The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: the Wisdom of Life

Schopenhauer's guide to happiness — that what you are matters more than what you have or what others think — from the pen that called existence a mistake.

by Arthur Schopenhauer195 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit
First published: 1851(aged 63)
Original language: German

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Overview

An anonymous reviewer in the Westminster Review did in 1853 what three decades of German silence had not: he announced Schopenhauer to the world. John Oxenford's essay, "Iconoclasm in German Philosophy," was translated back into German and turned the sixty-five-year-old into a celebrity — and the book at the centre of the collection Oxenford praised was this one, the opening run of the Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit. It is the most serene thing Schopenhauer wrote, a guide to happiness from the century's foremost pessimist. He divides the sources of a good life into three — personality, what a man is; property, what he has; position, what others think him — and argues that the first decides nearly everything and the last nearly nothing. Health and an even temperament outweigh any fortune; the anxious craving for reputation is the great avoidable misery. The apparent contradiction of a pessimist writing on happiness dissolves into his real counsel: since happiness owes more to what one is than to what one gains, wisdom lies in wanting less and cultivating the inner resources no loss can touch. These pages formed part of Parerga and Paralipomena, the 1851 miscellany that ended his obscurity, and they remain the door through which most readers enter him, the metaphysics left for later. Recognition reached him at sixty-five; he had seven years left.

Key concepts

What falls under what a man is?

The goods of personality — health, temperament, character, and intelligence — everything one is in oneself, apart from all circumstance. Schopenhauer ranks these first among the sources of happiness because they are always present, felt directly, and cannot be stripped away by any turn of fortune.

What does what a man represents cover?

One's standing in the minds of others — subdivided into honour, rank, and fame. Schopenhauer rates this lowest of the three sources of happiness, because it exists only in other people's opinions and touches nothing of what one actually is. The craving for it he calls the great avoidable misery.

What is eudaemonology in this book?

The art of happiness — how to order a life so as to make it as pleasant and successful as possible. Schopenhauer treats it as a practical discipline, held deliberately apart from the higher standpoint of his metaphysics, which judges existence not worth having in the first place.

On what does he base his threefold division?

On Aristotle's sorting of human goods into those of the soul, of the body, and external goods. Schopenhauer recasts them as personality (what one is), property (what one has), and position (what one represents), and argues the first decides happiness almost entirely, the last almost not at all.

Themes of the book

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

What You Are, Not What You Have

Does a good life turn on personality, on possessions, or on the opinion others hold of you — and which of the three can you least afford to chase?

The century's foremost pessimist wrote its most serene guide to happiness. He divides the sources of a good life into three — what a man is, what he has, and what others think him — and argues that the first decides nearly everything and the last nearly nothing. Health and an even temperament outweigh any fortune; the anxious craving for reputation is the great avoidable misery. Since happiness owes more to what one is, wisdom lies in wanting less and cultivating the inner resources no loss can touch.

human nature
character
intellect
wisdom
prudence
vanity
envy
honor
happiness
fame

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 195
distinct concepts: 356
by passages held, corpus-wide: #136

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: aging with intellect.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 9 pairings. 28 shared passages in all. 67 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
aging	intellect	4
aging	time	4
envy	human nature	4
ethics	human nature	4
aging	perception	3
envy	ethics	3
human nature	justice	2
intellect	perception	2
perception	time	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
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) you are here 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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