A review by tmackell
En présence de Schopenhauer by Michel Houellebecq

this is barely even a book. just like 50 pages of some Schopenhauer quotes and Houellebecq's brief commentary on them. I remember Schopenhauer was one of the first philosophers I really got in to and reading him in highschool damn near gave me an existential crisis. I remember it was an Easter Sunday I was reading Essays and Aphorisms and got really depressed thinking what's the point of it all if everything is just will and representation. Like a dark side of the Zen Buddhist way of seeing things. Schopenhauer basically got a lot of his ideas from eastern thought but I think reading that stuff made him nihilistic rather than liberated. kinda like how "Nothing matters" can be either a nihilistic or liberating thought.... makes sense that Houellebecq would fuck with this guy