This chapter is divided into three sections. In the first, I identify the mentions of Schopenhauer in À la recherche du temps perdu. I use an implicit reference to Schopenhauer by Swann to open a discussion of Schopenhauer’s theory of music. I attempt to downplay its identification, suggested by some commentators, with both the views about music expressed in the novel and the form of the novel itself. In the second section, I discuss Proust’s references to Schopenhauer in his essay (...) on reading. I confirm that Proust well understood Schopenhauer’s relationship with his own erudition and suggest that Schopenhauer’s influence on Proust may take the form of an incitement to think for oneself. In the third and final section, I consider several potential points of convergence between Proust and Schopenhauer concerning states of the will. However, in all cases I find, as I do throughout the chapter, that below the surface Proust and Schopenhauer often part ways. (shrink)

Preocupados por la salud, queremos examinar en esta puesta en escena el modo de metamorfosis y de liberación que experimentan el genio y el santo, como también el alcance de las mismas. Lo haremos desde la obra fundamental de Schopenhauer El mundo como voluntad y representación. Esta liberación solo puede entenderse como una toma de distancia, precisamente, del teatro del mundo y su rasgo distintivo: el tormentoso sufrimiento. De modo que analizaremos, en un primer momento, cómo está constituido el escenario, (...) es decir, cuáles son las dos caras del teatro, para responder a la pregunta fundamental qué es el mundo. Su posible respuesta nos arroja a considerar su anverso y reverso, la representación y la voluntad; a su vez, nos permite a analizar las caras impresas en ellas respectivamente, a saber, el genio y el santo. Es importante señalar que esta publicación es una lectura e interpretación de El mundo como voluntad y representación en clave teatral. Se trata entonces de una aproximación al pensamiento del filósofo a través de las figuras teatrales del genio y el santo. Lo anterior, le pemitirá al lector comprender la composición y los rasgos constitutivos de la obra del filósofo de Schopenhauer. (shrink)

The present paper addresses the formal perspective of information with the focus on ‘untrue’ information presented as dangerous. Grounded in perspectivism, the epistemic subject is understood as decisive in informational transfer. In this context, ethics should focus on how the epistemic subject receives information. Regarding wide-spread information, the notions of danger and safety, the latter being a reaction to the former, essentially result from the fear mechanism of affective neural systems in higher mammals. The practice of attaining safety by eliminating (...) danger is analyzed through the Nietzschean metaphor of the Apollonian and the Dionysian and the concept of ressentiment. Focusing on the individual, the paper presents a critique of systemized authoritative management of speech content, intensified by the emergence of social media. It is asserted that, by reacting to danger through the systematization of prevention and regulation of speech, it not only affirms fear but also decreases the faculties of an individual to deal with danger and fear itself. The paper argues that the only way to overcome danger and fear is through the individual’s exposure to it, which allows for the strengthening of one’s faculties, thus fulfilling one’s potential in freedom. (shrink)

Schopenhauer’s bifurcation between optimistic and pessimistic religions is made, so I argue here, by means of five criteria: to perceive of existence as punishment, to believe that salvation is not attained through ‘works’, to preach compassion so as to lead towards ascetics, to manifest an aura of mystery around religious doctrines and to, at some deep level, admit to the allegorical nature of religious creeds. By clearly showing what makes up the ‘pessimism’ of a ‘pessimistic religion’, Schopenhauer’s own philosophical pessimism (...) can be clarified since he posits a strict correlation between the truth of philosophy and religion. Accordingly, Schopenhauer’s pessimism is by means of this process clarified as non-radical and providing a genuine ‘highest good’ that is more than absolute denial. (shrink)

In Beyond Good and Evil, section 15, Nietzsche offers a criticism of the Kantian contention that the external world is but the work of our organs. As such, he claims, our organs, as part of this world, would by implication also be the work of our organs. Unless then we are to assume that the concept of a causa sui is not an absurd one, the external world is, reduction ad absurdum, not the work of our organs. This paper offers (...) a defence of Schopenhauer from Nietzsche’s charge of circularity, based on the contention that the apparent circularity arises only upon the Nietzschean assumption that the transcendental idealist is, in fact, mistaken in his conception of a transcendental subject. It is only by assuming that Schopenhauer was mistaken, for example, in supposing the law of causality to be of a subjective and transcendental nature, that Nietzsche can even speak about the subject or the world as ‘caused’. A true grasp of Schopenhauer’s position can only lead to the conclusion that no causal chain, let alone a circular one, is at play here. Nietzsche’s error is diagnosed as arising from a deepening of historical sense, which assumes, from the outset, that the conceptual categories of the perceiving subject do not offer us an aeterna veritas. Finally, Nietzsche’s misconception, and his subsequent inability to diagnose it, arises from Schopenhauer’s own inability to escape what Wittgenstein terms the “temporality of our grammar.” Schopenhauer simply does not have the words at hand to ever remove the notion of temporality from the idea that the subject and the world ‘create’ each other. Taking cognisance of Schopenhauer’s ‘double aspect’ theory of the subject, removes from the relationship the notion of causality upon which Nietzsche’s critique is based. (shrink)

In this paper I will explore Samuel Beckett’s significant, yet overlooked, contribution to the study of asceticism and ascetic thought. I will present a reading of Beckett’s seminal play, Waiting for Godot, so as to illustrate the way in which Beckett utilizes and develops numerous aspects of Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophical system. As I understand it, the Beckettian asceticism manifested in the tragedies of Beckett’s middle period not only utilizes aspects of Schopenhauerian asceticism, it also incorporates broader, non-ascetic aspects of Schopenhauerian (...) thought – namely that of boredom, and the aesthetic theory of the dynamically sublime. In contrast to Schopenhauerian asceticism, which focuses on bodily deprivation, Beckettian asceticism impoverishes not only the body but also the mind. Through the medium of tragedy, Beckett presents a unique ascetic method that centres on impoverishing the mind by preventing the formation of useful, or actionable, representations. (shrink)

This issue profiles various attempts, both successful and fraught, to engage the divide between asceticism and opulence, between materialism and poverty.