Arthur Schopenhauer – Biography of Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer He was born in Danzig, Poland, on February 22, 1788. He was the descendant of two wealthy German families. The parents of Schopenhauer they moved to Hamburg after Prussia annexed Danzig in 1793. When his father died in 1805, possibly as a result of suicide, his mother Johanna, who was a writer and intellectual, started a literary salon in Weimar.

Schopenhauer he enrolled at the University of Göttingen in 1809. There he focused on the study of philosophy, more precisely, on the ideas of Plato and Immanuel Kant. In 1819, he published The world as will and representation (Die Welt ais Wille und Vorstellung), which would mark his future as a philosopher. He subsequently accepted a position at the University of Berlin, where he started a rivalry with fellow professor Georg Hegel that ultimately alienated him from academia.

The conflicts followed Schopenhauer beyond his professional life. While living in Berlin, he was convicted of assaulting a woman named Caroline Marquet who refused to leave her door, and to whom he had to make regular payments for the rest of her life.

In 1833, following a cholera outbreak in Berlin, Schopenhauer moved to Frankfurt. There he lived alone for the next three decades, accompanied by poodles and domestic cats. His writings on aging were finally published under the title Senilia.

Arthur Schopenhauer He died of cardiac arrest on September 21, 1860, at the age of 72, at his home in Frankfurt.

Writing of Schopenhauer focused on extensive research on individual motivation. Unlike Hegel, Schopenhauer believed that human beings were motivated by their own basic desires rather than broader social tendencies. He considered human action devoid of direction, and saw desire as the root of suffering and pain. Artistic contemplation, he argued, offered temporary relief from this pain.

The welfare of animals was a major concern to him, who believed that animals and humans were fundamentally equal in their self-centered motivations. He was a committed lover of pets, who denounced the philosophical arguments that placed human lives above those of animals.

He was also a devotee of Sanskrit literature and had a strong interest in Buddhism, in which he saw strong comparisons with his own beliefs.

Schopenhauer It influenced intellectuals around the world, particularly in the fields of philosophy, the arts, and psychology, and was particularly popular during the modernist era of the early 20th century. Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jorge Luis Borges have quoted al philosopher as a major influence.