Journal of the History of Philosophy

This is the first major biography of Schopenhauer to be written originally in English. David Cartwright seems well qualified to undertake this task. Cartwright is not only a philosopher who understands and appreciates Schopenhauer's works, but apparently he has philosophical and temperamental affinities with Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer held that the best philosophical reflection stems from astonishment at the world, a world of endless striving, suffering, and death. He also believed that the best philosophers write clearly and seek only truth. Cartwright evidently shares these views.

Cartwright correctly notes, "To understand [Schopenhauer's] life, it is important to understand the genesis of his philosophy" (xv). The converse is also true: to understand the sources of Schopenhauer's philosophy, one must know the story of his life. Arthur Schopenhauer was the lonely child of a depressive and ultimately suicidal father and a novelist/socialite mother who would rather not have had children. Schopenhauer and his younger sister, Adele, both felt misplaced in the world, as if their existence were an unfortunate accident. Schopenhauer, mistaking this feeling for a universal one, made it the basis of his pessimism and proto-existentialism. Plausibly, this feeling may be traced back to the personalities and situation of Schopenhauer's parents. Cartwright's biography goes deeply into the lives and characters of Heinrich Floris and Johanna Schopenhauer, allowing the reader to know them as the individuals they were. Schopenhauer and the people who shaped his life are so vividly painted that this biography is as enjoyable as a novel.

Cartwright's book is deliberately structured so that the sections dealing with exposition of Schopenhauer's philosophy are separated from the unfolding story of Schopenhauer's life. One can read the life like a novel, if one wishes, skipping the philosophical exposition. The philosophical exposition, however, is uniformly excellent. Cartwright ably conveys the seemingly contradictory doctrines at the heart of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Schopenhauer claimed allegiance to Kantian transcendental idealism, yet this idealism sits in tension with the frankly metaphysical thesis that reality is not made of ideas at all. Rather, the thing-in-itself is a universal Will or causal power, manifesting itself in nature at various levels. At the most basic level, it shows itself as physical forces like electromagnetism and gravity. At the next level up, it manifests itself as the tropisms and growth-activities of plants. Next, it transforms itself into the survival-and-reproduction-motivated actions of animals, including humankind. The rationality of humans is not so special after all, since reason is a mere tool in service of the instinctive will, a will that often operates unconsciously and has no ultimate object except to perpetuate itself. All this metaphysical theorizing about the nature of the thing-in-itself, and the downplaying of reason, are strikingly un-Kantian.

Other less well-known parts of Schopenhauer's thought are also accurately explained by Cartwright: Schopenhauer's still-unsurpassed treatment of the problem of free will and determinism; his devastating critique of Kantian ethics; and Schopenhauer's own Eastern-influenced ethics of compassion (actions of true moral worth are the non-self-interested ones, motivated by the intuitive understanding that all beings, both tormentor and tormented, are manifestations of a single underlying reality; whoever or whatever is suffering, "that art thou"). Schopenhauer's insights into the nature of art and music are conveyed, but here Cartwright passes over another seeming contradiction: according to Schopenhauer, in moments of artistic contemplation, and in the genius's act of creation, the individual [End Page 261] will is transcended, and the contemplator or creator of art becomes a pure, will-less "eye of the world." How is this supposed to be possible, since Will is the very essence of everything, including human beings?

Arthur Schopenhauer the man comes across in this biography as a person whose character was as seemingly contradictory as his philosophy. In some ways, Schopenhauer appears attractive: he was a genius whose ideas were ahead of their time; he felt a universal pity for the suffering of all creation; he...