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Yesterday, at the end of the speaking club, I announced that our next topic is gonna be the philosophy of Schopenhauer. Nobody objected. So this week, I’m gonna try to reread The World as Will and Representation.
Now, I’d like to recall the time when I came across the philosophy of Schopenhauer in the summer of 2012. I was interested in German philosophy. I had already read eight volumes of Hegel’s collected works, a few volumes of Marx, nine volumes of Goethe, a few volumes of Fichte and a few volumes of Feuerbach. In addition to German philosophers, I read Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Descartes, Spinoza and Montesquieu. All this was in less than a year. I encountered Hegel in September of 2011, and he was my role model until I met Schopenhauer. I remember watching a lecture on psychology by Petukhoff from MSU (Moscow State University), where he mentioned Kant but ignored Hegel. It made me angry; I thought the professor was an idiot. “How can he talk about Kant and say nothing about the ten-times-greater-Hegel, who exposed Kantian philosophy as a mere pedantic sophistry? Hasn’t he heard that Hegel completed the historical construction of philosophy as a science, declared himself its supreme authority and attained the absolute?” So I was quite disappointed. Whenever people talked about philosophy without referring to Hegel, I looked down on them with unmasked contempt. That was my attitude for almost a year. Then, one day, I went to the library, borrowed five books by other German philosophers (Fichte, Feuerbach and Schopenhauer) and read them in two weeks. In the following video, I’m gonna tell you what happened afterwards.
Bing's version:
The World as Will and Representation
Is what I shall again peruse with care.
I told the club that this would be our session,
And none did seem to have a grudge to bear.
Before this book did cross my path one day,
I thought that Hegel was the only light.
His volumes I consumed with much delight,
And scorned all others who did not his way.
But then I found some other German scribes,
And read their works with curiosity.
I felt a change within my heart and eyes,
And questioned my old idolatry.
What followed then I shall in time relate,
But now I must to Schopenhauer wait.
One more Bing's version:
I’m going to read Schopenhauer once more,
His book of Will and what it represents.
I told the club that this is what’s in store,
And none did dare to raise their arguments.
Before I met this pessimistic chap,
I was a Hegel fanboy through and through.
His books I read as if they were a map,
And snubbed all others who had different views.
But then one day I stumbled on some tomes
By other Germans who had things to say.
I read them all and felt a change in bones,
And wondered if I had been led astray.
What happened next I’ll tell you by and by,
But now I must to Schopenhauer fly.
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