Zoller, Gunter. Review of David E. Cartwright, SCHOPENHAUER: A BIOGRAPHY. NDPR (May 2011).

Cartwright, David E.  Schopenhauer: a Biography.  Cambridge: CUP, 2010.

The most recent entry on the philosophical biography list is David Cartwright's tome on Arthur Schopenhauer. In addition to having published numerous articles on the philosophy of Schopenhauer, especially on his ethics, and having served as president of the North American Division of the Schopenhauer Society, Cartwright is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Schopenhauer's Philosophy (2004), which already exhibits a biographical approach to Schopenhauer's thought. Now Schopenhauer's life is the stuff of biography. Unlike his philosophical contemporaries and predecessors, he did not spend an entire life devoted to academic teaching and career building. He came to advanced schooling, university studies and academic philosophy somewhat late, after a detour through an apprenticeship as a merchant. But he also had the advantage of social privilege and financial independence over his colleagues and competitors, who often were not able to travel much and did not have Schopenhauer's first-hand experience of the larger world outside of libraries and lecture halls.

To be sure, the narrative potential of his life has not escaped earlier writers on Schopenhauer. In fact, there are several fairly recent and quite successful biographies or biographical accounts of Schopenhauer available, some of them even written in English or published in English translation. To begin with, there is Arthur Hübscher's extensive biographical sketch of Schopenhauer's life (Arthur Schopenhauer. Ein Lebendsbild) that opens the first volume of the critical edition of Schopenhauer's works edited by Hübscher (first edition 1937). More recently, the German philosopher-turned-philosophical-biographer, Rüdiger Safranski, issued a very well-received, almost novelistic rendition of Schopenhauer's life (Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy; German edition 1987, English translation 1991). Moreover, Bryan Magee's volume, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, which contains a close account of Schopenhauer's philosophical thought and its influence, opens with a succinct chapter on "Schopenhauer's Life as Background to his Work" (1983, revised edition 1997).

What Cartwright's biography adds to the existing body of biographical work on Schopenhauer is breadth and detail. . . .

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Troxell, Mary. "Arthur Schopenhauer." INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY May 9, 2011.

Arthur Schopenhauer has been dubbed the artist’s philosopher on account of the inspiration his aesthetics has provided to artists of all stripes. He is also known as the philosopher of pessimism, as he articulated a worldview that challenges the value of existence. His elegant and muscular prose earn him a reputation as one the greatest German stylists. Although he never achieved the fame of such post-Kantian philosophers as Johann Gottlieb Fichte and G. W. F. Hegel in his lifetime, his thought informed the work of such luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein and, most famously, Friedrich Nietzsche. He is also known as the first German philosopher to incorporate Eastern thought into his writings.

Schopenhauer’s thought is iconoclastic for a number of reasons. Although he considered himself Kant's only true philosophical heir, he argued that the world was essentially irrational. Writing in the era of German Romanticism, he developed an aesthetics that was classicist in its emphasis on the eternal. When German philosophers were entrenched in the universities and immersed in the theological concerns of the time, Schopenhauer was an atheist who stayed outside the academic profession.

Schopenhauer’s lack of recognition during most of his lifetime may have been due to the iconoclasm of his thought, but it was probably also partly due to his irascible and stubborn temperament. The diatribes against Hegel and Fichte peppered throughout his works provide evidence of his state of mind. Regardless of the reason Schopenhauer’s philosophy was overlooked for so long, he fully deserves the prestige he enjoyed altogether too late in his life. . . .

Visit: http://www.iep.utm.edu/schopenh/.

"Schopenhauer: What is Moving the World," University of Frankfurt, September 22-24, 2010.

Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy is received all over the world and also beyond the limits of philosophical inquiry. With its incorporation of elements of Buddhist and Hindu thought it proves to be open-minded in respect to foreign culture and mentality. On the other hand it shows great respect for the results of sciences and for the relevance of Religion for morality. With aspects of interculturality, interdisciplinarity and modernity of Schopenhauer’s philosophy the program of the congress is divided in ten sessions: ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, science, hermeneutics, psychology, Asiatic philosophies, religion, mysticism, and reception. In addition there will be a workshop on editions and translations of the works of Schopenhauer. Congress languages are German, English and French.

For more information contact the Schopenhauer-Gesellschaft e.V. (http://www.schopenhauer.de/) or the Schopenhauer Research Center (http://www.schopenhauer.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/).

IN OUR TIME with Melvyn Bragg. BBC Radio 4 October 29, 2009.

Melvyn Bragg is joined by A.C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, and Christopher Janaway to discuss the dark, pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, which set the tone for much twentieth century thought. Download the podcast here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/iot/rss.xml.

Reginster, Bernard. Review of Barbara Hannan's THE RIDDLE OF THE WORD. NDPR (August 2009).

Hannan, Barbara. The Riddle of the World: a Reconsideration of Schopenhauer's Philosophy. Oxford: OUP, 2009. Hannan describes her book as "an introduction to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, written in a personal style" (p. ix). The "personal" character of this introduction might suggest a fresh new perspective on Schopenhauer's philosophy or a more or less idiosyncratic take on it; Hannan offers a little of both. A first, introductory chapter is intended to offer an overview of Schopenhauer's philosophy but focuses mostly on his metaphysics, which is taken up in greater detail in the second chapter. Hannan emphasizes three main themes: the character of Schopenhauer's idealism, his claim that reality is in itself will (a view she describes as "panpsychism"), and his views on causality and freedom. Here, and throughout the book, Hannan candidly acknowledges many of the well-known difficulties that afflict Schopenhauer's metaphysics: for instance, his claim that we can know the world as it is in itself, which is difficult to square with his brand of transcendental idealism; his claim that the world is in itself "will", which appears to rest on a dubious extrapolation from a certain form of self-knowledge; the puzzling ontological status of the Ideas, which are neither phenomena, nor noumena; and his claim that it is possible to achieve "will-less" states of being, which appears to contradict flatly his view that all being is, in itself and essentially, will. Hannan suggests that at least some of these difficulties could be explained by the fact that Schopenhauer is a "transitional thinker". For instance, although he officially continues to endorse transcendental idealism, his deep philosophical instincts would pull him away from it in the direction of some sort of realism. This is apparent, for example, in his methodological claim that the phenomenal world manifests, rather than conceals or distorts, the world as it is in itself (pp. 16, 44-51). Hannan also points out that Schopenhauer's panpsychism begins to look less objectionably anthropomorphic if it is taken to anticipate more recent ideas, such as the understanding of mindedness simply in terms of "intrinsic causal powers" and "reactivity" to stimuli, or the view that the mental/physical dichotomy is not ontologically deep, but represents merely alternative descriptions of the same reality. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16925.

Guay, Robert. Review of Robert Wicks' SCHOPENHAUER. NDPR (January 2009).

Wicks, Robert. Schopenhauer. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. After a brief but informative biographical chapter, Wicks has a historical narrative meant to explain how Schopenhauer arrived at the metaphysical views that underlie his ethics. The story begins with Locke, and proceeds roughly as follows: Locke's theory of perception helps to explain "how we can become aware of an objective, public world that . . . contains only qualities associated with space and solidity" (17), but generates a 'veil of ideas' skepticism. This is further aggravated by Humean skepticism about causality, which Wicks renders as the claim that events "are in themselves loose and separate" (23). All this jeopardizes the legitimacy of scientific thinking until Kant's theory of perception recharacterizes causal connections as expressing "logical projections that reflect our rational nature" (25). This succeeds in vindicating scientific inquiry, but the resulting idealism makes knowledge of reality as it is in itself impossible. Schopenhauer then borrows this basic outlook, but transforms it "to allow for knowledge of the thing-in-itself" (28). This transformation involves distinguishing the "world as representation, which is the very product of the PSR [Principle of Sufficient Reason]" (60), from the world as Will, a "blind, irrational, meaningless, and aimless striving" (59) that is the essential reality underlying the illusory world of experience. And once one understands that Will is the metaphysical core of the world, then one arrives, through empathy and asceticism, at an appropriately detached attitude toward worldly desires. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=14945.