do you agree with schopenhauer?

[danzk]

For the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, life is an alternation between pain, arising from the need and desire to obtain something (or someone), and boredom, resulting from the satisfaction that results from the satisfied need: "Human life, therefore, passes entirely between wanting and achieving. Desire, by its nature, is pain: satisfaction soon brings satiety. The end was nothing more than a mirage: possession takes away its prestige; desire or need once again present themselves in another form (...) nothingness, emptiness, boredom". In this mechanism, man is condemned to be unhappy, because the will is renewed every day. This results in Schopenhauer's observation that all life is suffering and pain.

 

[grisly bear]

Personally, I think I partly understand Schoppenhauer's thought (at least what you wrote about him).

The basic idea may be true to a certain extent, but wouldn't it mean that every life feels suffering and pain.
But when I look into the world, where I myself can only perceive pain, I still recognize that some people seem to be 'happy'.
Doesn't that somehow contradict Schoppenshauer's statement?
And even if their 'happiness' is only based on a mistaken belief, it doesn't matter at all for these people because they still feel their 'happiness'.

But perhaps I have also misunderstood or misinterpreted your message about Schoppenhauer.


But it is an interesting topic with different points of view and I am also interested in other people's views.

 

[andreamysk]

Schopenhauer's thought was quite revolutionary for his time (at least in the West: Buddhism said similar things 2300 years before) and in some ways anticipated the concept of "selfish gene" popularized by Richard Dawkins: reduced to the bare minimum, we are all nothing but blind machines pre-programmed to perpetuate life, the will of life to reproduce itself (I'm simplifying a lot). Curiously, however, Schopenhauer was against CTB, because it was still the result of an act of will. He wanted to escape from this vicious circle in which we enter from birth, through NON-will (NON-desire, NON-attachment, which only cause pain). However, he also theorizes a path to a kind of happiness (i.e. NON-pain), through art (disinterested aesthetic pleasure, contemplation), ethics (compassion, the comfort felt in considering the common existential condition, even with non-human living beings), asceticism (making oneself somehow pure spirit, reaching nirvana).

His thought did not have much success among his contemporaries: the star of the time was Hegel, whom Schopenhauer detested so much that he placed his own lectures in the same university (in Berlin) and at the same times as his colleague: as a result, his lecture hall was perpetually deserted, while Hegel's was packed (Schopenhauer's comment: "ok, well, I don't want to teach idiots anyway" :-)

 

[Forever Sleep]

Yes, I agree with the principle of it. I'm not convinced everyone experiences this cycle as painful or unpleasant though. It probably depends on how able you are to sate your own needs. If it isn't difficult to get the things you need at any given time, it may not even occur to you to look at the utterly dependent cycle you're in. I expect the happier people in the world don't think about it much at all. They simply recognise a need and fulfil it as best they can.

I suppose it isn't all bad either. Would food or water be as nice if you weren't hungry or thirsty? Life would be even more robotic if we didn't want stuff and get pleasure from getting it.

I think the problem maybe with our era is that we are encouraged to want so much. We are encouraged to feel dissatisfied with our bodies, our lifestyles so that we spend money trying to 'fix' it all.

 

[QueerMelancholy]

I think the funniest thing about Schopenhauer is that for such a "pessimistic" person he lived until the ripe old age of 72. LOL

 

[danzk]

Yes, I agree with the principle of it. I'm not convinced everyone experiences this cycle as painful or unpleasant though. It probably depends on how able you are to sate your own needs. If it isn't difficult to get the things you need at any given time, it may not even occur to you to look at the utterly dependent cycle you're in. I expect the happier people in the world don't think about it much at all. They simply recognise a need and fulfil it as best they can.

I suppose it isn't all bad either. Would food or water be as nice if you weren't hungry or thirsty? Life would be even more robotic if we didn't want stuff and get pleasure from getting it.

I think the problem maybe with our era is that we are encouraged to want so much. We are encouraged to feel dissatisfied with our bodies, our lifestyles so that we spend money trying to 'fix' it all.

perfect

 

[Downdraft]

No.

Happiness is actually it's own emotion, not just the mere absence of suffering.

He was against suicide anyway.

He seemed to do too much projecting, over-focusing in ones experience, disregarding anything external. Men seemed to believe depression is the default state, like no other factors could make life bad.

He was a typical anti-natalist who doesn't have a good base, nor it's logical to it.

 

[dreambound]

i think schopenhauer was a brilliant mind, & way ahead of his time, especially considering
the dreary weight of conformity of the period in which he lived.
I am one of those people who thinks that suffering is the default state for most people.