This day in history: German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer died on this day in 1860. He is one of my favorite philosophers, though he is very depressing to read. His pessimism challenges you though...Schopenhauer believed that the world in which we live is so bad that it cannot be worse:
"The life of the great majority is only a constant struggle for this existence itself, with the certainty of losing it at last. But what enables them to endure this wearisome battle is not so much the love of life as the fear of death, which yet stands in the background as inevitable, and may come upon them at any moment. Life itself is a sea full of rocks and whirlpools, which man avoids with the greatest care and solicitude, although he knows that, even if he succeeds in getting through with all his efforts and skill, he yet by doing so comes nearer and nearer at every step to the greatest, the most inevitable and irremediable shipwreck—death. This is the final goal of the laborious voyage, and worse for him than all the rocks from which he has escaped."
Thus the essence of the pessimistic idea is that—
Evil is of the very essence of existence.
Life is necessarily and hopelessly wretched.
To live is to desire.
To desire is to want.
To want is to suffer.
Wretchedness always outweighs felicity.
Nothing is worth the trouble it costs us.
See also 350 Books on German Philosophy on DVDrom (Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hegel)
See also: Life is Pain and Boredom - Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer on the Emptiness of Existence
Schopenhauer on Thinking and Reading
On the Indestructibility of our True Nature at Death by Arthur Schopenhauer
See my blog listing for this here.
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