In his autobiography, Mein Leben, Wagner tells us that it was partly his reading of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation , and the need to give ‘rapturous expression’ to the ‘frame of mind produced’ by that reading, that gave him the initial conception of Tristan and Isolde.

This is a revised and enlarged version of Bryan Magee's widely praised study of Schopenhauer, the most comprehensive book on this great philosopher. It contains a brief biography of Schopenhauer, a systematic exposition of his thought, and a critical discussion of the problems to which it gives rise and of its influence on a wide range of thinkers and artists. For this new edition Magee has added three new chapters and made many minor revisions and corrections throughout. (...) This new edition will consolidate the book's standing as the definitive study of Schopenhauer. (shrink)

Beginning with the death of Socrates in 399 BC, and following the strand of philosophical inquiry through the centuries to recent figures such as Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, Bryan Magee's conversations with fifteen contemporary writers and philosophers provide an accessible and exciting account of Western philosophy and its greatest thinkers. With contributions from A. J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, and John Searle, the book is not only an introduction to the philosophers of the past, but (...) gives an invaluable insight into the view and personalities of some of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. (shrink)

In this infectiously exciting book, Bryan Magee tells the story of his own discovery of philosophy and not only makes it come alive but shows its relevance to daily life. Magee is the Carl Sagan of philosophy, the great popularizer of the subject, and author of a major new introductory history, The Story of Philosophy. Confessions follows the course of Magee's life, exploring philosophers and ideas as he himself encountered them, introducing all the great figures and (...) their ideas, from the pre-Socratics to Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, including Wittgenstein, Kant, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, rationalism, utilitarianism, empiricism, and existentialism. (shrink)

In this inspirational book Bryan Magee tells the story of his discovery of philosophy, and in doing so introduces the subject to his reader. Experiences of everyday life provide discussion of philosophers and explain why certain philosophical questions persistently exercise our minds. With great fluency Magee untangles philosophy, making it seem part of everyone's life. Intensely personal and brimming with infectious enthusiasm, this is a wonderful introduction to philosophy by one of the most elegant and accessible writers (...) on the subject. (shrink)

In any field it is common practice for an editor who is sent a book for review to put it into the hands of a reviewer who has published a book on the same subject. The reasons are self—vident: not only does the reviewer have specialist knowledge, he is known by the journal's readers to have it, and is likely therefore to be accepted by them as an authority. However, there are arguments against the practice which, though less often considered, (...) deserve to carry the day more often than they do. The mere fact that the new author has written his bookat all means or ought to mean, that he thinks existing books on the subject leave something to be desiredhypenif he has nothing new to say he should have kept silent. But this in turn means that his book is in conflict with or goes beyond, what his reviewer has published on the same subject, and in that sense contains implicit criticism of the reviewer's work. It is this fact that creates the problem. For if the reviewer lets such elements in the book pass he will appear to readers who know his own work to be either conceding arguments or condoning what he ought to regard as error, while if he praises them he may appear to be recanting his own positions. In the circumstances what he tends to do is come down heavily on those aspects of the book that differ from his own, and criticize them. Thus it comes about that the sub-text of many a hostile review is less an impartial assessment of the author's work than an oblique defence of the reviewer's. To say this is not to impute bad motives to the reviewer: on the contrary, my point is that it is in the logic of the situation. (shrink)

On Blindness opens the eyes of the sighted to the world as experience by the blind, offering a unique opportunity to explore the challenges, frustrations, joys - and extraordinary insights - experienced in the everyday business of discovering the world without sight. What difference doessight or its absence make to our ideas about the world? What begins as a philosophical exchange between the noted philosopher and broadcaster Bryan Magee and the late Martin Milligan, activist and philosopher blind almost (...) from birth, develops into a personal and intense discussion of the implications of blindness. The debate is vigorous and oftenheated; sometimes contentious, it is always stimulating. In discussing the range of blind experience, from those born blind to those who became blind - including those who have to cope with the shock of gaining sight they had never before possessed - On Blindness argues strongly against the notionthat blindness is a simple experience. This extraordinary book casts new light on one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience. It will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in sight and blindness from a personal, practical or philosophical point of view. This dictionary is intended for anyone who enjoys food andwould like a handy, non-technical guide to the terms they encounter on food labels, in advertising or in the media. Its broad coverage of food and nutrition makes it invaluable for consumers, cooks, and a range of students and practitioners in the fields of catering, home economies, foodtechnology, and health care. (shrink)

The essential guide to the history of western philosophy.

There is general agreement, which I share, that among the earliest of Western philosophers were three of the very greatest: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Each of these is on record as saying something – and it is almost the same thing – about the nature of philosophy itself that goes to the heart of the matter. Aristotle said: ‘It is owing to their wonder that men now begin, and first began, to philosophise’ . And Plato wrote, putting his words into (...) the mouth of Socrates: ‘This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin’. (shrink)

Overzicht van de ideeën van de Oostenrijks-Engelse wijsgeer (geb. 1902) over de wetenschap en de maatschappij.

Explore 2,500 years of Western philosophy, from the ancient Greeks to modern thinkers, with this ultimate guide’s stunning and simple approach to some of history’s biggest ideas. This essential guide to philosophy includes thoughts on our modern society, exploring science and democracy, and posing the question: where do we go from here? Easy-to-understand text is accompanied by works of art and artifacts from history, as the big ideas and important thinkers are introduced through time. Famous quotes are highlighted, and the (...) sidebars discuss other ideas or key works to include extra context around the theories and people. Celebrate the world's most revolutionary concepts and understand how these ideas continue to shape our world. Develop your own perspectives and explore relevant issues such as modern logic and religion with this wonderfully comprehensive illustrated guide. In a world of evolving ideas, The Story of Philosophy is a fantastic resource to revisit again and again. (shrink)

In addition to his large‐scale system of metaphysics, Schopenhauer produced many essays, and it was eventually these that made his name and drew attention to his philosophy. The biggest collection of them is called Parerga and Paralipomena. They are of help in understanding the philosophy, because they often contain bolder, more clear‐cut statements of the same points. They are written in an aphoristic style and are the source of many epigrams. For a long time they were more widely read than (...) the philosophy itself. (shrink)

Dylan Thomas made his name with one particular poem, ‘The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’, which he wrote and published in his teens. Not only the theme but also the imagery in detail is too close to certain passages in Schopenhauer for a coincidence to be likely. It is more probable that there was some influence. This is made more likely by the fact that there are good reasons to believe that the young Thomas had read (...) a book called Thomas Hardy's Universe, by Ernest Brennecke, which contains many quotations from Schopenhauer, including, in its first chapter, the one closest to Thomas's poem. (shrink)

Schopenhauer did not believe in the existence of God or the soul, yet he thought Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism to contain some of the profoundest of all truths, in symbolic form. He is the only major Western philosopher to take account of the Hindu and Buddhist religions and he shares a number of fundamental doctrines with them. Perhaps surprisingly, some of these have been confirmed by modern science. So there are three‐way comparisons to be made between Schopenhauerism, Buddhism, and modern (...) science. (shrink)

To the proposition that I can know objects only from outside, and through the forms of sense and intellect that my personal equipment makes available, there is a single exception and that is my own body. Each of us is a physical object that knows one physical object from inside, namely itself. But I experience the movements of this body primarily as an agent rather than through organs of sense or intellect. My willed movements are perceived by others as matter (...) in motion, but by me they are apprehended first and foremost as acts of will: the two are the same phenomenon experienced in different ways. (shrink)

At the core of what Schopenhauer took from Kant is transcendental idealism. An understanding of this calls not only for intelligence but for what might be called ‘intellectual imagination’. The nature of whatever faculties we have must limit what they can do, and therefore, unless reality is itself a product of our minds, it is almost certain that there are aspects of an independent reality that we cannot apprehend. Schopenhauer follows Kant in using the word ‘noumenal’ for these and the (...) word ‘phenomenal’ for those aspects of reality that are accessible to experience. (shrink)

Schopenhauer believes that differentiation is possible only where there is time or space, and therefore only in the phenomenal world: the noumenon must be one and undifferentiable. This inner one‐less of all being explains our feeling for others, the compassion on which morality is based. Thus, Schopenhauer's ethics are a practical inference from his metaphysics. At our death in the empirical world, we cease to exist as individuals, but our noumenal nature remains unaltered. Being noumenal, it is outside time, and (...) indestructible. (shrink)

The commonest misunderstanding of Schopenhauer is that he taught, contradicting Kant, that we can have direct knowledge of the noumenon. Then there is the mistake that this noumenon is the will understood in a conative sense, the will as we experience it in agency, or the will to live, or the will to power. A careful reading of Schopenhauer's work is able to show that these are misinterpretations. He does not believe we can know the noumenon; and by ‘will’ he (...) means a blind force that is as present in inorganic nature as elsewhere. It was an error on Schopenhauer's part to use the term ‘will’ in a way that invites these misunderstandings; but the damage has been done. (shrink)

Empirical reality presents itself to us as experience, and this can take only such forms as can be mediated by whatever equipment we possess, including our own bodies. Thus there has to be a detailed correlation between our powers of apprehension and reality as we perceive it. So subject and object are interdependent: neither could exist as we apprehend them if the other did not also exist. Pure subject without an object and pure object without a subject are both metaphysical (...) concepts, to which nothing could correspond in the empirical world. (shrink)

Schopenhauer was the first, and to the end the greatest philosophical influence on Nietzsche, who said it was Schopenhauer who had turned him into a philosopher. For many years the young Nietzsche was a thoroughgoing Schopenhauerian; but then he rebelled against this influence, attacked it and tried to overthrow it. Other substantial intellectual figures of the nineteenth century who were significantly influenced by Schopenhauer include the historian Jacob Burckhardt, author of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy; Hans Vaihinger, author (...) of The Philosophy of ‘As If’; Edward von Hartmann, author of The Philosophy of the Unconscious; and Sigmund Freud. (shrink)

Schopenhauer wrote candidly about sex at a time when almost nobody did. He saw consideration of it as the means of reproduction whereby human beings come into existence as inescapable for metaphysics, indeed for serious thinking. He conjectured that homosexual impulses were implanted by nature in adolescent and elderly males because, although they have sexual urges and can procreate, it is undesirable that they should do so, and therefore the urge is diverted. This, he thinks, is why homosexual activity has (...) been widespread in all known societies. The manner in which he writes about it suggests that he had felt homosexual impulses himself but had not given way to them. (shrink)

The neglect of Schopenhauer's philosophy in the twentieth century led to his becoming associated in people's minds with his neat‐contemporaries, the Idealist philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, when in fact he was a radically different sort of philosopher from them. Unlike them, he absorbed the empiricist tradition into his work and saw the enterprise on which he was engaged as having been launched by Locke. He hated the Idealists and their writings, regarding them as a poisonous influence. In this he (...) went too far, for their work had merits that he failed to appreciate and more in common with his own than he realized. (shrink)

Outstanding among the many creative artists on whom Schopenhauer exercised influence was the opera composer Richard Wagner, who, rarely for a composer, was an intellectual and studied Schopenhauer's philosophy seriously. He was already composing operas in accordance with a published theory of his own, which involved treating all its constituent elements as of equal importance. Schopenhauer persuaded him to accept not only hitherto rejected metaphysical ideas but also the supremacy of music over the other arts. In response, Wagner composed works (...) such as Tristan and Isolde and Parsifal whose libretti are pervaded with Schopenhauer's ideas and whose music dominates the opera. Although the first of these Schopenhauerian works, Tristan and Isolde, was published in 1859, and therefore before Schopenhauer's death in 1860, it is virtually certain that he never knew of its existence. (shrink)