![The World As Will And Idea: 3 vols in 1 [unabridged]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71o2KpB5dnL._AC_UL165_SR165,165_.jpg)
This is a great and rare book by a great and rare man. It’s a shame Schopenhauer died when he did, at the age of 72, in 1860, and just a year after an equally great and rare man, Charles Darwin, published another great and rare book, his “On the Origin of Species”. Schopenhauer undoubtedly would have revised some or maybe much of what he had written had he been familiar with Darwin’s book on evolution. Both men have been much praised and ridiculed over the years as it usually is when truth is praised above all else no matter how disturbing or disconcerting that truth might be. I praise Schopenhauer’s and Darwin’s honest and gutsy efforts to face the truth about life. Schopenhauer did so by way of philosophy and Darwin by way of science. Darwin’s contribution to human knowledge must be either accepted or rejected and it is generally accepted by lovers of science and rejected by fundamentalist Christians, and no matter how much evidence there is to support it.
Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy was rejected by just as great a philosopher and genius, Friedrich Nietzsche, who was just 16 when Schopenhauer died. I don’t know just when Nietzsche read Schopenhauer but I suspect he was much impressed by the essential truth Schopenhauer said about life. And there’s much about life to be pessimistic about. I imagine Nietzsche agreed with much of Schopenhauer’s views but could not quite accept it all in toto.
The pronounced pessimist will always say there’s a cloud behind every silver lining while the “incurable” optimist, who cannot wholly and truthfully disagree with the pessimist, will add something just as truthful and profound and this is that behind that “cloud” there’s always another silver lining. So since it makes just as much sense when all is said and done to be an optimist as it does to be a pessimist, why not take the happier road and be an optimist? Even Schopenhauer says of happiness on page 200 of his “The World as Will and Idea”, “If the intervals between desire and its gratification are neither too short nor too long, the suffering caused by each are reduced to a minimum, and this makes for the happiest life.” This from Schopenhauer!
I sometimes suspect even Schopenhauer in his heart of hearts was not the total pessimist so many people make him out to be, and not just because he spoke of a “happiest life”. After all he loved music and loved to play the flute and loved all the arts. In his own special way he found his own special happiness in what he called thIs, “the worst of all possible worlds”.
Schopenhauer was a lover of the truth no matter how unpleasant that truth might seem to be, as was Darwin and Nietzsche as well. This is why I have such great respect and even love for these three great men and others like them, and even great women also, who seek the truth or something at least approaching the truth, above all else.
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Top reviews from other countries
R D RUDD
When you discover the obvious, but did not initially realise that the Apex is not supporting the columns, but vice versa.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2017ben betney
One of the greatest books person can own and read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2019
Dr. H. A. Jones
Schopenhauer's greatest work
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 10, 2010