection of normal values. See how Nietzsche himself manages the transvaluation. He turns Schopenhauer into affirmation. How? By giving us something to read. He manages to reproduce much of the effect Schopenhauer produces by a radical negation. the Schopenhauerian rejection can seem more aesthetic than the Nietzschean., prouder more effective.
as97, Wagner's Schopenhauerianism. Quite pure in Philosophy and Art 1880. The very Schopenhauerian Buddhistic interpretation of Christian art. The crucifixion, the Saviour as miraculously turning against the will to live, moved only be feeling for the suffering of others. The unpleasantness of the Jewish association, the harsh Jehovah countered by the idea of the Virgin mother,. The natural connection of all this with vegetarianism. But I get a clear sense that Buddhism has been sentimentalised. Fin de siecle sickness. Linkage to a counter reformation sensibility.
as156, Schopenhauer and Buddhism. Is it a young man's religion? Idea of decline in the second hall of life, As you grow older you feel differently. But is this denial? Decrease in the violence of desire. So perhaps a tendency to deny and oppose that violence.
as232, Gissing's discontent. Clear reasons why only the misfit is capable of real originality. Only in the disharmony between the will and the world are the real contours of that world made visible. Such knowledge brings power, aristocratic power. 'Demos'. With its hint of demonic. A work of negation, like Schopenhauerian negation. But only like tragedy. The facts Schopenhauer points out are the facts of tragedy, which maybe used to affirm
ar 94, Mehring's Marxist interpretation . Schopenhauer as appealing to the leisured bourgeois class that just wants peace. Nietzsche as high finance that wants to do away with morality.
ar97, Symbolism exhibition. What they say about Moreau., about how he uses symbolism for essentially private purposes of his own.Suggestion that this is proto Freud. But then such a vision is not necessarily content to see itself as private. It determines religion and politics. It leads to hermetic philosophy & ultimately the Golden Dawn. Aesthetics of he later nineteenth century. Philosophical puzzles that are set. I seek philosophical basis for something that mostly did not articulate itself in such terms. I feel the need for a critic like Arthur Symons, but even more for Schopenhauer. Basically we have an art that offers consolation for a certain frustration of the will. It is an escape from unhappiness into a different form of happiness. So different that it can seem like a renunciation of the will.
ar238, We who may tend to think of consumerism as one of the things art should be most concerned to reject. Because it is not entirely consumerism, it is some of the values consumerism brings with it. Try to think again of Schopenhauer here. What has to be rejected is a sort of alien will. A kind of alien pressure to collude and conform to something distasteful…… The attack on high culture as elitist. Importance of the space created by Schopenhauerian and symbolist culture.
ar342, "The culmination of the Black philosophy is only found in Schopenhauer, and we may regard him as having been obsessed on the one hand, by the despair which he learnt from the bankruptcy of Hume and Kant ; on the other by the direct obsession of the Buddhist documents to which he was one of the first Europeans to gain access.." (Aleister Crowley - Magick without Tears p 25) "We may define the doctrine of the White School in very simple terms. Existence is pure joy. Sorrow is caused by failure to perceive this fact; but this is not a misfortune. We have invented sorrow, which does not matter so much after all, in order to have the exuberant satisfaction of getting rid of it " PP 77-78
ar355, Schopenhauer, a pessimistic system which belongs with the oriental. A philosophy which has a practical use, which invites into Buddhism. Promoting Schopenhauer's aesthetic, first of all to resurrect his motive. Like sexual discontent and frustration. Resurrect the discontent, then the solution will become available.
b14 Being and will. Schopenhauer's opposition. Being only made good by an act of will. Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, gigantic efforts of will to establish being as good. The concept of will enables us to co-ordinate all these different systems. One might compare it to Copernican theory
ff251 Schopenhauer a successor to Kant & would have been impossible without him. Kant made rational religion possible, feeling rationally respectable. What ultimately this does is open up a whole new range of phenomena & relationships between them which greatly improve our understanding of the world. Logically unsound but opens up a new area of question, a new ideal of a perfectly satisfactory explanation.
ff289& Schopenhauer on women's arrogance to social inferiors. quote. This has a more general application. women like to rub in whatever power they have Feminist urge to press home simple notions of equality to the point where men really come to feel subservient.
ff310 Quote on the lady
gg88 What Schopenhauer says about fixity of character I hope is not true.
mm138 Schopenhauer against egoism and for altruism and sympathy. Seemingly an objection to my recent speculations, I who speak of the quest for satisfaction. Abandon the quest, Schopenhauer would say, cease to desire satisfaction, regard the satisfaction of others as much you regard your own. That I suppose is something I had not thought of. Of course it is a bit of a conceptual cop out, like Nirvana, like Kant. One of those transcendental solutions that change the terms of the question., Mysticism. sympathy.
mm158 Schopenhauer, a man is responsible not for each individual act, but for his entire character and selfhood. That is his noumenal reality, his responsibility. Thus people might be held responsible for their physical appearances. And why not? What a happy state of affairs, to know that a beautiful woman is responsible for her beauty, that it expresses her innermost self! Thus love would not seem unfair. But then women feel already that they are their bodies. I feel that I have a body. Durer's asymmetrical devils. The last judgement at Leyden by Leyden.
oo124 Schopenhauer's aesthetic. Much truth in the idea that aesthetic enjoyment results from detachment from the will. The explanation of the bookshop (P116) & of the joys of travelling east. The US is dominated by will ruled by it. but this will is not what Nietzsche understands by will. 'The feeling the power is increasing ' is a product of will. Aesthetic enjoyment is a resistance overcome. i.e. you are no longer in the thick of it. 'O the brave music of a distant drum!' Ugliness can be enjoyed from a point outside. It is ugly precisely because it frustrates the will. but if it satisfies the will it will not thereby be beautiful. Immediate involvement brings immediate awareness of ugliness
tt168 quote..how very paltry and limited the normal human intellect.. only the rarest of exceptions do (philosophise)… rest … animals… various religions
xx343 Schopenhauerian aesthetic. Will as antithetical to art. Art as conquest or overcoming.
xx379 Schopenhauerian pessimism. Logic behind it. Baudelaire's poem about the race of Abel and the race of Cain. The race of Abel because they are fortunate have been the only ones who have been able to express their view of life publicly therefore they grossly overrepresent the pleasantness of human life in general. For most people life means dreary menticidal toil. Difficulty with this. They are happy who do not know any better. Schopenhauerian pessimism arises at a time of social revolution & rising expectation. As soon as the race of Cain feel they can and ought to live like the race of Abel then their lives become intolerable to them.
zz266 Schopenhauer says that woman is not beautiful apart from our sexual desire, but what does that mean? Sexual desire is there it is part of my nature part of the way in which I apprehend the world.
zz279 The web of human sympathies. That someone like Schopenhauer sympathises with St Augustine. So many points on which Nietzsche is in fundamental disagreement with Schopenhauer. Yet in other points so sympathetic…
at21 Art may express a zeitgeist, that may be its significance. And the aesthetic philosophy we use to interpret this may even be Schopenhauerian. But art can also be use to create a zeitgeist. 'The mannerism of concept art'. Concept art in its full destructive power. Emin's bed. Hirst's dead animals.
Artist as shaman. The artist's philosophy may be seen as irrelevant to his work. Alternatively he may well be the proponent of some kind of philosophy. Seeing himself as the shaman, he may think of himself as purveying wisdom to his audience. What I don’t like is the idea of art as mystagoguery, as a superior kind of philosophy, a form of mystery teaching. This is like Kant coming back. Nietzsche goes and we get Kant instead.
at37 See how Schopenhauer's misogyny and his anti-Hegelianism link up. With a woman, if one is interested in her one is interested in her attitude to oneself. One does not want to ally oneself with something hostile to oneself. To be half erotically drawn into something detestable. Hegel, Wagner, Schopenhauer, woman, revolution. All linked up. Exploring the idea of male rejection of the idea of female genius. The female on one's own side is quite a different question. The self assertion that is the real joy in life.
at52 Deussen (The Philosophy of the Upanishads) His Schopenhauerianism combining with Christianity.
Anquetil-Duperron. French translation of the Persian translation of The Upanishads, used by Schopenhauer..The use that is made of Indian philosophy in the west. Nature of interpretation. Interpretation of religion so it makes sense The life of Indian philosophy in the culture of the west. Question of whether or not Buddhism is life negating, and if Buddhism is not is Schopenhauerianism? Associate art with negation and death. But is that the reality of it? What is the crucial point? 'Idea that is better not to be than to be'. This may be an idea but is it honestly applied? A lot of Buddhism may involve a lot of happiness, and a lot of joyful action.
at67 Deussen, his Kantianism. So sure Kant was right, he judges Upanishadic doctrine by that standard. But there are other possible approaches, and the magical is one such. See how the kings first came up with the atman doctrines, and how it seemed a civilising doctrine. Something constant amid the chaos of momentary desire. Interesting to see how theism arrives late. Realism, pantheism, theism, idealism. See Buddhism as so much like Schopenhauer, a retreat from the urgency of desire.
When the west discovered Upanishadic religion with Anquentil-Dupperron's translation from the Persian, it was soon understood how superior this was as religion This is a real kingly religion. Deussen analyzing all the different layers. Such magnificence in these early speculations
See how religion for us is far from kingly. The taming aspect of it is so obvious. Religion to us is not to do with understanding. It contains this immense reproach, this weight of guilt. Restraint and coercion to an uncomfortable ideal that expresses someone else's interest.
at80 Deussen appears to be some kind of Schopenhauerian. Nietzsche wanted him to join some kind of community he was hoping to set up.
He sees Indian pessimism as coming from an intellectual problem. He dismisses other suggestions, such as that it comes from the harshness of the Ganges valley as against the Indus, or from the oppressive domination of the Kshatryias. Because the Ganges was no worse than the Indus and the philosophy came from the Kshatriyas.
