The document provides an overview of the life and philosophical views of Arthur Schopenhauer. It discusses his pessimistic view that life involves endless suffering driven by an irrational will. Schopenhauer believed love and other pursuits are illusions that do not lead to happiness. The document also examines Schopenhauer's influence on later philosophers like Nietzsche and questions about whether pessimism can be rationally justified.

1. W.Horvath: "Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer" . Oil on canvas, 40 x 60 cm, Crete 2000

2. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) "Life is so short, questionable and evanescent that it is not worth the trouble of any major effort... no man is ever very far from [suicide]... Life has no genuine intrinsic worth... Human life must be a kind of error, [as is] the notion that we exist in order to be happy." Goethe's view was otherwise: "If you wish to draw pleasure out of life you must attach value to the world.” Schopenhauer attached value to some parts of the world, such as his succession of dogs - with whom he regularly took long daily walks. (179) He also loved Venetian salami, theatre, the opera, the concert hall, novels, philosophy, poetry, and at least one or two women. So: why didn't he have a more positive experience of life? Or do you think he did, after all, enjoy living - and complaining about it? Would he have had a better life if he had learned to be more optimistic, more grateful, less critical? Is our personal disposition something we can work on and change?

3. Schopenhauer on love "The conscious mind is a partially sighted servant of a dominant, child-obsessed will-to-life... we would not reliably assent to reproduce unless we first had lost our minds." (187) And we would not be sexually or romantically attracted to another person if we weren't under the domination of that inexorable, insatiable Will... "Love is nothing but the conscious manifestation of the will-to-life's discovery of an ideal co-parent..." But "the pursuit of personal happiness and the production of healthy children are two radically contrasting projects." "We pursue love affairs, chat in cafes with prospective partners and have children with as much choice in the matter as moles and ants - and are rarely any happier." (197) So: those of us who think our marriages and the subsequent births of our children were transcendently-joyous events are just deluded. Do you agree?

4. Are there good philosophical reasons for being a pessimist? Does anything in your experience support the claim that “the glass is half empty,” that the world is ultimately just a mass of pointless striving? Is philosophic pessimism something different than temperamental pessimism? Or is it just an attempt to rationalize one's personal state of mind, and to justify it in metaphysical terms? Is it possible to be neither an optimist nor a pessimist?

5. Young Schopenhauer became a hero to the youthful “romantics” of his time who were so committed to feeling (as opposed to reason). He fell in love but “had no wish to formalize the arrangement” deB176 - a classic case of reluctance to commit. His refusal to marry his mistress and mother of his child at a time when this would deeply damage her social and economic status is hardly the behavior of a loving spirit. TPM

6. Old Schopenhauer is more a picture of exhausted energy and curmudgeonly feeling.

7. Philosopher of the Month: Arthur Schopenhauer ...Explicitly following Kant, Schopenhauer believed that our world of space and time was merely the ‘phenomenal’ world of appearances and that the world as it really is outside of the way we represent it to ourselves is timeless and spaceless. We subjectively add space and time to the world just as – to re-use a well-known metaphor – in wearing red-lensed glasses we add the colour red to all our (visual) experience. Because time and space are the way that we necessarily picture things, however, we cannot see the way the world really is in itself (in terms of the earlier metaphor: we cannot take the glasses off) . ... TPM

8. Schopenhauer admired Goethe because he had turned so many of the pains of love into knowledge... The essence of art is that its one case applies to thousands...no longer one man suffering alone, he is part of the vast body of human beings who have throughout time fallen in love in the agonizing drive to propagate the species. DeB 201

9. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) Schopenhauer was an anti-Hegelian who returned to Kant with the intention of determining the nature of the "thing in itself" by analyzing experience. But Schopenhauer was a son of Idealism; consequently he conceived reality monistically. For him the world was a phenomenal representation...

10. Kant began with experience and remained there, declaring that it is impossible to attain knowledge of the thing in itself. Schopenhauer also began with experience, but he believed that it is possible to pass beyond experience and to know the thing in itself. According to him, if we were merely rational beings, endowed with sense and intellect but devoid of volition, we would never be able to answer the question: "What is the external cause of our representations?" The world would be for us a dream, a mere representation, a mysterious signal devoid of meaning. But each one of us is also a body, and the corporeal life reveals itself as tendency, effort, activity, or in a word, as will . Will, therefore, is our reality . RA

11. Schopenhauer departed from Kant by denying the rationality of the Will... it is ultimately without purpose: An animal is born. It struggles to survive. It mates, reproduces, and dies. Its offspring do the same, and the cycle repeats itself generation after generation. What could be the point of all this? Like the Buddhists, he recommended asceticism and the blunting of desire. Like Nietzsche, he thought art and aesthetic experience were redemptive.

12. “ The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by virtue of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link...” It is this active relation between ideal and actual to which I would give the name "God." John Dewey (1859-1952) This was Dewey's epitaph.

13. Among 19 th century philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer was among the first to contend that at its core, the universe is not a rational place . Inspired by Plato and Kant, both of whom regarded the world as being more amenable to reason, Schopenhauer developed their philosophies into an instinct-recognizing and ultimately ascetic outlook, emphasizing that in the face of a world filled with endless strife, we ought to minimize our natural desires to achieve a more tranquil frame of mind and a disposition towards universal beneficence. Often considered to be a thoroughgoing pessimist, Schopenhauer in fact advocated ways — via artistic, moral and ascetic forms of awareness — to overcome a frustration-filled and fundamentally painful human condition... SEP

14. Schopenhauer became the young romantics’ hero, championing “the whole person” against pure and abstract reason, emphasizing the importance of the irrational (foreshadowing Kierkegaard, “the melancholy Dane”). Nietzsche was briefly smitten by him. He was one of Wittgenstein's favorite philosophers.

15. The Condensed Edition of Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea " We can surely never arrive at the nature of things from without. " The World as Will and Idea ( Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung ), 1819- ...the sole essential reality in the universe is the will, and all visible and tangible phenomena are merely subjective representations of that 'will which is the only thing-in-itself' that actually exists. The defect of his system is its tendency to a sombre pessimism... ( Squashed Ph'ers)

16. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). The World as Will and Representation: Volition (“will”) stands outside space & time, but following its dictates leads to misery... Ultimate reality is will–ceaseless, unconscious striving that leads invariably to suffering. Better never to have existed than to suffer. Had a notoriously difficult rel’ship w/mom. Famous for trying, failing to dislodge Hegel, whom he regarded as a sophist and charlatan. Sought refuge in Indian philosophy.

17. “ His antipathy toward Hegel” and his optimism led him to embrace the Buddhist conviction that life is suffering, driven by an irrational will that takes many form in humans including violent aggression, instinct, intellectual ambition, and philosophical hubris (“how’s the system coming?”)...

18. Schopenhauer hated Hegel and described him as ‘that clumsy and nauseating charlatan, that pernicious person, who completely disorganized and ruined the minds of a whole generation.’ -Bryan Magee His 1820 Berlin lectures drew five students, while Hegel packed in 300. deB 176 They're in the same boat now.

19. Six Questions for Arthur Schopenhauer Harper's 1. Professor Doktor Schopenhauer, some of your critics say that your core writings are not much more than a transposition of Buddhist religious texts into the language of the Western philosophical tradition. Can you respond? Well, what was left? Moses Mendelssohn had already turned Judaism into a philosophical system; Immanuel Kant had extracted a comprehensive system of moral philosophy from Christianity... The obvious next project was Buddhism. It worked beautifully, didn’t it? And what is Western metaphysics compared to the Buddhist tradition? An anemic imitation.

20. 2. In his Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen , Friedrich Nietzsche praised you and described you as his mentor. But then later he described you, together with Christianity, as the “enemies of his life.” What led to this falling out between yourself and Nietzsche? There are two explanations, really. The simple one is that the Nietzsche who was filled with praise and admiration was the mentally healthy Nietzsche, and the late phase Nietzsche was in the midst of syphilitic delusions. I mean—who in his right mind would name me in the same breath as Christianity? But then of course I can’t avoid coming to some conflicts in our thinking... He was a science fiction writer in the end, that Fritz, it’s no wonder that they made a cartoon character out of his major contribution...

21. ...The will finds thousands of pretexts for perpetuating this unsatisfied hunger of the will to live. These pretexts only perpetuate the misery of life. · One such pretext and deceit is love . The will of the species masks itself under the pleasures of love with the purpose of perpetuating the desire for life in others. In so doing, it satisfies its own will to live. · Another pretext and deceit is egoism , which impels us to increase the pains of others in the hope of gaining some advantage in our own miserable life. · Still another deceit and illusion is progress which, in actuating itself, only makes more acute the sense of distress... Radical Academy

22. He may have been a grinch, a sourpuss, a misanthrope, and a misogynist, but as W.C. Fields said: no one who lives children or animals is all bad. Schopenhauer loved dogs and loathed the restriction of their freedom by man. DeB 177 You would think that a philosopher who named his pet poodle “Atma” would have the ability to see the Self in all beings; yet Arthur Schopenhauer’s love of wisdom did not seem to extend to a general love of humanity. In fact whenever the poodle misbehaved Schopenhauer would refer to it as “You Human”. - R.Udovicich, The Poodle Named Atman

23. Schopenhauer was puzzled by previous philosophers' neglect of the topic of love, a pompous denial of a side of life which violated man's rational self-image. DeB 185 But Socrates did not neglect it, nor did Plato - Plato's idea of “higher love,” though, is a big Idea... a Form, not very warm or tangible.

24. Schopenhauer's theory of the will invites us to adopt a more forgiving stance towards the eccentric behavior to which love so often makes us subject... (Love is nothing but irrational, impersonal will...) 188-9 It offers the consolation of knowing that our pain is normal. 194 The lover overlooks everything, misjudges everything, and in consummating his/her passion elicits “devilish” laughter. 192 Love could not induce us to take on the burden of propagating the species without promising us the greatest happiness we could imagine. 194

25. “ The greatest burden?” The pursuit of personal happiness and the production of healthy children are two radially contrasting projects - !!?? Schopenhauer was a life-long, childless bachelor. He did not know the joys that can compensate for, even make trivial, the “burdens” of parenthood.

26. An inborn error: the notion that we exist in order to be happy... the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer. 198 And by this dark thought we are supposed to be cheered?

27. And yet... Schopenhauer finally transcends pessimism, at least on paper. By assigning the absurdities of existence to an implacable, impersonal force of will, he comes to look less at his own individual lot than at that of humanity as a whole. He conducts himself more as a knower than as a sufferer. But of course we can't really know that the world is nothing but will. That's Schopenhauer's peculiar interpretation and perspective. In an odd way, though, it reconciled him to a life he claimed to find intolerable – and seems even to have made it worth living, from that perspective.

28. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. [But even if true, it does not follow that every ridiculous idea is a strong candidate for truth.] Compassion is the basis of all morality. Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right. Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world. [Compare Wittgenstein: the limits of my language...] If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it. Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. The amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity. The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten. We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

29. Sometimes by David Budbill Sometimes when day after day we have cloudless blue skies, warm temperatures, colorful trees and brilliant sun, when it seems like all this will go on forever, when I harvest vegetables from the garden all day, then drink tea and doze in the late afternoon sun, and in the evening one night make pickled beets and green tomato chutney, the next red tomato chutney, and the day after that pick the fruits of my arbor and make grape jam, when we walk in the woods every evening over fallen leaves, through yellow light, when nights are cool, and days warm, when I am so happy I am afraid I might explode or disappear or somehow be taken away from all this, at those times when I feel so happy, so good, so alive, so in love with the world, with my own sensuous, beautiful life, suddenly I think about all the suffering and pain in the world , the agony and dying. I think about all those people being tortured, right now, in my name. But I still feel happy and good, alive and in love with the world and with my lucky, guilty, sensuous, beautiful life because, I know in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be taken from me, and therefore I've got to say, right now, what I feel and know and see, I've got to say, right now, how beautiful and sweet this world can be. WA 11.17.08

30. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860),a pessimist , considered Will irrational and insatiable, an unremitting source of pointless striving and disappointment we ought to renounce. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), initially smitten with Schopenhauer, broke with him and exalted the “ Will to Power ” as the life-affirming key to self-overcoming.

31. Originally drawn to Schopenhauer's message of renunciation, negation, and resignation , Nietzsche eventually turned away from “Schopenhauerian deer-like shyness” in favor of a more (self-) affirming vision.

32. Preface Why I Am So Wise Why I Am So Clever Why I Write Such Good Books The Untimely Ones Human, All Too Human The Dawn The Gay Science Thus Spoke Zarathustra Beyond Good and Evil Genealogy of Morals Twilight of the Idols The Case of Wagner Why I Am a Destiny The Birth of Tragedy

33. Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900 Nietzsche says “will” is most impressive when it is directed to the effective channeling of one's own instincts and powers: masterly domination not of others but of oneself .

34. If, as Nietzsche says, humans are a bridge to a post-human world, shall we each try to go there alone? Or should we travel together? In Darwinian terms: is it “survival of the fittest” - or of the most compassionate and cooperative? In Utilitarian terms: shall we seek the greatest good of the greatest number, or angle for personal advantage? Is happiness (pleasure) a consumer good? Might that – compassion, cooperation, kindness, empathy – in fact be the next stage of our evolution?

35. Should we be trying to make it easy on ourselves... our greatest ally in the struggle to become more than we are? or are adversity, discomfort, and difficulty

36. Zarathustra audiobook excerpt Richard Strauss/ 2001 opening, trailer Dawn of man

37. Friedrich Nietzsche ( 1844-1900 ) Born the son of a Lutheran pastor in Röcken, Saxony, Friedrich Nietzsche was raised by female relatives after his father's death in 1849. He quickly abandoned his initial pursuit of theology in order to specialize in philology at Bonn and Leipzig... Phil Pages He loved his father, but still found Christian values corrupt, depraved, self-deceptive, weak... the product of timid slaves in the Roman empire. DeB 237

38. In the small German village of Röcken bei Lützen, located in a rural farmland area southwest of Leipzig, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in 1844.... Nietzsche's uncle and grandfathers were also Lutheran ministers, and his paternal grandfather affirmed the “everlasting survival of Christianity.” When Nietzsche was 4 years old his father died from a brain ailment, and his two-year-old brother, Joseph, followed six months later... From 1880 until his collapse in January 1889, Nietzsche led a wandering, gypsy-like existence circling almost annually between his mother's house in Naumburg and various French, Swiss, German and Italian cities... SEP

39. On a visit to Rome in 1882, Nietzsche, now at age thirty-seven, met Lou von Salomé (1861-1937), a twenty-one-year-old Russian woman who was studying philosophy and theology in Zurich. He soon fell in love with her, and offered his hand in marriage. She declined, and the future of Nietzsche's friendship with her and Paul Rée took a turn for the worse, as Salomé and Rée left Nietzsche and moved to Berlin. In the years to follow, Salomé would become an associate of Sigmund Freud, and would write with psychological insight of her association with Nietzsche...

40. When Nietzsche Wept: Eternal Return Nietzsche's “ holy moment ”... like Schopenhauer, he philosophized to console a broken heart

41. Nietzsche, who died in 1900 (and was insane after 1889) was no Nazi, though the Nazis themselves were confused about this... thanks in part to Nietzsche's little sister Elisabeth, who lived long enough to shake Hitler's hand in 1935.

42. Sils-Maria, 1889 – Nietzsche spent many summers and wrote many books there.

43. Nearby, Piz Corvatsch . The moral of Nietzsche's “mountain philosophy” - pain, effort, and disappointment precede fulfillment.

44. The height leaves one out of breath but curiously elated with a primal delight at being alive. “Only thoughts which come from walking have any value.”

45. In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain.

46. Denouncing what they wanted but were too weak to fight for... We all become Christians when we profess indifference to what we secretly long for but do not have. DeB 238 The person who does nothing but avoid “sin” might merit heaven, on the Christian view, while a free-thinker will probably be deemed “immoral” for not conforming. Conventional ethics reinforce such “leveling”... PW 107 The New Testament proposes to transform our difficulties into virtues: timidity (“blessed are the meek”), friendlessness (“your reward is great in heaven”), an unreasonable boss (“obey your masters”), poverty (“easier for a camel” etc.)... powerlessness became goodness, baseness humility, submission obedience, impotence forgiveness.

47. As an antidote to otherworldliness [Platonism, rationalism, Christianity] Nietzsche proposed “eternal recurrence,” the view that time repeats cyclically. If you imagined that your natural life must be lived over and over again in exactly the same way, suddenly there is an enormous weight on every moment...

48. Bill Murray, in Groundhog Day made eternal recurrence work for him... You might be missing Nietzsche's point, but there would be the consolation of Andie McDowell. This is cheating, of course. Every moment is supposed to be repeated “in exactly the same way.” But if you could do this, wouldn't you?

49. Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence, an answer to nihilism This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and sequence- The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it , a grain of dust. -Nietzsche even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself.

50. H.L. Mencken on “ Eternal Recurrence ” - "I will come back," muses Zarathustra, "with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent - not for a new life or a better life, but to the same life I am now leading. I will come back unto this same old life, in the greatest things and in the smallest, in order to teach once more the eternal recurrence of all Things." For Nietzsche, earth-centered vitality is the meaning of life. He entirely rejected the otherworldly as a source of salvation.

51. In the 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine , the alienated teenager Dwayne “ hates everyone” and is an aspiring Nietzschean. But he eventually overcomes his antipathies and affirms his life and family, as “poor Nietzsche” apparently did not.

52. "”The sick are the greatest danger for the well. The weaker, not the stronger, are the strong's undoing,” wrote Nietzsche. William James commented: “ Poor Nietzsche's antipathy is itself sickly enough, but we all know what he means... Shall the seen world or the unseen world be our chief sphere of adaptation? and must our means of adaptation in this seen world be aggressiveness or non-resistance?” Good questions, but...

53. “ The mood of a Schopenhauer or a Nietzsche ... though often an ennobling sadness, is almost as often only peevishness running away with the bit between its teeth. The sallies of the two German authors remind one, half the time, of the sick shriekings of two dying rats .” VRE

54. Nietzsche celebrated the Greeks' tragic vision of life, integrating both a classically ordered Appollonian perspective – the quest for truth and beauty - and a darker Dionysian element. They “made a festival of all their passions and evil natural inclinations,” allowing “a moderate discharge”... Fulfillment is reached by responding wisely to difficulties that could tear one apart. DeB 230

55. “ Dionysus , [aka Bacchus] the god of wine, sexuality, and revelry, represents the dynamic flux of being, the acceptance of fate, and the chaos of creativity.” Dionysian festivals . Orgies were acts of devotion to Dionysus, used as a way to unite with divinity, and shared with other believers...

56. Nietzsche saw the Greeks as tragedians, not pessimists; they were concerned with personal excellence and social sanity, not otherworldy salvation. Their morality was based on healthy, creative self-assertion – not resignation and renunciation “They knew how to live!” Against Schopenhauer's pessimism about the meaning of life, Nietzsche insisted that vitality is itself the meaning of life... the affirmation of life.

57. But Nietzsche was no Dionysian himself. Alcohol, he thought, was a form of anaesthetic; a way of seeking easy comfort, of “maximizing pleasure” like an English utilitarian... “ Instead of drinking beer in the lowlands, accept the pain of the climb.” deB 234 and evading difficulty like ( he said) a Christian. Christianity and alcohol weaken our will, our “resolve to garden our problems; both deny us the chance of fulfillment.” deB 237

58. William James had a different view. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function. . . . Not through mere perversity do men run after it. The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

59. Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: " I am looking for God! I am looking for God!" "Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers... As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

60. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose.

61. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto." Nietzsche biblio

62. Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still traveling - it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves." It has been further related that on that same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang a requiem. Led out and quietened, he is said to have retorted each time: "what are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of God?"

64. The laughter with which the madman is greeted is the clue that whatever reverence the solemn God once commanded has lost its grip. 68 “ Laughter kills the cheerless God.” 67 * If His time was not up yet in 1882, what about 1979 (when the Pythons filmed Brian) or 2008? Does it depend on who and where you ask? But maybe He's not dead yet, and (as Nietzsche's prophet says) "this tremendous event is still on its way." Still, some signs of the apocalypse (if that's what you want to call “the end of the world as we know it”) may be in evidence...

65. Atheism has had a run of popularity lately, at least on best-seller lists.

66. Just remember that the last laugh is on you...” “ Life's a laugh and death's a joke. It's true. You'll see it's all a show. Keep 'em laughing as you go...

67. Not dead yet? And “dead” how? If “we have killed Him,” who are we ?

68. Nietzsche was ultimately a sad, lonely, self-isolated man. Like Schopenhauer he exhibited greater depth of feeling for non-human animals than for members of his own species. But he was right to notice that Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us. Not everything which hurts may be bad. And while it may be literally false, there's wisdom in his most oft-repeated aphorism: What does not kill me makes me stronger.

69. Falling Out With Superman I STUMBLED upon Friedrich Nietzsche when I was 17, following the usual trail of existential candies -- Camus, Sartre, Beckett -- that unsuspecting teenagers find in the woods. The effect was more like a drug than a philosophy. I was whirled upward -- or was it downward? -- into a one-man universe, a secret cult demanding that you put a gun to the head of your dearest habits and beliefs... Then I went to Sils...

70. I stood in the doorway. And then, as a gift, the following words came into my head, words spoken by Zarathustra to his disciples, disciples that Nietzsche himself never had. ''You revere me; but what if your reverence tumbles one day? Beware lest a statue slay you. You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters Zarathustra? . . . Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.'' I took a last look at the room. Then I walked out the door.

71. Optimism. If Nietzsche's rejection of pessimism is too full of antipathy, and Leibniz's is superficial, “how dare we be optimistic ?” Al Gore addressed that question in March '08 at a TED conference in Monterey, California. Generations past have risen to the challenge of seemingly- impossible problems, but ours is the first with an opportunity to solve the climate crisis. An old African proverb says: if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together . Our challenge: go far... quickly.

72. Schopenhauer doesn't seem to have been very grateful for life. No Thanksgiving gladness for him. But a very different attitude toward generational succession and the procession of life is possible – and it's really “e verybody’s story”...

73. Many think of life as a precious gift, and find religious or spiritual meaning in this. But is the idea of life as a gift , and of gratitude as the most suitable response, necessarily religious? Is there a place in the secular mind for these sentiments? Ronald Aronson (“ Thank Who Very Much”) : “So much and many to thank...” Loyal Rue : “all lives, no less my own, are instruments of life itself. I will submerge the gravity of my own death in the long, stern grace of evolution.” Robert Solomon: We have much to learn by abandoning the interpersonal model of gratitude and thinking not of God and other people's intentions but of our gratitude to larger and impersonal forces.