The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims

The pessimist's rulebook for daily living — how to guard your peace, spend your attention, and grow old — drawn from the collection that finally made his name.

by Arthur Schopenhauer160 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Parerga und Paralipomena
First published: 1851(aged 63)
Original language: German

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Overview

The philosopher who judged existence a mistake nonetheless drew up practical rules for enduring it, and this is the second half of them. Grouped as general maxims and then as counsels on our relation to ourselves, to others, to fortune, and to the stages of life, these pages translate a bleak metaphysics into blunt advice: measure happiness by the absence of pain rather than the presence of pleasure, guard your solitude, expect little of company, and treat the present day as the only real possession you hold. Schopenhauer drew them from the Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, the run of worldly wisdom that closes the first volume of Parerga and Paralipomena, the two-volume miscellany he published in 1851 after a lifetime of going unread. It was these accessible pages, not his difficult metaphysics, that general readers seized on first, and they have stayed in print ever since. Saunders detached them for English readers, lifting Schopenhauer's own chapter heading — Paränesen und Maximen — into the title of a separate book. The counsel is worldly and unillusioned rather than consoling: its premise is that little can make a life positively happy while a great deal can wreck it, so the wise aim is defensive — protect what peace you have. That so level-headed a manual and a philosophy of universal suffering came from one pen is the surprise the book keeps delivering. It is the guide, not the system behind it, that most readers have met first.

Key concepts

What is eudaemonology?

The art of living happily — Schopenhauer's name for these worldly rules on ordering life to pass as agreeably as possible. He keeps it deliberately apart from his metaphysics: judged from the heights, existence is not worth the trouble, but granted that we must live, this practical wisdom asks how to endure it best.

Why does Schopenhauer call pleasure negative?

Because only pain and want are felt positively; pleasure is merely their momentary absence, the silencing of a need. It cannot be stored or added up, and vanishes the instant we possess what we craved. From this follows his central counsel: aim at removing pain, never at heaping up pleasures that dissolve on arrival.

How does he organize these counsels?

Under a person's four relations: to themselves, to others, to fortune or the course of events, and to the different stages of life. The same defensive wisdom runs through all four — the practical fields in which Schopenhauer applies his single rule that peace is guarded, not seized.

What does he mean by a defensive wisdom of life?

That happiness is won by shielding what peace and health one has, not by chasing joy. Little, he argues, can make a life positively happy, while a great deal can wreck it — so the prudent aim is to avoid the large evils rather than pursue the small goods. Wisdom is guarding against loss.

Themes of the book

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

Guarding Your Peace

When little can make a life positively happy and a great deal can wreck it, what is the wise aim — and how much of daily conduct should be defensive?

The philosopher who judged existence a mistake still drew up rules for enduring it, and these are the bluntest of them. Measure happiness by the absence of pain rather than the presence of pleasure; guard your solitude; expect little of company; treat the present day as the only real possession you hold. The counsel is worldly and unillusioned, not consoling — its premise that peace is something you protect, never something you acquire. Readers met this practical Schopenhauer long before they met his metaphysics.

human nature
will
intellect
subjectivity
perception
psychology
education
vanity
character

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Within this work

passages held: 160
distinct concepts: 319
by passages held, corpus-wide: #395

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “aging” and “experience”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 23 pairings. 87 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
aging	experience	6
aging	intellect	4
experience	intellect	4
human nature	solitude	4
aging	character	3
aging	solitude	3
experience	happiness	3
happiness	prudence	3
happiness	solitude	3
intellect	solitude	3
aging	happiness	2
character	human nature	2
happiness	intellect	2
aging	human nature	1
aging	prudence	1
character	experience	1
character	intellect	1
character	prudence	1
character	solitude	1
experience	human nature	1
human nature	intellect	1
human nature	prudence	1
prudence	solitude	1

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)
Notorious far beyond its length: a few hostile pages on women from the second volume of the 1851 Parerga, an embarrassment to his admirers and a standing charge against him.
DE
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims (Parerga und Paralipomena) you are here 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

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