Writes Robert Zaretsky, in "Compassionate Curmudgeon/Why we must root ourselves in the real world" (The American Scholar).
December 3, 2025
"Schopenhauer was a lifelong bachelor who had few friends and many enemies, who preferred the company of dogs..."
"... to that of his fellow men and women, and whose own mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, broke off ties with him, telling him in a letter, 'I am acquainted with your heart and know that few are better, but you are nevertheless irritating and unbearable, and I consider it most difficult to live with you.'... [H]e became even more so as he grew older, driven by the belief that solitude was the price of telling the rest of humankind two unbearable truths. First, that it is better never to have been born; second, for those of us unfortunate enough to exist, to expect nothing but suffering and sorrow.... It is curious to think that his beloved standard poodle, Atma, knew what men and women did not know: that his master believed in the care and concern for all living beings...."
Writes Robert Zaretsky, in "Compassionate Curmudgeon/Why we must root ourselves in the real world" (The American Scholar).
Writes Robert Zaretsky, in "Compassionate Curmudgeon/Why we must root ourselves in the real world" (The American Scholar).
Posts
42 comments:
Thurber said that he never did anything worthwhile before he started raising Scotties.
"Schopenhauer was a lifelong bachelor who had few friends and many enemies, who preferred the company of dogs...”
Why did his enemies prefer the company of dogs? Did he do or say something to piss dog lovers off?
I know little of philosophy, beyond having once lent an umbrella to a philosophy major and thus become his friend (utilitarianism at its finest, that). I do know, thanks to Monty Python, that David Hume could outconsume both Schopenhauer and Hegel. (Ref.: Bruce's Philosophy Song). And while I am certain that all sane humans recognize that life is a journey on a rocky road throgh a vale of tears, all sane humans also recognize that the alternative to being alive misses out on some worthwhile moments as we work through our row to hoe therein. And as Tiny Tim said, "God bless us, every one."
Photoshopped? AI? Wizardry? Or real? Wouldn't the poodle have had to be motionless for rather longer than a modern snapshot or selfie would require?
Schopenhauer featured -- posthumously and unwillingly -- in the Nietzsche-Wagner-Hitler controversies.
The man apparently never tasted Haagen Dazs Coffee Chip ice cream.
Dog resembles man or vice versa.
Photoshop/AI per Lazarus' comment. I also wonder if poodles (bred as working dogs) had been miniaturized by Schopenhauer's day. I really don't know.
Frederick the Great lies buried alongside his favorite whippets at Potsdam.
"God bless us, every one"? I think your memory is playing tricks on you there. What he said was "Tiptoe through the tulips".
Photoshopped: check the photo at his WiKiP entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer
But, "it could have been." Here's the AKC piece on poodle development and history:
https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/dog-breeds/poodle-history/
n Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, the Will of the species manipulates individuals into mating.
He believed:
• women were the “agents” of this deception
• men were fooled into sacrifice by beauty and attraction.
It’s plausible.
Who *doesn't* prefer dogs to people?!
Per Josephbleau, to be precise and IIRC, Schopenhauer wrote that romantic love between a man and a woman comes from the will of the child to be born.
Far out.
Thanks for that link, ColoComment.
Why do so many miserable people think they're miserable because they're smarter than everyone else?
What a cacophonious curmudgeon. Perhaps a different slate of friends, an alternative endeavor, would have boosted his inoculation from life's unexpected quirks. What's in your faith?
The illustration is mine using a famous photo of Schopenhauer. I just told Grok to add a poodle.
So, we're going to reduce Art (as his friends called him) Schopenhauer to an old crumugeon who hated people and had a dog.
OK - if wiki is to believed he only shunned people starting at age 45, which is definitely on older side in those days. He lived to 72, which indicates not being around people may add years to your life.
Those who hate Racism may like him better if they read this quote by the "Schope"
"Speaking of the treatment of slaves in the slave-holding states of the United States, he condemned "those devils in human form, those bigoted, church-going, strict sabbath-observing scoundrels, especially the Anglican parsons among them" for how they "treat their innocent black brothers who through violence and injustice have fallen into their devil's claws". They are a "disgrace to the whole of humanity".[
OTOH, he dislike Judaism:
"[Judaism] is, therefore, the crudest and poorest of all religions and consists merely in an absurd and revolting theism. It amounts to this that the κύριος ['Lord'], who has created the world, desires to be worshipped and adored; and so above all he is jealous, is envious of his colleagues, of all the other gods; if sacrifices are made to them he is furious and his Jews have a bad time ... It is most deplorable that this religion has become the basis of the prevailing religion of Europe; for it is a religion without any metaphysical tendency. While all other religions endeavor to explain to the people by symbols the metaphysical significance of life, the religion of the Jews is entirely immanent and furnishes nothing but a mere war-cry in the struggle with other nations."
Everyone brings joy to this room. Some by coming, others by leaving.
I play pickleball with lots of people. In tournaments, there will be several hundred people. The best group I have associated with in a long time, except for one. Affectionately known to everyone as Mean Paul.
I never actually read him, but I've read about him. I take some comfort in his philosophy. If you recognize that happiness is transient, perhaps you're better able to enjoy those buoyant moments before the tide goes out and you're left with a few strands of seaweed between your toes. I think it's seaweed.
As someone who has had an interest in 18th-19th C German philosophy since I was 19 (now many decades ago)**, I've read most of Schopenhauer's main opus "The World as Will and Representation". Needless to say, if one leans towards the legacy of the earlier German Idealists (Hegel, Schelling, Fichte), one will not be happy with Old Schopy.
However, I think Schopenhauer's greatest cultural legacy was that he introduced & popularized the Hindu Scriptures among Western intellectuals. For example, the importance of the Hindu Scriptures among the American Transcendentalists can be traced to S.'s influence. Maybe that's why his dog was named Atma.
**Maybe my handle would have given you a clue...
Germany Philosophers are fucked up people. The best Germans in the 19th century fled to the U.S. while these incels pontificated
@Mccullough,
Germany Philosophers are fucked up people.
Not true. This is a lie promulgated by the Anglo-American Analytic Philosophical tradition, which as intellectual movements tend to do, reviled their predecessors with a vengeance.
As for "incel", only Schopenhauer & Nietzsche as far as I know fit that description.
When you read this stuff, you discover that a great deal of the modern world comes out the intellectual world of late 18th-19C Germany . For example, the American university system is explicitly modeled after the system of the 19th C University of Berlin. You ever wonder why Americans "major" in a subject and don't "take a first" like the British? German vs British university systems. These guys, and the guys who followed immediately afterwards were important in developing the American university system.
From the Zaretsky article: But what experience also teaches us is that we feel compassion for the suffering and afflictions of our fellow human beings, enmeshed with us in this unceasing struggle for being. Woods stresses that for Schopenhauer, the existence of compassion is proved not by abstract theorizing but by living. We know compassion because we feel it in ourselves, but also because we know it when we see and feel it in others. From this vast pile of empirical data, Schopenhauer drew a simple maxim: “Do no harm; and help others to the extent you can.”
Also from the Zaretsky article:
Moreover, Schopenhauer locates this will as the starting point of his metaphysics and ethics. We experience it every moment of our lives as the force that fuels our never-ending struggle for self-preservation and reproduction. (In anticipation of Freud, Schopenhauer described “the sexual organs as the true center of the world”—an assertion he proved by fathering two children out of wedlock, neither of whom he acknowledged as his own.)
So, a miserable hypocrite.
Finally: This conviction led Schopenhauer to be an ardent abolitionist, a keen advocate of prison and asylum reform, and a fierce opponent of animal cruelty. It is curious to think that his beloved standard poodle, Atma, knew what men and women did not know: that his master believed in the care and concern for all living beings.
Nothing wrong with that, except that his "compassion" seems to extend only to matters for which he could not possibly have any personal responsibility. Indeed, his philosophy seems to reject any personal responsibility whatsoever. Why does that seem familiar?
YouTube: Are memories and ideas living organisms?
It would explain a few things.
.." two unbearable truths. First, that it is better never to have been born; second, for those of us unfortunate enough to exist, to expect nothing but suffering and sorrow.."
*IF* you believe these things to be true..
BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT, and STOP COMPLAINING!
if you don't you're just HOT AIR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVSmiDJB-PI
Arthur Schopenhauer 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860
That's (check my math) 72; which is MORE than three score and 10.
So this SKAG.. This WASTE of SPACE, tortured us with his presence TWO YEARS longer than GOD allocated..
Sounds like a hypocrit to me
"A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.”
Not understanding that is the root of much evil.
“It is curious to think that his beloved standard poodle, Atma, knew what men and women did not know: that his master believed in the care and concern for all living beings...."
Then why did he give Atma that ridiculous haircut?
So many things can be improved by just adding a poodle.
Its an achivement of AI to make this so easy.
Sadly, many will be tempted to add a cat instead.
Technology can be used for both good and evil.
Name one person easier to live with than a dog, and taxidermized friends or relatives do not count.
"In anticipation of Freud, Schopenhauer described “the sexual organs as the true center of the world”—an assertion he proved by fathering two children out of wedlock, neither of whom he acknowledged as his own."
Both of the children died soon after they were born. There wasn't much time to "acknowledge them".
There are precious few human beings in whose company I would rather pass time than with my two sweet little dogs. One of them is fast asleep with his head on my feet as I write this.
For example, the American university system is explicitly modeled after the system of the 19th C University of Berlin.
That was then, this is now. Now it is a nest of Gramscian termites, a playground for Frankfurt School intellectual vandals, and a jobs program for the most uselessly unemployable degree holders in our entire society. And that's at the better sort of institution. Places like CUNY and UC Santa Cruz and Oberlin and Wellesley could seamlessly trade places with the old Patrice Lumumba University.
God sounds terribly insecure. Maybe Freud invented psychoanalysis to cure him and make the creator of heaven and earth more confident.
We need to bring back mass and widespread slavery. It could occupy idlers who are currently only up to mischief, a very destructive force. Slavery is still allowed per the Constitution
Stuffed.
He appears from time to time at this webcomic: for example https://existentialcomics.com/comic/269
Schopenhauer is better known for the mouthfulness of his name than the content of his words.
First diagnosed high-functioning autism patient?
Appears to be a mind-meld.
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