Arthur Schopenhauer

75

Arthur Schopenhauer : biography

22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860

He was very attached to his succession of pet poodles. Schopenhauer criticized Spinoza’s"His contempt for animals, who, as mere things for our use, are declared by him to be without rights,…in conjunction with Pantheism, is at the same time absurd and abominable." The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 2, Chapter 50. belief that animals are to be used as a mere means for the satisfaction of humans.Spinoza, Ethics, Pt. IV, Prop. XXXVII, Note I.: "Still I do not deny that beasts feel: what I deny is, that we may not consult our own advantage and use them as we please, treating them in a way which best suits us; for their nature is not like ours…." This is the exact opposite of Schopenhauer’s doctrine. Also, ibid., Appendix, 26, "whatsoever there be in nature beside man, a regard for our advantage does not call on us to preserve, but to preserve or destroy according to its various capacities, and to adapt to our use as best we may.""Such are the matters which I engage to prove in Prop. xviii of this Part, whereby it is plain that the law against the slaughtering of animals is founded rather on vain superstition and womanish pity than on sound reason. The rational quest of what is useful to us further teaches us the necessity of associating ourselves with our fellow-men, but not with beasts, or things, whose nature is different from our own; we have the same rights in respect to them as they have in respect to us. Nay, as everyone’s right is defined by his virtue, or power, men have far greater rights over beasts than beasts have over men. Still I affirm that beasts feel. But I also affirm that we may consult our own advantage and use them as we please, treating them in the way which best suits us; for their nature is not like ours, and their emotions are naturally different from human emotions." Ethics, Part 4, Prop. 37, Note 1.

Views on homosexuality and pederasty

Schopenhauer was also one of the first philosophers since the days of Greek philosophy to address the subject of male homosexuality. In the third, expanded edition of The World as Will and Representation (1859), Schopenhauer added an appendix to his chapter on the "Metaphysics of Sexual Love". He also wrote that homosexuality did have the benefit of preventing ill-begotten children. Concerning this, he stated, "… the vice we are considering appears to work directly against the aims and ends of nature, and that in a matter that is all important and of the greatest concern to her, it must in fact serve these very aims, although only indirectly, as a means for preventing greater evils.". He wrote that only those who were too old or too young to reproduce strong, healthy children would resort to pederasty (Schopenhauer considered pederasty to be in itself a vice)."The World as Will and Representation: Volume Two". Dover Shrewdly anticipating the interpretive distortion, on the part of the popular mind, of his attempted scientific explanation of pederasty as personal advocacy (when he had otherwise described the act, in terms of spiritual ethics, as an "objectionable aberration"), Schopenhauer sarcastically concludes the appendix with the statement that "by expounding these paradoxical ideas, I wanted to grant to the professors of philosophy a small favour, for they are very disconcerted by the ever-increasing publicization of my philosophy which they so carefully concealed. I have done so by giving them the opportunity of slandering me by saying that I defend and commend pederasty."

Intellectual interests and affinities

Indology

Schopenhauer read the Latin translation of the Upanishads which had been translated by French writer Anquetil du Perron from the Persian translation of Prince Dara Shikoh entitled Sirre-Akbar ("The Great Secret"). He was so impressed by their philosophy that he called them "the production of the highest human wisdom," and considered them to contain superhuman conceptions. The Upanishads was a great source of inspiration to Schopenhauer, and writing about them he said: