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About the Author
DESCARTES is rightly regarded as the father of modern philosophy primarily and generally because he helped the faculty of reason to stand on its own feet by teaching men to use their brains in place whereof the Bible, on the hand, and Aristotle, on the other, had previously served. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
the publisher charging big money for a reprint of a reprint, which seems
to have been bound on the assumption that the book won't be read. Should
Schopenhauer be subsidising the junk currently put out as new titles by
the once-worthy OUP?
Not everything S. writes about in this book (or for that matter any of his other books) is relevant or interesting or correct - you may want to skip his physical theory of colors, for example. But the reader does get a sense of the range and brilliance of his multilingual mind. Many of his thoughts are timeless and true everywhere in the world.
S. caught my attention not because I'm interested in philosophy generally - I most certainly am not - but rather because he was one of Einstein's heroes, and Einstein is one of mine. Einstein loved to quote him, and apparently had his picture hanging in his office.
Interestingly, Hitler also counted S. as his hero. The only book he took to the front as a soldier in the First World War was Schopenhauer's masterpiece, and later as Fuehrer he quoted S. in long, rambling paragraphs in his own table talk. One wouldn't normally expect much in common between the greatest mind who ever lived and this anti-intellectual warmonger. Hitler was an antisemite, so perhaps that's one reason why he was attracted to S. But S. was most liberal and generous in his misanthropic hatreds - one doesn't find him discriminate for or against any particular group. Perhaps Hitler didn't know about the far more damning things S. had to say about Germans?
S. influenced many philosophers, such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, but I'm not familiar enough with philosophy to elaborate on this point. He also inspired many other creative minds who were not actually philosophers: Richard Wagner (a fanatical devotee to S. and to whom Hitler was also a fanatical devotee), Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Sir Winston Churchill (mentioned S. in his autobiography My Early Life), and the quantum physicist Erwin Schroedinger, among numerous others. (Notice that the last three were Nobel prizewinners?) Even the sharp-tongued and critical Wolfgang Pauli (another Nobel physicist) took him seriously. If you want to know why S. was so influential, then this is a good place to start. Parerga is easier to read than his other books, with the exception of his two essays on morality. Try to get Vol. I as well, but if you must choose, get Vol. II - it's longer and has a good index, and a good index is always useful in any book.
Start with Parerga; then after you're familiar with his philosophy, move on to his main work. But don't forget his Essay on the Freedom on the Will - which stands alone as a real masterpiece in all philosophy, even more outstanding than his other works.
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