Arthur Schopenhauer — "The fundamental error of all systems of morality is that they are not based on o…"
The fundamental error of all systems of morality is that they are not based on observation.
The fundamental error of all systems of morality is that they are not based on observation.
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"Human life, when viewed in its entirety, is a tragedy; but in its details it has the character of a comedy."
"The world is a stage on which a tragedy is performed, and the actors are all madmen."
"They are the sex which pays the debt of life, not by what it does, but by what it suffers. The pains of child-bearing, the care of the child, the constant dependence upon the man, and the short durati…"
"If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him."
"The greatest wisdom is to know oneself."
German philosopher of pessimism whose The World as Will and Representation (1819) defined the suffering-and-renunciation tradition. Closely associated with Immanuel Kant (the system Schopenhauer built on and revised). For an intellectual contrast, see G.W.F. Hegel, German Idealist of the rational unfolding of Spirit — Schopenhauer scheduled his Berlin lectures opposite Hegel's and spent decades attacking Hegel's optimistic system as deliberately mystifying nonsense — the foundational rivalry of 19th-century German philosophy.
The standard scholarly entry points to Arthur Schopenhauer's work: Bryan Magee (Oxford, populariser-philosopher) — The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1983); Christopher Janaway (Southampton, Schopenhauer specialist) — Self and World in Schopenhauer's Philosophy (1989); David E. Cartwright (Wisconsin–Whitewater) — Schopenhauer: A Biography (2010). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Arthur Schopenhauer.
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