The Schopenhauer Cure

A Novel

Irvin D. Yalom

To my community of older buddies who grace me with their friendship, share life`s

inexorable diminishments and losses, and continue to sustain me with their wisdom and

dedication to the life of the mind: Robert Berger, Murray Bilmes, Martel Bryant, Dagfinn

Føllesdahl, Joseph Frank, Van Harvey, Julius Kaplan, Herbert Kotz, Morton Lieberman,

Walter Sokel, Saul Spiro, and Larry Zaroff.

22

Women,

Passion,

Sex

_________________________

Sexdoes not hesitate to

intrude with its trash,

and to interfere with the

negotiations of statesmen

and the investigations of

the learned. Every day it

destroys the most

valuable relationships.

Indeed it robs of all

conscience those who were

previously honorable and

upright.

_________________________

After his mother, the next most pervasive female presence in Arthur`s life was a

querulous seamstress named Caroline Marquet. Few biographical accounts of

Schopenhauer fail to spotlight their 1823 midday encounter, which took place on

a dimly lit Berlin stairway outside Arthur`s flat when he was thirty–five and

Caroline forty–five.

On that day Caroline Marquet, living in the adjoining flat, entertained three

friends. Irritated by the noisy chattering, Arthur flung open his door, accused the

four women of violating his privacy since the anteroom where they stood talking

was technically a part of his flat, and sternly ordered them to leave. When

Caroline refused, Arthur physically forced her, kicking and screaming, from the

anteroom and down the stairs. When she impertinently climbed back up the stairs

in defiance, he again removed her, this time more forcefully.

Caroline sued him, claiming that she was pushed down the stairs and

suffered grievous injury resulting in trembling and partial paralysis. Arthur was

highly threatened by the lawsuit: he knew that he was unlikely ever to earn money

from his scholarly pursuits and had always fiercely guarded the capital inherited

from his father. When his money was imperiled he became, in the words of his

publisher, «a chained dog.»

Certain that Caroline Marquet was an opportunistic malingerer, he fought

her lawsuit with all his might, employing every possible legal appeal. The bitter

court proceedings continued for the next six years before the court ruled against

him and ordered him to pay Caroline Marquet sixty talers a year for as long as her

injury persisted. (In that era a house servant or cook would have been paid twenty

talers annually plus food and board.) Arthur`s prediction that she was shrewd

enough to tremble as long as the money rolled in proved accurate; he continued to

pay for her support until she died twenty–six years later. When he was sent a copy

of her death certificate he scrawled across it: «Obit anus, abit onus» (the old

woman dies, the burden is lifted).

And other women in Arthur`s life? Arthur never married but was far from

chaste: for the first half of his life he was highly sexually active, perhaps even

sexually driven. When Anthime, his childhood friend from Le Havre, visited

Hamburg during Arthur`s apprenticeship, the two young men spent their evenings

searching for amorous adventures, always with women from lower social strata—

maids, actresses, chorus girls. If they were unsuccessful in their search, they

ended their evening by consoling themselves in the arms of an «industrious

whore.»

Arthur, lacking in tact, charm, and joie de vivre, was an inept seducer and

needed much advice from Anthime. His many rejections ultimately caused him to

link sexual desire with humiliation. He hated being dominated by the sexual drive

and in subsequent years had much to say about the degradation of sinking to

animalistic life. It was not that Arthur didn`t want women; he was clear about

that: «I was very fond of them—if only they would have had me.»

The saddest of love stories in the Schopenhauer chronicles took place when

he was forty–three and attempted to court Flora Weiss, a beautiful seventeen–year–old girl. One evening at a boating party he approached Flora with a bunch of

grapes and informed her of his attraction to her and his intention of speaking to

her parents about marriage. Later, Flora`s father was taken aback by

Schopenhauer`s proposal and responded, «But she is a mere child.» Ultimately, he

agreed to leave the decision to Flora. The business came to an end when Flora

made it clear to all concerned that she vehemently disliked Schopenhauer.

Decades later, Flora Weiss`s niece questioned her aunt about that encounter

with the famous philosopher and, in her diary, quoted her aunt as saying, «Oh,

leave me in peace about this old Schopenhauer.» When pressed for more

information, Flora Weiss described Arthur`s gift of the grapes and said, «But I

didn`t want them, you see. I felt revolted because old Schopenhauer had touched

them. And so I let them slide, quite gently, into the water behind me.»

There is no evidence that Arthur ever had a love affair with a woman whom

he respected. His sister, Adele, after receiving a letter in which Arthur reported

«two love affairs without love,” responded, in one of their few interchanges about

his personal life, «May you not totally lose the ability to esteem a woman while

dealing with the common and base ones of our sex and may Heaven one day lead

you to a woman to whom you can feel something deeper than these infatuations.»

At thirty–three Arthur entered into an intermittent ten–year liaison with a

young Berlin chorus girl named Caroline Richter–Medon, who often carried on

affairs with several men simultaneously. Arthur had no objections to that

arrangement and said, «For a woman, limitation to one man during the short time

of her flowering is an unnatural state. She is expected to save for one what he

cannot use and what many others desire from her.» He was opposed to monogamy

for men as well: «Man at one time has too much and in the long run too little....

half their lives men are whoremongers, half cuckolds.»

When Arthur moved from Berlin to Frankfurt, he offered to take Caroline

with him but not her illegitimate son, whom he insisted was not his. Caroline

refused to abandon her child, and after a short correspondence their relationship

ended for good. Even so, Arthur, almost thirty years later, at the age of seventy–one, added a codicil to his will leaving Caroline Richter–Medon five thousand

talers.

Though he often scorned women and the entire institution of matrimony,

Arthur vacillated about marriage. He cautioned himself by reflecting, «All great

poets were unhappily married and all great philosophers stayed unmarried:

Democritus, Descartes, Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. The only exception

was Socrates—and he had to pay for it, for his wife was the shrewish

Xanthippe.... most men are tempted by the outward appearance of women, that

hides their vices. They marry young and pay a high price when they get older for

their wives become hysterical and stubborn.»

As he aged he gradually relinquished the hope of marriage and gave up the

idea completely at the age of forty. To marry at a late age, he said, was

comparable to a man traveling three–fourths of the journey by foot and then

deciding to buy the costly ticket for the whole journey.

All of life`s most fundamental issues come under Schopenhauer`s bold

philosophical scrutiny, and sexual passion, a topic avoided by his philosophic

predecessors, was no exception.

He launched this discussion with an extraordinary statement about the

power and omnipresence of the sexual drive.

Next to the love of life it [sex] shows itself here as the strongest and most

active of all motives, and incessantly lays claim to half the powers and

thoughts of the younger portion of mankind. It is the ultimate goal of almost

all human effort. It has an unfavorable influence on the most important affairs,

interrupts every hour the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes

for a while the greatest human minds.... Sex is really the invisible point of all

action and conduct, and peeps up everywhere in spite of all the veils thrown

over it. It is the cause of war and the aim and object of peace,...the

inexhaustible source of wit, the key to all allusions, and the meaning of all

mysterious hints, of all unspoken offers and all stolen glances; it is the

meditation of the young and often the old as well, the hourly thought of the

unchaste and, even against their will, the constantly recurring imagination of

the chaste.

The ultimate goal of almost all human effort? The invisible point of all

action and conduct? The cause of war and the aim and object of peace? Why so

overstated? How much does he draw from his own personal sexual

preoccupation? Or is his hyperbole simply a device to rivet the reader`s attention

on what is to follow?

If we consider all this, we are induced to exclaim: why all the noise and fuss?

Why all the urgency, uproar, anguish and exertion? It is merely a question of

every Jack finding his Jill. Why should such a trifle play such an important

role, and constantly introduce disturbance and confusion in the life of man?

Arthur`s answer to his question anticipates by 150 years much of what is to

follow in the fields of evolutionary psychology and psychoanalysis. He states that

what is really guiding us is notour need butthe need of our species. «The true end

of the whole love story, though the parties concerned are unaware of it, is that a

particular child may be begotten,” he continues. «Therefore what here guides man

is really an instinct directed to what is best in the species, whereas man himself

imagines he is seeking merely a heightening of his own pleasure.»

He discusses in great detail the principles governing the choice of sexual

partner («everyone loves what they lack») but repeatedly emphasizes that the

choice is actually being made by the genius of the species. «The man is taken

possession of by the spirit of the species, is now ruled by it, and no longer belongs

to himself...for ultimately he seeks not his interests but that of a third person who

has yet to come into existence.»

Repeatedly, he emphasizes that the force of sex is irresistible. «For he is

under the influence of an impulse akin to the instinct of insects, which compels

him to pursue his purposes unconditionally, in spite of all the arguments of his

faculty of reason.... He cannot give it up.» And reason has little to do with it.

Often the individual desires someone whom reason tells him to avoid, but the

voice of reason is impotent against the force of sexual passion. He cites the Latin

dramatist Terence: «What is not endowed with reason cannot possibly be ruled

with reason.»

It has often been noted that three major revolutions in thought have

threatened the idea of human centrality. First, Copernicus demonstrated that Earth

was not the center about which all celestial bodies revolved. Next, Darwin

showed us that we were not central in the chain of life but, like all other creatures,

had evolved from other life–forms. Third, Freud demonstrated that we are not

masters in our own house—that much of our behavior is governed by forces

outside of our consciousness. There is no doubt that Freud`s unacknowledged co–revolutionary was Arthur Schopenhauer, who, long before Freud`s birth, had

posited that we are governed by deep biological forces and then delude ourselves

into thinking that we consciously choose our activities.