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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
Brilliant collection of wide-ranging essays from the plainspoken German master, one of the last great system builders. My favorites included The Emptiness of Existence, Short Dialogue on the Indestructibility of Our True Being by Death and Religion: A Dialogue.
If you are up for lively, insightful, sometimes outrageous essays on a variety of philosophical and literary topics, 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer will not let you down. There are 7 essays collected in this book and to share a taste of what a reader will find, below are quotes along with my comments on 5 of the 7 essays. The very readable Dircks translation is available on-line: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE
"Obscurity and vagueness of expression are at all times and everywhere a very bad sign. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they arise from vagueness of thought, which, in its turn, is almost always fundamentally discordant, inconsistent, and therefore wrong. When a right thought springs up in the mind it strives after clearness of expression, and it soon attains it, for clear thought easily finds its appropriate expression." --------- Being myself a musician and trained in nada yoga, that is, the yoga of sound, I recently started reading a short book on listening by a French philosopher and aesthetician in the postmodern tradition. The language was so convoluted and chock-full of double negatives, qualifications, obscure language and multiple references, I almost felt like shouting, ‘My good man, if you have something insightful to say, kindly say it!’
ON READING AND BOOKS
“One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison, they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength are limited.” ---------- I never tire of reminding myself that life is too short for bad taste. I would even take this a step further: if, after giving a book a fair chance, the book still doesn’t speak to me, I put it aside and find another book I can really get into, grow wings and take flight.
“Any kind of important book should immediately be read twice, partly because one grasps the matter in its entirety the second time, and only really understands the beginning when the end is known, and partly because in reading it the second time one’s temper and mood are different, so that one gets another impression; it may be that one sees the matter in another light.” ---------- Schopenhauer’s words are particularly true respecting literature. The novel, story or poem comes alive and is colored by our mood, emotions and feelings. With each rereading, we gain an additional angle or slant, thus expanding our experience and understanding. I recall preparing for a group discussion of John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’. It must have taken me at least a dozen readings, some silent, some aloud, to gain a basic appreciation of the poem’s rhythm, beauty and depth of meaning.
THE EMPTINESS OF EXISTENCE
“That human life must be a kind of mistake is sufficiently clear from the fact that man is a compound of needs, which are difficult to satisfy; moreover, if they are satisfied, all he is granted is a state of painlessness, in which he can give himself up to boredom.”--------- To gauge the truth of this statement, a question we can ask ourselves: ‘Are we easily bored?’ Our answer speaks not so much to the emptiness of existence in the abstract as to the emptiness in our own individual lives.
ON WOMEN
Schopenhauer’s infamous misogynous essay. “Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and short-sighted — in a word, are big children all their lives.” ---------- Just goes to show, even a great thinker can be very, very wrong, even laughable. As an adult, I’ve had the good fortune to have many excellent teachers in various fields: creative writing, music, theater, dance, yoga, and most of my teachers have been women.
THINKING FOR ONESELF
“The presence of a thought is like the presence of our beloved. We imagine we shall never forget this thought, and that this loved one could never be indifferent to us. But out of sight out of mind! The finest thought runs the risk of being irrevocably forgotten if it is not written down.” ---------- From my own experience, my thoughts have staying power when I translate them into writing; this certainly applies to thoughts and impressions about the books I review.
slow-paced
"From all this it may be concluded that thoughts put down on paper are nothing more than footprints in the sand : one sees the road the man has taken, but in order to know what he saw on the way, he requires his eyes."
One problem with free books on Kindle is that any books that include multiple languages do not translate all the languages. With the book in question, Schopenhauer is translated from German to English, but the French and Latin quotes he provides are not. Therefore, unless you're fluent in these languages, you might want to stick with a paid version of his essays. If not for this flaw, I'd give the collection four stars, for Schopenhauer gives fascinating (and sometimes dated) views on a variety of subjects.
This collection contains a preliminary and a biographical note before the essays. Due to weird formatting, however, it may be difficult to make out which each essay is, since all the titles run together. They are: On Authorship and Style, On Noise, On Reading and Books, The Emptiness of Existence, On Women, Thinking for Oneself, Short Dialogue on the Indestructibility of Our True Being By Death, Religion: A Dialogue, Observations, Metaphysics of Love, Physiognomy, On Suicide. "On Women" is highly sexist and based on stereotypical views of women, but the rest challenge the modern reader with their ideas without being offensive (though "Metaphysics of Love" may anger romantics -- which Schopenhauer anticipated in the essay). And hey, he influenced Wagner: http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/oct/23/a-to-z-of-wagner-s-for-schopenhauer
This collection contains a preliminary and a biographical note before the essays. Due to weird formatting, however, it may be difficult to make out which each essay is, since all the titles run together. They are: On Authorship and Style, On Noise, On Reading and Books, The Emptiness of Existence, On Women, Thinking for Oneself, Short Dialogue on the Indestructibility of Our True Being By Death, Religion: A Dialogue, Observations, Metaphysics of Love, Physiognomy, On Suicide. "On Women" is highly sexist and based on stereotypical views of women, but the rest challenge the modern reader with their ideas without being offensive (though "Metaphysics of Love" may anger romantics -- which Schopenhauer anticipated in the essay). And hey, he influenced Wagner: http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/oct/23/a-to-z-of-wagner-s-for-schopenhauer