The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers

Schopenhauer was the prophet of a pessimistic era. By 1818, when his first book was published, the French Revolution had exposed the hollowness of the old European order, and yet France itself was once again under Bourbon rule following Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815. Neither the past nor the future seemed to offer any satisfactory answers. The Enlightenment attack had undermined faith in religion, but in a time of despair, no form of consolation had taken its place. It was to prove a fertile environment for philosophers of gloom and even nihilism.

Schopenhauer’s life was as sad as his philosophy, until his final years when he achieved a degree of popularity and recognition among the fellow titans of German culture. Schopenhauer’s text is refreshingly clear, especially compared to his fellow German Kant. However, its accessibility revealed the full scope of its pessimism to readers, especially his fellow philosophers who saw in his teachings a denial of their field’s very usefulness.

Schopenhauer accepted Kant’s postulate that “the external world is known to us only through our sensations and ideas” (335), except he believed that the truth lies within human nature rather than in Kant’s ethereal logic.