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.

33

Suffering, Rage, Perseverance

_________________________

To the learned

men and

philosophers of

Europe: for

you, a windbag

like Fichte is

the equal of

Kant, the

greatest

thinker of all

time, and a

worthless

barefaced

charlatan like

Hegel is

considered to

be a profound

thinker. I have

therefore not

written for

you.

_________________________

If Arthur Schopenhauer were alive today, would he be a candidate

for psychotherapy? Absolutely! He was highly symptomatic. In

«About Me» he laments that nature endowed him with an anxious

disposition and a «suspiciousness, sensitiveness, vehemence, and

pride in a measure that is hardly compatible with the equanimity of

a philosopher.»

In graphic language he describes his symptoms.

Inherited from my father is the anxiety which I myself curse

and combat with all the force of my will.... As a young man I

was tormented by imaginary illnesses.... When I was studying

in Berlin I thought I was a consumptive.... I was haunted by

the fear of being pressed into military service.... From Naples I

was driven by the fear of smallpox and from Berlin by the fear

of cholera.... In Verona I was seized by the idea I had taken

poisoned snuff...in Manheim I was overcome by an

indescribable feeling of fear without any external cause.... For

years I was haunted by the fear of criminal proceedings.... If

there was a noise at night I jumped out of bed and seized sword

and pistols that I always had ready loaded.... I always have an

anxious concern that causes me to look for dangers where none

exist: it magnifies the tiniest vexation and makes association

with people most difficult for me.

Hoping to quell his suspiciousness and chronic fear, he

employed a host of precautions and rituals: he hid gold coins and

valuable interest–bearing coupons in old letters and other secret

places for emergency use, he filed personal notes under false

headings to confuse snoopers, he was fastidiously tidy, he

requested that he always be served by the same bank clerk, he

allowed no one to touch his statue of the Buddha.

His sexual drive was too strong for comfort, and, even as a

young man, he deplored being controlled by his animal passions.

At the age of thirty–six a mysterious course of illness confined him

to his room for an entire year. A physician and medical historian

suggested in 1906 that his illness had been syphilis, basing the

diagnosis only upon the nature of the medication prescribed,

coupled with Schopenhauer`s history of unusually great sexual

activity.

Arthur longed to be released from the grip of sexuality. He

savored his moments of serenity when he was able to observe the

world with calm in spite of the lust tormenting his corporeal self.

He compared sexual passion to the daylight which obscures the

stars. As he aged he welcomed the decline of sexual passion and

the accompanying tranquillity.

Since his deepest passion was his work, his strongest and

most persistent fear was that he should lose the financial means

enabling him to live the life of the intellect. Even into old age he

blessed the memory of his father, who had made such a life

possible, and he spent much time and energy guarding his money

and pondering his investments. Accordingly, he was alarmed by

any unrest threatening his investments and became

ultraconservative in his politics. The 1848 rebellion, which swept

over Germany as well as the rest of Europe, terrified him. When

soldiers entered his building to gain a vantage point from which to

fire on the rebellious populace in the street, he offered them his

opera glasses to increase the accuracy of their rifle fire. In his will,

twelve years later, he left almost his entire estate to a fund

established for the welfare of Prussian soldiers disabled fighting

that rebellion.

His anxiety–driven letters about business matters were often

laced with anger and threats. When the banker who handled the

Schopenhauer family money suffered a disastrous financial setback

and, to escape bankruptcy, offered all his investors only a small

fraction of their investment, Schopenhauer threatened him with

such draconian legal consequences that the banker returned to him

70 percent of his money while paying other investors (including

Schopenhauer`s mother and sister) an even smaller portion than

originally proposed. His abusive letters to his publisher eventually

resulted in a permanent rupture of their relationship. The publisher

wrote: «I shall not accept any letters from you which in their divine

rudeness and rusticity suggest a coachman rather than a

philosopher.... I only hope that my fears that by printing your

work I am printing only waste paper will not come true.»

Schopenhauer`s rage was legendary: rage at financiers who

handled his investments, at publishers who could not sell his

books, at the dolts who attempted to engage him in conversations,

at the bipeds who regarded themselves his equal, at those who

coughed at concerts, and at the press for ignoring him. But the real

rage, the white–hot rage whose vehemence still astounds us and

made Schopenhauer a pariah in his intellectual community was his

rage toward contemporary thinkers, particularly the two leading

lights of nineteenth–century philosophy: Fichte and Hegel.

In a book published twenty years after Hegel succumbed to

cholera during the Berlin epidemic, he referred to Hegel as «a

commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive, and ignorant charlatan,

who with unparalleled effrontery, compiled a system of crazy

nonsense that was trumpeted abroad as immortal wisdom by his

mercenary followers.»

Such intemperate outbursts about other philosophers cost

him heavily. In 1837 he was awarded first prize for an essay on the

freedom of the will in a competition sponsored by the Royal

Norwegian Society for Learning. Schopenhauer showed a childlike

delight in the prize (it was his very first honor) and greatly vexed

the Norwegian consul in Frankfurt by impatiently clamoring for

his medal. However, the very next year, his essay on the basis of

morality submitted to a competition sponsored by the Royal

Danish Society for Learning met a different fate. Though the

argument of his essay was excellent and though it was the only

essay submitted, the judges refused to award him the prize because

of his intemperate remarks about Hegel. The judges commented,

«We cannot pass over in silence the fact that several outstanding

philosophers of the modern age are referred to in so improper a

manner as to cause serious and just offense.»

Over the years many have agreed entirely with

Schopenhauer`s opinion that Hegel`s prose is unnecessarily

obfuscating. In fact, he is so difficult to read that an old joke

circulating around philosophy departments is that the most vexing

and awesome philosophical question is not «does life have

meaning?» or «what is consciousness?» but «who will teach Hegel

this year?» Still, the level, the vehemence of Schopenhauer`s rage

set him apart from all other critics.

The more his work was neglected, the shriller he became,

which, in turn, caused further neglect and, for many, made him an

object of mockery. Yet, despite his anxiety and loneliness,

Schopenhauer survived and continued to exhibit all the outward

signs of personal self–sufficiency. And he persevered in his work,

remaining a productive scholar until the end of his life. He never

lost faith in himself. He compared himself to a young oak tree who

looked as ordinary and unimportant as other plants. «But let him

alone: he will not die. Time will come and bring those who know

how to value him.» He predicted his genius would ultimately have

a great influence upon future generations of thinkers. And he was

right; all that he predicted has come to pass.