I regard his university years in Berlin as crucial in shaping the extraordinary self-reliance of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). He had just turned sixteen when he transferred to the University of Berlin and immersed himself in the writings of Immanuel Kant.
Most sixteen-year old university students feel intimidated or at least impressed by professors. The large gap in experience, wisdom and authority creates an atmosphere of blind respect; it normally takes years for students to shape their own ideas, and dare contradict or criticize their professors.
Schopenhauer walked the path from admiration to criticism of his professors at an amazing speed. At the beginning, he felt fascinated by Kant’s abstruse ideas (”transcendental idealism”) about metaphysics and epistemology, but it didn’t take long for Schopenhauer to poke holes in Kant’s philosophy.
Schopenhauer’s doubts about Kant’s and Fichte’s idealism
As a student at the University of Berlin, Schopenhauer went to philosophy lectures given by Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) focusing on the metaphysical ego of the German people.
Fichte’s lectures were extremely popular, but Schopenhauer found them nonsensical. He viewed Fichte’s arguments for the existence of a metaphysical German ego as inventions lacking evidence and consistency. In a word, Schopenhauer considered Fichte’s ideas worthless.
In contrast to his former quiet life at the Gymnasium and at the University of Göttingen, Schopenhauer had an active social life in Berlin. He attended large number of lectures, not only in philosophy, and participated in seminars and debates.
His transfer from University of Göttingen to the University of Berlin meant that he had definitively quit medicine to focus on philosophy. He had convinced his mother to continue her financial support, but she was unhappy with the situation.
Schopenhauer’s self-reliance in the choice of profession
In her letters, Johanna Schopenhauer criticized the choice in strong terms. She rightly regarded medicine as a profitable and prestigious profession, and philosophy as a low-income hobby for which barely anybody shows an interest.
Letters went back and forth between Arthur Schopenhauer and his mother. He justified his choice as a vocational pursuit, but his mother kept criticizing it as foolish and wasteful.
Nevertheless, his mother’s steady criticism only reaffirmed Arthur Schopenhauer’s determination to become a philosopher.
As a child, he had spent long hours engrossed in books that dealt with advanced subjects. Now at the University of Berlin, he was ready to pull together his vast knowledge and develop a new philosophical system.
By the time Schopenhauer turned eighteen, he had acquired profound expertise in the works of Kant, Plato, and Spinoza, but found them weak in the area of ethics. None of them gave solid advice on how to deal with adversity, attain happiness, or make difficult decisions.
The widening of Schopenhauer’s views beyond mainstream philosophy
Dissatisfaction with European philosophy led Schopenhauer to look beyond the mainstream. While Kant and Fichte focused their attention on idealistic, grandiloquent abstractions, he felt the need to address day-to-day situations: How do you face the inevitable disappointments in life? How to cope with failure?
For this reason, Schopenhauer devoted the next two years (I am referring to 1807-1808) to reading the ancient Stoics and the ancient Buddhists. He delved into Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and the Buddhist tradition, taking extensive notes.
In 1808, Arthur Schopenhauer returns to Berlin and devotes himself to his doctoral dissertation. He was twenty years old at that time. He published his dissertation in book format with the title “On the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason.”
Schopenhauer’s dissertation expands the idea of causality in traditional Aristotelian teachings. Instead of restricting cause to particular events, he aimed at identifying the underlying causes for general social, historical and biological events that appear natural or organic at first sight.
Subsequently, Schopenhauer undertook an extended journey across Europe, primarily in France, Switzerland, and Italy. He could read and speak French fluently, but in Paris, he had easier and wider access to works of Voltaire and Diderot. In a Parisian bookshop, he acquired Voltaire’s complete works.
Schopenhauer’s path towards a new philosophy
After returning to Berlin, he concentrated on writing a long book outlining a new philosophy he had developed. The book was published in 1817-1818 under the title “The world as will and representation.”
The writing of “The world as will and representation” took Schopenhauer one year. He literally worked day and night. He would take breaks during the day for long walks or for a nap, but kept working the whole evening until well past midnight.
In his doctoral dissertation, Schopenhauer had hinted at the existence of underlying, common causes for natural, social and human events. Now, in “The world as will and representation,” he identifies the will as the primal force underlying existence.
Schopenhauer published at his own expense “The world as will and representation” and sent dozens of copies for review to newspapers and magazines but the book received practically zero attention.
It took years for mainstream philosophers to acknowledge that Schopenhauer’s “The world as will and representation” is presenting a ground-breaking thesis and establishing the basis for a new philosophical system. I will continue Schopenhauer’s biography in my next article.
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