The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism

The essays where Schopenhauer states his pessimism at its bluntest — that it would have been better not to be — pulled from the collection that finally won him readers.

by Arthur Schopenhauer162 passages held

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

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Overview

Existence, Schopenhauer says without hedging, is something that had better not have happened — and these short essays put that conviction in its barest, least technical form. Life, he argues, is not a gift with some pain mixed in but a debt paid in suffering: willing is endless craving, every satisfied wish only clears ground for the next, pleasure is merely the brief absence of a particular pain, and boredom floods in whenever wanting pauses. On suicide he refuses the Christian condemnation yet denies it settles anything, since death ends the individual and not the will that drove him. The pieces — on the sufferings of the world, the vanity of existence, suicide, education, noise — come from Parerga and Paralipomena, the 1851 two-volume collection that reversed a lifetime of neglect and, in his last decade, made him famous. Saunders selected and retitled them for English readers a generation later. What the difficult metaphysics behind these claims never managed, this distilled and quotable pessimism did: it travelled, and a mood of world-weariness ran through late-nineteenth-century European letters partly on its strength. The essays are often taken as gloom cultivated for its own sake. Schopenhauer meant them as clear sight — the refusal to pretend the world is other than it is, which he held to be where any real wisdom begins.

Key concepts

What does Schopenhauer's pessimism actually claim?

That suffering is the positive, essential content of life and satisfaction merely its brief negative — so that, on balance, it would have been better had the world never been. He means this as a metaphysical verdict, not a passing mood: sober diagnosis, the refusal to pretend existence is other than it is.

What is the pendulum between pain and boredom?

His picture of the willing life. Unsatisfied desire is felt as pain; the moment desire is satisfied, emptiness and boredom rush in; and existence swings endlessly between the two poles, never resting in lasting contentment. Boredom, for Schopenhauer, is direct proof that life has no positive value of its own.

Why does he call this the worst of all possible worlds?

Reversing Leibniz's optimism, he argues the world is so precariously arranged that it barely manages to exist; a little worse and it could not continue at all. This is evidence not of benevolent design but of a blind will — a world that exists on sufferance, not one made good for its inhabitants.

What is the vanity of existence he describes?

The emptiness at the core of a life spent in constant becoming that never reaches being. The present perpetually slips into the past, every goal dissolves once reached, and willing strains toward ends that would justify it and never arrive. Existence is thus a striving without a resting point that could redeem it.

Themes of the book

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

Better Never to Have Been

Is life a gift with some pain mixed in, or a debt paid in suffering from the first day to the last?

Existence, Schopenhauer says without hedging, is something that had better not have happened. Willing is endless craving, every satisfied wish only clearing ground for the next; pleasure is merely the brief absence of a particular pain, and boredom floods in whenever wanting pauses. On suicide he refuses the Christian condemnation yet denies it settles anything, since death ends the individual and not the will that drove him. Taken for cultivated gloom, the essays were meant as clear sight — the refusal to pretend the world is other than it is.

metaphysics
will
human nature
ethics
truth
reason
suffering
education
pessimism

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Within this work

passages held: 162
distinct concepts: 219
by passages held, corpus-wide: #146

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: egoism with ethics.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 12 pairings. 77 shared passages in all. 84 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
egoism	ethics	14
ethics	metaphysics	11
ethics	methodology	11
ethics	theology	10
ethics	logic	7
ethics	morality	7
egoism	morality	5
logic	theology	3
metaphysics	methodology	3
epistemology	methodology	2
logic	methodology	2
methodology	theology	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.
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.
DEEN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism you are here 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

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