The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Literature

Schopenhauer on how to write, what to read, and why to think for yourself rather than about books — the sharpest prose stylist among philosophers on his own craft.

by Arthur Schopenhauer196 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

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

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Overview

The hack who writes for money, the scholar who reads until he can no longer think, the professor of philosophy hiding behind Hegel's fog — these essays go after all of them. Schopenhauer, himself among the most lucid prose stylists any philosopher has managed, argues that to think for oneself is worth more than any amount of reading, which at its worst is merely letting another mind trample through your own; a good style says clearly what is worth saying and hides nothing behind terminology. The pieces come from Parerga and Paralipomena, the 1851 collection that, at sixty-three and after a lifetime of selling almost nothing, finally brought Schopenhauer readers and then fame. Saunders gathered these particular chapters for English readers under a title of his own and published them in 1891. There is an irony the essays earn honestly: the man raging against writers nobody should read had himself been read by almost nobody for thirty years, and knew exactly what obscurity cost. His counsel on clarity is not theory but the method of a writer who had watched turgid contemporaries fill the halls he could not. It remains among the most quoted things he wrote on the craft itself.

Key concepts

What does thinking for oneself mean?

Forming one's thoughts from direct reflection on the world rather than absorbing them ready-made from books. Schopenhauer holds a single truth won by one's own thinking worth more than any quantity of learning taken on trust, because only self-won thought becomes truly part of a mind and grows there.

What are the two kinds of writers?

Those who write because they have something to say, and those who write for the sake of writing — for money or reputation. Only the first think before taking up the pen; the second dilute a little matter in many words. Schopenhauer says one should read the first and avoid the second.

What is his charge against professors of philosophy?

That academic philosophy hides behind Hegel's fog, manufacturing obscurity to disguise an absence of thought and to keep a lucrative profession going. Genuine philosophy, done for its own sake, has nothing to do with the lecture-hall trade — a verdict sharpened by his own long exclusion from those halls.

What does Schopenhauer mean by good style?

Saying clearly what is worth saying and hiding nothing behind terminology. Obscurity, he insists, is not depth but a cloak thrown over empty or confused thought; a writer who truly understands his subject writes to be understood, not to seem profound. Clarity is the honesty of prose.

Themes of the book

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

Think for Yourself

Is wide reading the making of a mind, or a trespass on it — another man's thoughts trampling through ground that should have been your own?

To think for oneself, Schopenhauer argues, is worth more than any quantity of reading, which at its worst merely lets a foreign mind march through yours. A good style says clearly what is worth saying and hides nothing behind terminology — a standard he wields against hacks who write for money, scholars who read until they can no longer think, and professors sheltering in Hegel's fog. The counsel is not theory but the method of the sharpest prose stylist among philosophers, who knew exactly what obscurity had cost him.

intellect
reflection
truth
judgment
solitude
experience
character
memory
genius

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 196
distinct concepts: 370
by passages held, corpus-wide: #134

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: compassion with ethics.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 12 pairings. 48 shared passages in all. 71 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
compassion	ethics	7
ethics	metaphysics	7
compassion	egoism	6
character	egoism	5
altruism	compassion	4
altruism	ethics	4
compassion	metaphysics	4
altruism	egoism	3
character	ethics	2
character	intellect	2
egoism	ethics	2
egoism	metaphysics	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
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 you are here 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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