English
When we think in Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) the first that we do nearly inevitably is refer to his incomparable style. A delicious and seductive way to write and present his ideas, so interested in putting in contact Western philosophy with some important aspects of ancient wisdom and Oriental thoughts, which has subjugated from its emergence to a large part of the most select and important writers of the last two centuries, unable to resist the influx of its siren call. From Nietzsche – who abandoned philology for philosophy on its hypnotic rise – to Borges via Marcel Proust, the most important and delicate craftsmen of the literary creation of the male pantheon have had him as a light which made hours milder and more enjoyable shedding unused light into life´s long and gloomy night.
It´s not strange, given his extremely offensive misogyny – which may have to be understood under his conception of art of insulting as the last resource when it becomes apparent that the opponent is superior and it´s not possible to be right or to defeat him with reasoning – that women, generally, have maintained their enthusiasm for him on a secret and critical level.
However, Schopenhauer himself was in charge of reminding us in more than one occasion that having something to say wasn´t only the first rule of the good style but the only one necessary, despite that all German writer, particularly philosophers, distinguished themselves for transgressing it from the time of Fichte, cultivating what he ingeniously named the Homeopathic Method: “a minimal and weakened portion of thought in fifty pages of waffling, and then, with unlimited confidence in the proverbial patience of the reader, one proceeds unperturbed, the narration of tattle page after page. The mind, condemned to reading this… languishes and waits for the appearance of any idea, like when the traveller of the Arabic desert misses water… until he finally dies of thirst”.
This same sentence could be used as an illustration of his firm belief, only in a contradictory appearance with the above, of which who writes in a careless way, doesn´t attribute too much value to his thoughts and that the mediocre writers don´t dare to write how they think “because they guess that if the did so, the subject in question could have a simple outlook”.
The style has to be therefore a synonym of clear depths that make one shudder. In Schopenhauer, like in all true artists, there´s never a conflict between shape and depth. Not surprisingly, one of the pillars of his philosophy was aesthetics. Schopenhauer had many things to say and he said them because he found the appropriate language to do so, while all Hegelianism couldn´t but present itself “with the most repulsive garb of gibberish” because it lacked common sense, clarity and intelligence.
Such insolent, solar and well founded confidence he had in the virtues of his style, inseparable as we´ve seen from him brilliant mind, that being a lecturer in the University of Berlin http://www.hu-berlin.de/ he made coincide the timetable of his classes with those of the almighty Hegel, obtaining one of the most beautiful attendance fracases of all time.
Paul Oilzum
You might want to visit the place of such glorious disaster, one of the most prestigious European universities, when you rent apartments in Berlin
Translated by: aleixgwilliam