The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, a Dialogue, Etc.

A staged debate between a defender of religion and a seeker of truth, heading a selection on faith, reading, and art — from the book that made him a sage.

by Arthur Schopenhauer152 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

First published: 1851(aged 63)
Original language: German

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Overview

Two voices argue and neither wins. Demopheles defends religion as a necessary vehicle of truth for the many, who could never bear metaphysics straight; Philalethes answers that a useful falsehood is still a falsehood, and that faith survives only by forbidding the questions that would dissolve it. Schopenhauer wrote the exchange as the centrepiece of these essays and lets it end unresolved, because he thought the tension real: religion is an allegory of a truth philosophy states literally, valuable as consolation and dangerous as knowledge. Around the dialogue Saunders grouped shorter pieces — on pantheism, on physiognomy, on books and reading, on the Christian system — all drawn from Parerga and Paralipomena, the 1851 collection. That book did what none of his earlier work had: it found readers. Within two years an English notice had announced him, admirers and the curious began arriving at his Frankfurt lodgings, and the man who had spent decades in near-total obscurity became, in his seventies, a figure people travelled to see. The religious essays sharpened his reputation as the philosopher who could praise faith's social work while denying every one of its claims. He was neither believer nor ordinary atheist, holding instead that the great religions gave symbolic form to the same pessimism his system argued outright, and that Buddhism had grasped it most clearly of all.

Key concepts

Who are Demopheles and Philalethes?

The two voices of the dialogue, and their names carry their positions. Demopheles — friend of the people — defends religion as truth the many could never bear in naked form. Philalethes — lover of truth — answers that a useful falsehood is still a falsehood. Schopenhauer lets neither win.

What does Schopenhauer mean by religion as allegory?

That religion states in image, myth, and dogma the very truth philosophy states literally. It is symbolic metaphysics for those who cannot follow the abstract kind — true taken as allegory, false the moment its pictures are taken for literal fact. This double status is why he neither believes nor simply dismisses it.

What is the metaphysics of the people?

Schopenhauer's phrase for religion: a popular stand-in for philosophy that gives the masses, who cannot follow argument, a consoling symbolic account of existence and a curb on conduct. It does the work metaphysics does for the few, in the only form the many can receive.

Was Schopenhauer an atheist?

Neither an ordinary atheist nor a believer. He denied every literal claim of religion yet held that the great faiths give symbolic form to the same pessimism his own system argues outright, and he rated Buddhism the one that grasped it most clearly. Religion, for him, was true allegory and false doctrine.

Themes of the book

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

A Useful Faith, and a False One

Can a belief be worth keeping for the consolation it gives the many, while being untrue in every claim it makes about the world?

Two voices argue and neither wins. Demopheles defends religion as a necessary vehicle of truth for those who could never bear metaphysics straight; Philalethes answers that a useful falsehood is still a falsehood, one that survives only by forbidding the questions that would dissolve it. Schopenhauer leaves the exchange unresolved because he thought the tension real: faith is an allegory of a truth philosophy states literally, valuable as consolation and dangerous as knowledge. Neither believer nor ordinary atheist, he held that religion clothes his own pessimism in symbol.

theology
morality
human nature
superstition
ethics
history
psychology
religion

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Within this work

passages held: 152
distinct concepts: 284
by passages held, corpus-wide: #151

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: fame with merit.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 13 pairings. 41 shared passages in all. 55 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
fame	merit	8
honor	social status	5
fame	honor	4
honor	reputation	4
honor	merit	3
merit	social status	3
fame	happiness	2
fame	social status	2
happiness	intellect	2
happiness	merit	2
happiness	reputation	2
reputation	social status	2
reputation	vanity	2

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.
DEEN
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.
DEEN
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 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.
DEEN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; On Human Nature
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.
DEEN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, a Dialogue, Etc. you are here DEEN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism
The pessimism most readers know him by, stated without the metaphysics — Saunders' selection of the shortest, bluntest essays from the 1851 Parerga.
DEEN
1851 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
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Literature
One of the topical selections Saunders carved from the Parerga for English readers, this one on writing, reading, and style; published in 1891.
DEEN
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
1851 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
Anmerkungen zu Locke und Kant sowie zu nachkantischen Philosophen (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
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

— or open another of their works