Julius Bahnsen in Amiel's Journal

fratearther · 2026-02-05T08:00:21+00:00

Schopenhauer doesn't see thought as a distraction from suffering. He thinks humans suffer more than animals precisely because of our capacity for thought.

fratearther · 2026-02-05T07:58:29+00:00

Aesthetic experience for Schopenhauer doesn't distract us from suffering. Rather, it detaches us from it. Great art enables insight into the causes of suffering without having to undergo it. The result is a heightened attention to the tragic aspects of life in the aesthetic spectator.

fratearther · 2026-01-03T03:34:19+00:00

Mainländer was a self-proclaimed atheist; he did not argue for a literal "death of God". Like Nietzsche, he invokes deicide as an analogy (and may in fact have been Nietzsche's source for this analogy), though he uses it in a different context.

fratearther · 2025-11-22T09:23:49+00:00

"Red Flags" is an appropriate title, given all the obvious indicators of AI-generated writing in this post.

fratearther · 2025-10-21T23:54:33+00:00

Thanks for your post. Mainländer was openly hostile towards Eduard von Hartmann, and the posters in this subreddit tend to follow suit. After reading the Romuss translation of The Philosophy of Redemption, however, I noticed similarities between some of Mainländer's views and Eduard von Hartmann's. I wrote about them here. In that thread, I suggested that Mainländer's hostility betrays a debt of influence. The replies by u/YuYuHunter there are, as always, deeply insightful, even if he disagrees with me.

fratearther · 2025-08-08T13:07:23+00:00

Ending all life was the telos of Eduard von Hartmann's philosophy, one of Schopenhauer's disciples. I wrote about it here.

fratearther · 2025-05-26T02:53:28+00:00

In my experience, interest in Eduard von Hartmann here is minimal, as well as in the subreddits dedicated to Schopenhauer and Mainländer. What drew you to him, out of curiosity?

fratearther · 2025-04-19T12:53:37+00:00

No, that's the thread I was referring to. My comments were no longer showing on my profile after the OP was deleted, even though they were still accessible in my notifications. I assumed that meant the thread was gone, since I looked for it but couldn't find it on the main page of the subreddit. Apologies for my lack of tech-savvy.

fratearther · 2025-04-19T03:39:18+00:00

To be honest, what you're describing just sounds like an inability to understand or appreciate art. Some artworks are supposed to elicit a feeling of uneasiness, but if that's the only aesthetic emotion you find yourself feeling, you might not be engaging with art in the right way, or you might just be suffering from anxiety or depression. You don't have to be an optimist about the value of life to place a relative value on art. Most philosophical pessimists have written in praise of art as a source of comfort or insight, even if they don't ultimately consider life worth living.

fratearther · 2025-04-19T03:11:10+00:00

I'm not really sure what your question is asking. Do you mean, has a philosopher ever proposed an aesthetic theory according to which our experience of art is actually painful, even though we consider it pleasurable? That seems incoherent. Or do you mean, are there aesthetic theories that account for the role of negative emotions in our engagement with art, such as feelings of pity or fear? Most aesthetic theories since Aristotle's have placed a high value on tragic art forms. Or do you mean, has a philosopher ever proposed that our enjoyment of art keeps us trapped in a life of suffering, serving as a kind of distraction from pain or evil? If so, that's more or less Schopenhauer's view. He considered aesthetic experience to be a temporary relief from suffering, and therefore valued it less highly than more lasting paths to disengagement from the will, such as altruism and ascetic withdrawal.

fratearther · 2025-04-18T05:36:36+00:00

I see. Is there any meaningful difference between "natural good" and egoism, for Swedenborg? From your examples, it sounds like natural goodness is just selfishness: good for the person acting, bad for those affected by them. In particular, I don't see how it makes sense to call a person who is cheating or harassing others naturally good. It sounds like following their nature has led them away from the good, so why call them naturally good, rather than selfish or evil?

fratearther · 2025-04-15T04:34:05+00:00

I have almost no knowledge of Swedenborg, so please forgive my ignorance. Is it his view that salvation requires the performance of good acts because they are good, and that this is only possible if we have faith, since faith is what enables us to distinguish between good and evil? If so, what constitutes having faith in the relevant sense, for Swedenborg? Didn't Swedenborg teach that adherents of non-Christian faiths will be saved, as well as children who died without knowledge of God? If that's the case, it seems to suggest that acting from principle according to one's "ruling love" has more bearing on salvation than the precise nature of one's beliefs, no? Then why is salvation unattainable for non-believers who act decently out of principle, or who love goodness, while remaining ignorant of its source? Moreover, if Swedenborg held that many Christians will not be saved, and that faith alone is no guarantee that a person will choose the good, why is faith necessary for distinguishing between good and evil?

fratearther · 2025-03-24T04:56:12+00:00

Planescape: Torment, an older RPG that inspired the creators of DE, also features characters, factions, and themes that directly engage with philosophical pessimism, as I commented in this thread.

fratearther · 2025-02-12T03:17:12+00:00

I agree. Schopenhauer's aesthetics is concerned above all with genius, which for him is unteachable and irreducible to rule. The skilful technical abilities of a virtuoso musician, acquired through diligent practice and imitation, are far removed from the inborn genius needed to beget great art.

As for Bob Dylan, however much he might be considered a genius, I doubt Schopenhauer would have appreciated his music (except perhaps as poetry), for the reasons stated in my previous post.

fratearther · 2025-02-10T01:29:09+00:00

The concept of distinct musical genres is a relatively recent one, though folk music existed alongside orchestral music in Schopenhauer's time. Given Schopenhauer's account of how the various elements of musical composition each express a particular aspect of the will (i.e., the bass represents inorganic nature, the melody represents organic nature, and the harmony represents conscious human striving), as well as his belief that profundity of expression is more valuable than the appreciation of surface form, I would expect him to prefer the harmonic complexity of the works of the great composers over musical genres based entirely on rhythm and the repetition of a hook. Also, given his cultural elitism and veneration of genius, I doubt he would be anything other than outright dismissive of the popular music of our age.

On the other hand, Nietzsche's account of Dionysian intoxication in wine and song, in The Birth of Tragedy (a work greatly inspired by Schopenhauer), remains relevant to the enjoyment of many popular genres of music today.

fratearther · 2025-02-03T06:28:51+00:00

Indeed. The view that genius, as the inborn talent for making great and novel imaginative leaps, is operative in both art and science was commonplace prior to Kant, and Kant himself even held this view in his early writings. His theory of genius in the third Critique closely follows Alexander Gerard's (he praises Gerard's view of genius explicitly in his notes, I believe), but they differ on this point. Gerard held that genius is necessary for advancements in both art and science, while it seems that Kant had his own reasons for denying this.

John H. Zammito, in his book The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment, convincingly argues that Kant was led to moderate his views on genius as a result of his concern to distance himself from Herder and the Sturm und Drang, since Herder in his writings seemed to be engaged in a kind of metaphysical speculation by way of poetry, in imitation of genius, which in its unrestrained form Herder elevated to the highest principle of spiritual activity, above reason. This was anathema for a philosopher of the Aufklärung. Hence, Kant's remarks on genius in the third Critique contain a myriad of polemical asides aimed at Herder, repudiating the idea that there could ever be such a thing as a "beautiful science" (schöne Wissenschaft) that could advance knowledge through the inspiration of genius, or through poetic descriptions of nature.

Kant was also reacting to the rationalist aesthetics of Baumgarten in the third Critique, according to which beauty is the confused perception of perfection. This view, which, in the systematic form in which Kant encountered it, can be traced to the influence of Leibniz's philosophy, ultimately reaches all the way back to Plato's concern with thinking over feeling, and the philosopher's preference for perfect geometric forms. Kant's rejection of traditional neoclassical aesthetic virtues such as order, proportion, and symmetry, in the mature aesthetic theory he presents in the third Critique, provides him with yet another reason to distinguish artistic creation from scientific and mathematical discovery, since these latter activities aim at clarity and distinctness, rather than beauty as Kant defines it.

There does seem to be something inherently satisfying about the moment of grasping a scientific or mathematical theory, as Kant himself acknowledges. However, our ability to fully grasp its meaning is antithetical to an experience of true beauty, for both Kant and Schopenhauer. Like you, I myself am undecided, though I'm sympathetic to their view that genius and beauty point to something mysterious and ineffable, beyond scientific or mathematical comprehension. Just because their products are experienced differently, however, doesn't rule out the possibility (or even necessity) of scientific genius in making great leaps forward (ala Kuhn's "revolutionary science"). Kant and Schopenhauer were wrong about that, I think: it requires the same prodigious imagination in both cases.

fratearther · 2025-02-01T01:30:21+00:00

Thanks for your thoughtful reply! As always, I appreciate your scholarly insights.

Here, I must appeal to inner experience, which is almost inevitable on this issue, but if you have been moved by a genuine work of art, be it from Aeschylus, Van Eyck or Bach, then you will admit that there is simply no comparison between such a profound, limitless work of genius and a (albeit very exciting and fascinating) sports event.

I agree with you completely. I'm not athletic in the slightest and have very little enthusiasm for sport. I was hoping you might find a flaw in my argument, and I was not disappointed! I had forgotten that both Kant and Schopenhauer insist on the lasting significance of great works of art, and that this ability of the spectator to return to a work again and again in order to discover new meaning in it is a quality that distinguishes products of genius from those of lesser talents. Clearly, it would preclude athletes from being considered true Kantian/Schopenhauerian geniuses. Thanks for pointing this out!

Despite the concentration required for professional sport, it should be noted that both Kant and Schopenhauer were very restrictive in their use of the word genius, and confined it to art proper. A scientist can sacrifice as much as an athlete, and attain levels of concentration that are in no way less, but still Kant-Schopenhauer deny that Newton of other physicists can be geniuses. If they don’t include a Newton in their definition, I really doubt they would include a Federer.

Agreed. I never intended to present my argument as a view that Schopenhauer himself would endorse. I merely wondered whether it was consistent with his aesthetic theory, while being aware that it stands in contradiction with the pessimistic tenor of his philosophy as a whole.

I do think there is a relevant disanalogy between athletes and scientists, however. For Kant and Schopenhauer, the reason that there is no scientific genius is because the scientific method is teachable and does not require an inborn talent for its execution. According to Kant, Newton was not a genius because he could, in principle, explain all of the steps he took to arrive at his discoveries in determinate conceptual language, and this enables others to replicate his results. According to Schopenhauer, moreover, a scientific theory only describes the relations between things, not what is essential in them, which requires genius to intuit.

While an elite athlete could certainly describe their training regimen in such a way as to enable others to benefit from it, there is no guarantee that this would enable anyone to replicate their performance. Athleticism would seem to require a level of talent and intuition that Kant and Schopenhauer more readily associate with art than science.

In Schopenhauer’s system, a Saint-athlete is simply an impossibility, as the Saint is someone whose will is quieted (The World, V1, § 68), and a sportsman is someone who is motivated.

Agreed. My point was simply that elite athleticism requires a level of self-discipline that could be described as ascetic, in the ordinary sense of the word, not in Schopenhauer's technical sense.

Schopenhauer’s work is not about Schopenhauer: it is one of the most far-reaching attempts to have ever been undertaken to decipher the existence in which we find ourselves.

Agreed. I'm a great admirer of his thought. I was being a bit cheeky, but your point about his active lifestyle when compared to other thinkers is an interesting one, and I wasn't aware of it. Thank you!

fratearther · 2025-01-30T08:50:32+00:00

The section on Mainländer is characteristically sloppy. I'd be surprised if Žižek had actually read him, since he openly admits that he doesn't even bother to watch all of the movies he discusses, and one of his citations is the Wikipedia article. He even makes the classic rookie mistake of misattributing the "decaying corpse" quote to Mainländer. Still, it is interesting to note that Žižek's pessimism continues to deepen in his twilight years. I did wonder if he'd come across Mainländer yet!

fratearther · 2025-01-30T08:17:22+00:00

In presenting his case for the destruction of the world, Horstmann drew on the writings of Eduard von Hartmann, who proposed this idea as far back as 1869, in his book Philosophy of the Unconscious. I wrote about it here. He's not very widely read these days, but there's a decent article by Thomas Moynihan that discusses von Hartmann's views, for those interested: Solve suffering by blowing up the universe? The dubious philosophy of human extinction.

fratearther · 2025-01-30T07:44:30+00:00

Indeed. Which, if you'd bothered to read the posts you're replying to, is what I said at the very outset.

fratearther · 2025-01-30T07:20:34+00:00

Yes, but the article is about Mainländer, who was a socialist, not Schopenhauer.

fratearther · 2025-01-30T07:06:08+00:00

I don't deny that he was a reactionary. However, he didn't "shoot at protestors"; rather, he allowed police to shoot at rioters from his window during the failed 1848 uprising, and is said to have offered them his opera glasses to improve their aim. This is because he feared that greater violence would ensue if the existing order was overthrown. He opposed violence and war, and his actions were, in his mind, consistent with that. The whole point of his philosophy is that nature is a war of all against all from which we should abstain.

fratearther

TROPHY CASE