On Women

The short essay that did more damage to Schopenhauer's reputation than anything else he wrote — a few pages of blunt disparagement of women, endlessly quoted against him since.

by Arthur Schopenhauer7 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Über die Weiber
First published: 1851(aged 63)
Original language: German

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Overview

Few short essays have followed a philosopher's name as this one has. In a handful of pages Schopenhauer set down a sweeping, contemptuous verdict on women — that they exist for the propagation of the species and reach no further, remain childlike their whole lives, and fall short of men in justice and in the disinterested contemplation that produces real art or thought. He hung the claims on his metaphysics, casting woman as an instrument of the will-to-live's blind drive to reproduce, which for him was reason enough to distrust her. The essay appeared as a chapter in the second volume of Parerga and Paralipomena in 1851, the same collection that, in his final decade, turned decades of obscurity into fame — so his celebrity and his most notorious pages arrived together. It has embarrassed his admirers ever since and served his critics as a standing exhibit; whether it expresses a settled misogyny or the bitterness of a particular life, including a long feud with his mother, is still argued by scholars, some of whom note that the caricature of Schopenhauer the woman-hater was assembled by later writers as much as by the essay itself. What even his defenders concede is that it argues little and insults much, and that it has outlived subtler things he wrote precisely because it is so easy to quote against him.

Key concepts

What is disinterested contemplation, which he says women lack?

The will-free, objective perception that, in his aesthetics, lifts a mind above personal wanting to grasp things purely — the faculty behind genuine art and thought. Schopenhauer claims women, bound more closely to the will's immediate interests, never fully attain it. The charge borrows a real term from his system and applies it as prejudice.

How does he tie women to the will-to-live?

He casts woman as the instrument through which the species' blind drive to reproduce works, and reasons that where the will-to-live operates most nakedly he trusts the person least. The verdict hangs on his metaphysics rather than on evidence: the reproductive role is made to carry the whole judgment of a sex.

What does the essay actually claim about women?

That they exist to propagate the species and reach no further, remain childlike their whole lives, and fall short of men in justice and in disinterested contemplation. Even Schopenhauer's defenders concede it argues little and insults much, which is partly why so short a piece has done his reputation such lasting damage.

What is his charge that women lack justice?

The claim that, governed by feeling and the will's immediate interests rather than by abstract principle, women judge by sympathy and cunning more than by objective justice. Like the essay's other assertions, it is stated sweepingly and demonstrated hardly at all — a prejudice dressed in the vocabulary of his philosophy.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Woman as the Will's Instrument

What verdict on a whole sex follows once it is cast as nature's device for reproduction and credited with nothing that reaches beyond it?

In a handful of contemptuous pages Schopenhauer rules that women exist to propagate the species and reach no further — that they stay childlike their whole lives and fall short of men in justice and in the disinterested contemplation that yields real art or thought. He hangs the claims on his metaphysics, casting woman as an instrument of the will-to-live's blind drive to reproduce. Even his defenders concede the essay argues little and insults much, and that it has outlived subtler work precisely because it is so quotable against him.

species
reproduction
justice
reason
gender philosophy
marriage
moral psychology
aesthetics
art

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Within this work

passages held: 7
distinct concepts: 27
by passages held, corpus-wide: #825

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1813 On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature (Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde; und, Ueber den Willen in der Natur)
Schopenhauer's 1813 doctoral dissertation, and the book he told readers to finish before opening his masterwork; the 1836 essay bound with it hunts for the same metaphysics in natural science.
EN
1819 The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung)
The masterwork, and the whole of his philosophy: one argument he refused to recast, only enlarge, across three editions between 1819 and 1859. Every other title on this shelf leads toward it or away from it.
DE
1841 The Basis of Morality (Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik)
Two ethics essays written for academic prize contests — one crowned in Norway, one famously denied the Danish medal though it stood alone — issued together in 1841 as The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics.
EN
1851 Essay on Spirit Seeing and Everything Connected Therewith (Über das Geistersehn und was damit zusammenhängt)
An excursion into the paranormal — ghosts, second sight, animal magnetism — explained through his own metaphysics of will; the fifth of the six long essays in the 1851 Parerga.
DE
1851 On Women (Über die Weiber) you are here DE
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims (Parerga und Paralipomena)
Half of Schopenhauer's Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, the companion to The Wisdom of Life; Saunders split the two for English readers. Practical maxims for living, drawn from the 1851 collection.
EN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; On Human Nature (Parerga und Paralipomena / Nachgelassene Schriften)
Essays on ethics and politics that Saunders gathered — some from the 1851 Parerga, some from manuscripts unpublished at his death — under a title Schopenhauer never gave them.
EN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, a Dialogue, Etc. (Parerga und Paralipomena)
A dialogue on whether a useful faith can also be a false one, heading a cluster of essays on religion and art that Saunders drew from the 1851 Parerga.
EN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism (Parerga und Paralipomena)
The pessimism most readers know him by, stated without the metaphysics — Saunders' selection of the shortest, bluntest essays from the 1851 Parerga.
EN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Literature (Parerga und Paralipomena)
One of the topical selections Saunders carved from the Parerga for English readers, this one on writing, reading, and style; published in 1891.
EN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: the Wisdom of Life (Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit)
His most cheerful book, a guide to happiness that opens the Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life; the pages John Oxenford's 1853 essay singled out when he introduced Schopenhauer to English readers.
DEEN
1864 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; the Art of Controversy (Parerga und Paralipomena / Nachgelassene Schriften)
Not from the Parerga at all: a manual of thirty-eight debating tricks that Schopenhauer drafted around 1830, left unpublished, and that reached print only in 1864, from his posthumous papers.
DEEN
1892 Anmerkungen zu Locke und Kant sowie zu nachkantischen Philosophen
Undated notes from his literary remains, engaging Locke, Kant, and the post-Kantian idealists; manuscript material sorted by his editors after his death, never a book he wrote.
DE

— or open another of their works