A Genealogy of Schopenhauer's Pessimism.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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I am currently doing an essay on the genealogy of Schopenhauer’s pessimism. I have traced back his main ideas from Kant and his distinction between an empirical character and an intelligible charcater, and also from the Hindu scriptures, the Upanishads and the Bhagavadita. I also have a dozen other sources he has used to justify his own position; Plato’s daemon, the position of the New Testament in regards to the world being inherently evil and man born in sin, Buddhism, Joseph Priestly’s Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity, and a few references to Stoics, Epicureans, ancient Christians, and Homer.

Can anyone help me in understanding Priestly? From what I’ve read of him he is almost exactly the opposite of what Schopnehauer believes, yet Schopenhauer endorses Priestly’s stance.

Schopenhauer’s justification of pessimism doesn’t seem to be anything new when one reads previous texts on how man and the world is full of suffering, but from my own understanding his unique position is in saying that suffering, willing, striving etc. is essentially positive and while a cessation of suffering and willing is essentially negative. This is because we were meant to suffer and desire from birth, it is our own unique position. All other doctrines, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, do not claim that suffering and desire is positive, they always claim it as a negative. This seems to be Schopnehauer’s own doctrine and invention.

Does anyone agree or disagree with what I’ve stated? Can anyone help with some advice?

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Can offer no help at all!

But just to say good luck with it - he’s a guy I really, really keep meaning to get into - especially as he’s part of Nietzsches “geanology” - maybe you could stick the final essay up?

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I think he simply looked at the world and decided that there was more bad than good in it.

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Thanks, yep I’ll put it up.

I’d recommend you read him if you want to learn more about Nietzsche. He basically turns Schopenhauer “on his head” and goes from there.

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I think you may be confused by Schopenhauer’s use of the terms ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. He does not use the terms in the normative sense, that is, what is positive is good and what is negative is bad. When he says that suffering is positive, he means that suffering is real; when he states that cessation of suffering is negative, he means that happiness is the negation or elimination of suffering, and that happiness does not exist in the same way suffering does.

The non-Schopenhauerian view of suffering & happiness might look like this:

SUFFERING |---------------------0---------------------| HAPPINESS

A person’s may exist somewhere on a continuum between total suffering and total happiness.

The Schopenhauerian view is thus:

SUFFERING |---------------------0

A person is always suffering, and only feels happy when they reach 0, that is, when all their desires have been satisfied (negated). After they reach 0, one of two things occurs: they are subject to further desires, which in turn leads to further suffering, or, if they remain at 0 for long periods of time, they enter a state of boredom.

In the non-Schopenhauerian model, both suffering and happiness are ‘positive’, that is, they are real states. In the Schopenhauerian model, on the other hand, only suffering is ‘positive’, that is, only suffering exists, and happiness is the negation of that suffering!

If you have any further questions, let me know.

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Excellent summary, Neuro.

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indeed

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I see, so when Schopenhauer states suffering is positive he’s claiming it is the only human state that really exists, whereas happiness is only an illusion and so calls it negative?

Cheers.

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Does anyone think that Schopenhauer’s philosophy of pessimism was in part influenced by Kant’s ideas on desire, pleasure and displeasure from his book, “Critique of Judgment”? I have read a secondary source that this is so, but cannot find anywhere in Schopenhauer’s texts that it is so.

Anyone?