Nietzsche's Schopenhauer (original) (raw)
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Nietzsche Failed Engagement with Schopenhauer's Pessimism: An Analysis
Inquiry, 2019
While a common view in the literature is that Nietzsche cannot successfully argue against Schopenhauer’s pessimism, a detailed explanation of why this is so is lacking. In this paper I provide such a detailed analysis. Specifically, a consideration of three of Nietzsche’s strategies for a revaluation of pain and suffering reveals two problems: the problem of “the direction of revaluation” and the “dilemma of the intransigence of hedonism”. According to the first, the success of a revaluation cannot be guaranteed on strictly argumentative grounds and can in principle bring about a revaluation that proceeds in the opposite direction than the one desired. According to the second, Nietzsche‘s revaluations are of no significance since they either ground an un-Nietzschean affirmation of life, or they do not engage pessimism’s hedonistic perspective on the basis of which it condemns life. I then examine two strategies that Nietzsche can be seen to employ in his attempts to revalue the hedonistic perspective itself and explain why they too are unsatisfactory. The analysis illuminates the nature of the dialectical stand-off between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and clarifies the limitations of Nietzschean revaluations as a philosophical tool.
Nietzsche's Relation to Schopenhauer
Nietzsche-Studien, 2014
A comprehensive book focused on how Nietzsche's thought developed from Schopenhauer's and relentlessly engaged with Schopenhauer's till the last unpublished works and posthumous notes remains one of the main gaps in the international Nietzsche research. As Werner Stegmaier points out in his most recent book, Nietzsches Befreiung der Philosophie,¹ the single most important attempt to fill in this gap is still the very old, and obviously outdated, book by Georg Simmel, Schopenhauer und Nietzsche, Leipzig 1907, and even this book deals with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche only in succession -that is to say, without a depth analysis of the development of Nietzsche's thought and, thus, of Schopenhauer's presence in all of Nietzsche's work. In the last thirty to forty years, there have been, of course, many important contributions to the theme of Nietzsche's relation to crucial aspects of Schopenhauer's philosophy, but not the systematic approach that, we believe, is needed. Among such contributions, one should certainly count (a) the paper by Georges Goedert, "Nietzsche und Schopenhauer", in: Nietzsche-Studien 7 (1978), pp. 1-15, and his book, Nietzsche der Überwinder Schopenhauers und des Mitleids, Amsterdam / Würzburg 1988; (b) the collection, Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's Educator, Oxford 1998, edited by Christopher Janaway; and (c) many decisive insights, analyses, and research breakthroughs in the works of such authors as Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Henning Ottmann, Günter Abel, Werner Stegmaier, Christopher Janaway or (more recently) Bernard Reginster. But -perhaps above all -one should also count (d) Jörg Salaquarda's papers on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
Freud's Burden of Debt to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer
Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 2015
This paper addresses the questions raised by the evidence presented that many cardinal psychoanalytic notions bear a strong resemblance to the ideas of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In the process, the author considers not only that the 19th century Zeitgeist, given its preoccupation with the unconscious, created a fertile ground for the birth of psychoanalysis, but the influence on the Weltanschauung of Freud, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche of their common German cultural heritage, their shared admiration for Shakespeare and love of Hellenic culture, and the meteoric rise of science. Although influence may not be sharply separated from confluence, the parallels between Freud's concepts and those of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are too specific to be coincidental. And yet, Freud vehemently denied ever having read these philosophers' works until "very late in life". It is suggested that an unconscious sense of guilt may have induced that denial. This study adopts a cross-sectional approach that juxtaposes Freud's cardinal concepts with the ideas of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Its tripartite structure has the advantage of observing similarities and differences not only between Freud and the two philosophers, but also between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The focal concepts include: the unconscious; ego, id and superego; libido; drives; repression; sublimation; dreams; catharsis; free association; primary and secondary process thinking; Oedipus complex; repetition compulsion; the pleasure principle; mourning and melancholia; a criminal from a sense of guilt; and the death instinct.
THE BODY OF SUBLIME KNOWLEDGE: THE AESTHETIC PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Heythrop Journal-a Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology, 2009
Schopenhauer has been portrayed, since the emergence of the analytic philosophies of Russell and Moore 1 , with respect to two primary philosophical results. On the one hand, he is described as a 'metaphysician' of the Will. On the other hand, he is depicted as an 'ethicist' of the tragic self-denial of the Will. Indeed, there is much evidence for such interpretations in his magnum opus. Yet, the collateral effect of our captivation to this picture of mere philosophical results has been to render Schopenhauer's philosophy into a closed circle or a philosophical dead-end. Indeed, even the rare admissions of his influence upon major philosophers such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein 2 have been accompanied by a decided suppression of any consideration of the philosophical context of Schopenhauer's original questioning and of the specific meaning of 'metaphysics' amid his post-Kantian horizons. Until the last decade or so, the usual attitude to the philosophy of Schopenhauer has been dominated by the prejudicial legacy of the logical positivists -and other antimetaphysicians -with their respective dismissals of 'metaphysical' philosophies. For these iconoclasts, the philosophy of Schopenhauer is a contradictory, idiosyncraticbut above all metaphysical -teaching which sought, due to its own weakness or obscurity (or, Orientalism), to escape from the facticity of existence. 3 Of course, Nietzsche could be blamed for some aspects of this picture of Schopenhauer. Yet, while we will see below that Nietzsche's criticisms may have their merit, the character of his criticisms is quite distinct from that of the positivists. Indeed, I will explore the depth of the philosophy of Schopenhauer that exceeds the merely anti-2 metaphysical critiques, especially in light of his overt animosity to idealistic interpretations of Kantian philosophy and the Absolute idealism of Hegel, both dominant in the Academy of his day. To simply brand him a 'metaphysician' without any specification of the philosophical context simply obscures that which is critical for an understanding of his philosophy. Schopenhauer does not, as with Kant's description of the 'rationalists', simply play amongst the plethora of mere concepts, nor, does he descend into the passive state of pre-critical 'empiricism'. On the contrary, as a 'good', though dissident, post-Kantian, he remains a transcendental philosopher, but, one honest enough to enact a radical phenomenologyhis own hermeneutics of existence. He not only acknowledges our finite predicament, but also discloses phenomenologies of pain, pleasure, laughter and weeping, etc. (not to mention, for the moment, those of beauty and the sublime). In this light, my emphasis will be upon his methodology of contemplation, from which these philosophical results arose in the first place. We will find in Schopenhauer's contemplations upon the body, nature and art, an aesthetic phenomenology, one far removed from that of either Husserl or Nietzsche. 4
On Consciousness: Nietzsche’s Departure from Schopenhauer
2011
The paper begins by arguing that there are striking similarities between Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's views on the issue of consciousness, and that Schopenhauer's influence on Nietzsche regarding this issue has been unjustly neglected so far. On the other hand, the paper also argues that each of those similarities hides an important nuance of difference: in fact, (a) where Schopenhauer sees substantial unity, Nietzsche finds relations and unsubstantial multiplicity; (b) where Schopenhauer sees causality, Nietzsche finds "power, (c) where Schopenhauer still thinks in dualistic terms, Nietzsche experiments with conceiving of the phenomena in terms of an adualistic continuum of dynamic power relations, sign relations and perceptual relations, so that (d) where Schopenhauer sees essential oppositions, Nietzsche finds development along a continuum. Thus, Nietzsche uses Schopenhauer's views as a point of departure-but his departure from Schopenhauer is, in the end, quite radical. The interpretation of this radical departure is shown to be essential for clarifying Nietzsche's position regarding the crucial issues raised by the most recent literature on his critique of consciousness (e.g. epiphenomenalism and the question of the "free will").
The aim of this contribution is to highlight the possibility to investigate the relationship between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in the light of the concept of the «Ascesis of Consciousness». Beyond the differences and the quarrels which animated the relationship between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer — a great passion which ended in very strong criticism — it is in fact possible to underline how the idea of an ascetical philosophy is very strong for both of them, even if determined by different declinations. In particular, in this contribution, the idea of an «ascesis of consciousness» will be related to the concept of the «untimely», which represents, in the horizon of Nietzschean philosophy, the first impulse to an elevation of mind in the direction of an overcoming of temporal finitude. As will be made clear, both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were strongly orientated towards an elevation of thought in its experiential dimension, as it was able to grasp the essence of that eternity which lies beyond the finitude of the empirical and, thus, temporal experience. In this sense, the expression «ascesis of thought» — coined by the Italian philosopher Moretti-Costanzi — is what makes it possible to find the fil rouge which links Schopenhauer to Nietzsche in an over-historical way. In particular, the idea of an «ascesis», which borrows from the Greek term the significance of «exercise» and «experience», and from Latin the significance of an elevation (ascensus), is recalled by both thinkers here considered as the deep need they had to indicate a difference between ordinary experience, as determined by the finitude of temporality, and the eternity as that summit in which the consciousness regains itself in its original dimension. The experience of the ascesis of consciousness, therefore, will bring us to take into account the possibility to re-read the relationship between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as animated by the same horizon of sense, by virtue of which the elevation of the experience of thought will lead to the definition of two different states of mind, or «levels». These levels of consciousness are defined by the movement of the ascesis itself in its bringing the consciousness from time into eternity.