Representing Arthur Schopenhauer

hello I'm grant partly from philosophy now magazine and you're listening to the philosophy now radio show on resonance and on the podcast too if you are today we'll be talking about after shopping her who lived from 8 1788 to 1860 in Germany he's as much known for his flamboyant haircut and curmudgeonly personality as his philosophy of will and representation to discuss the man and his intellectual legacy I have with me Christian away from the University of Southampton and Daniel came from sinuhe's College Oxford so just to start with who was shopping our and why is important in history of philosophy he wants to take that one ok ok Chris ok yes Christian Way shopping how I think is important because he gives a very definite view of the human condition maybe we should start with who he was first well who he was he was born in Danzig Richard that time was in Germany and he was the son of a rather wealthy businessman he was destined for a life in business and sort of European commerce he had a education where he travelled around Europe and saw lots of great artworks and great cities and was set out for this cosmopolitan life as a businessman gave it all up because he fell in love with philosophy basically he's very dangerous and he ended up producing a completely original system of thought which as you said in the introduction is marked by a kind of pessimism about the human condition which i think is husband was very influential later on in the 19th century mmm-hmm he worked in the first half of the 19th century as you said died in 1816 though he was virtually unknown during most of his life and it's not until the latter part of the 19th century that people started taking an interest in his views and he was very influential on a lot of artists on bargainer on other composers but also a lot of literary writers and other artists found his ideas very appealing ok thank you very much if I could just add to show something to that about Schopenhauer's this is Daniel early life I think a very important event in his adolescence was the suicide of his father I think I mean is this you will be implausible to think that this event in Schopenhauer's life wasn't her a formative influence on him and the psychological NTC it's like a nice item or something he was 17 I had a time when his father died his father suffered from recurrent depressive episodes which Schopenhauer himself seems to have inherited heritage but on the plus side his father's death in abled him to become a private independently funded scholar because he inherited a fortune yeah his father okay so there's the yellow I think that's a good condition for philosophy isn't it to have independent means okay what sort of sort of person was he do you get the impression from his writing sort of sort of man he was yes all right he was it didn't suffer fools gladly no thought of himself as a rather embattled lonely figure who the intellectual world that he had ignored and he was he was probably quite hard to get on with yeah notes about him that suggests this yeah he pushed his landlady down the stairs once yeah apparently that's not quite accurate on it there was a bit of it he he couldn't stand anybody making any noise in his building and he complained and she refused to to go and there was something happened Oh disappoint his latest biographer says no no no it's completely untrue that he pushed her down saying anyway she claimed compensation and you had to pay for the rest of his life to support this woman so yes he he got in a few scraps with people okay why is he important to you guys waiting important to you Daniel what you're particularly interested in him well Schopenhauer engages with the great questions of mankind like what like why is there suffering is happiness possible that what is the meaning or purpose of human existence either these are the great questions of mankind and their questions are still disputed ok but keep this in and you'll find out the answers Leon yeah ok what what about you Chris why is he important to you I think basically the same I think that he poses these questions almost in a kind of religious way life is full of suffering it ends there's a lot of pain in life what is the point or purpose of this but he's just at that time in history when religion seems to be losing its hold he's an atheist and there's no place for a God in his job but he says ahead of the curve in his atheism he is I think I mean he doesn't ever argue that there isn't a god he just starts from a viewpoint in which there is just this brute fact of reality and some people have said it has been said he's a kind of precursor of existentialism we just exist as a matter of fact but there's no purpose to our existence I think that's where he starts from yeah so the the kinds of answers that he's going to give to those questions that Daniel mentioned are actually pretty downbeat and pretty tough yeah there is no point to human life it simply contains suffering to which there's no further point and if we if we really understood what what life was like we wouldn't want it I think it would be better not to exist he goes as far as saying that okay I mean could you mean before we get into the sort of details of what he of his ideas can can you give me a brief overview of his basic thing his basic theories about the world did have a go at that first day well the starting point Schopenhauer's philosophy is the distinction which he inherits from camp between a phenomenal world and the númenor which means what the phenomenal world is the world of everyday experience the rival of physical objects situated in space and time and subsisting in relations of causality so physical objects exist within a causal Network right I'm sure this physical object can interact causally with other physical objects and so on this is the this is the phenomenal world right in the world of experience every way by ordinary perceptual experiences write the numeral world is the world as it is apart from that experience the world as it is in itself what you mean independent of the way we perceive it now yes what's right yeah I'd say shopping how following Kant thinks that the way in which our ordinary everyday experiences organized in terms of space and time and causality and so on these aren't objective features of reality these are forms of our experience which we impose on the world in the act of perceiving it rather than discover so you're basically saying that if we were an experience II there would be no causes in the world that's that's the Kantian under the Chopin herion view that apart from a perceiving subject there are no spatio-temporal causal relations pairings so this is the metaphysical framework within which Schopenhauer's operating now Kant was strictly agnostic as to the nature of the world as it is apart from perception the nature of the new mental realm we couldn't have any knowledge of it aha this is the famous Kantian prohibition on metaphysics mmm it's a prohibition which can't himself doesn't always abide by because he ends up saying some other substantive things about the nature of the thing in itself for example that the thing in itself can is constituted by a plurality sorry by the thing in each set self you mean the entire world as it is independent yes my world as it is apart from precisely the word thing is quite misleading perhaps by anyway that's a restless boy so Kant thinks that the thing in itself is constituted by a plurality of things in themselves so for every object in the empirical realm and everything we see yes there's a corresponding thing in itself so for the various table the various physical objects in this room there are corresponding luminal objects all right Schopenhauer disagrees violently with Kent about that particular character that particular claim about the numeral world and I think that the numeral world is undifferentiated it's one undivided okay he also to heal so radically disagrees with counts prohibition on metaphysics he thinks that we can actually attain knowledge of the thing in itself yeah and he posits what the thing in itself is and it's and what is this thing in Connecticut because it will which means what the work the same as that's that is difficult and this I think is one of the things you need to think about carefully he keeps telling us that the world is will and obviously in the title of his book the world as will and representation which is his main work his main work the idea is that there's another side to the world the world as as beyond our experience the essence of the world but really really easy in itself that's the idea his will but what does he mean by that okay yeah we look at we're gonna answer that after the break but before we get into it the details of this I just want to ask what apart from can whatever philosophical cultural ideas did he inherit or make use of or he made use of Eastern philosophy Fisher didn't he did he is perhaps that the first well certainly the first major Western philosopher to really know about Indian philosophy and to really find points very deep points of resemblance and agreement with it such as well he he read a version of the Upanishads when he was quite young and it turned out to be a sort of transformative book for him that's like Indian metaphysics yes there's a lot of stuff about the self the illusory nature of the self the self being identical with the world as a whole the illusion of plurality and and so on which he found very metaphysically very interesting later on he discovered quite a lot about Buddhism and found its doctrines about suffering and the change of consciousness that you need in order to redeem life he found that was actually very sympathetic to his own views so I mean that's one thing that he's very important for historically the first Western philosopher really to try and assimilate Indian ideas okay it was also influenced by Plato the idea that there's an eternal timeless reality behind the world of our experience that you find in Plato he also found very sympathetic okay then add anything to that well I mean we've already mentioned the influence of camp yeah shows the other main influence on shaping house thought I mean inherits large parts of countyians love accounts metaphysics he agrees with much of 40 million pound except this stuff about whether you can know what the númenóreans well that's that's the main point of divergence between Canton Chopra now as I said also they disagree as to the as to the whether or not the thing in itself is constituted by a plurality okay of objects but Schopenhauer things that you can't have a plurality of things apart from space and time well that makes sense to me if they're all in the same place and time there'll be one thing wouldn't well cat yes because Kant argued that space and timers as we've said with the forms of our intuition so then objective features of the world so at the level of númenor reality space and time don't apply yeah okay so Schopenhauer fault Kent was being somewhat inconsistent in characterizing the thing in itself in terms of plurality okay I say all right and I just had one thing sure I think what we're shopping how really disagrees with can't it's not so much over the detail but whose whole outlook because they disagree over whether life can actually be any good you mentioned Daniel that this the world as it is beyond our experience of it is will and the world as and by by a deduction the world the rest of the world is what is called representation now well I suppose Chris what does he mean by representation when he says the world is willing representation because he does say at the beginning the world is my representation what does he mean well representation the world as representation is basically the world as we experience it right or as we can possibly experience it and representation just means you know what is present to mind what what the mind perceives without it can think of so what is left over is as it were what the world is beyond what we can directly perceive it to be and this is mean is there's only those two things that make up reality to shop and I was outright yes or anything else you think of them I think he thinks of them as it were two sides of the same coin there's one world it has a an aspect that we perceive and it has an aspect of what it is independently of what we pursue okay what's his justification for thinking the world's this way Daniel drama try that well in the second volume of the waters were wooden representation he speaks of objects as having two modes of existence or as there being two sides of being so any object within the empirical world has what he calls an objective mode of existence that's the way it appears to to us in perception that the objective existence of the water bottle for example is it's being situated in space and time is appearing to write to us as an object of perception it's being it's causally interacting with other objects and so on but it also has what he calls a subjective motive existence that's what it is apart from perception he thinks for that basic distinction applies to all things okay including and most importantly human beings we have an objective and and and a subject well it's it's clear in the case of ourselves that we do have a subjective sight to ourselves that's our experience an objective side which is I guess what what we look into the mirror or what other people see of us yeah but why did he think why did Chopin how think he was justified to expand that sort of dichotomy into the whole of the universe to say you know the whole of the universe has this objective and subjective side because it's not clear to me that you know the whole of the universe for instance resembles a giant brain or you know a set of brains because with brains are the only things that we know has a subjective experience am i certain saying that inanimate objects have a subjective sign to their existence I'm not meaning to impute any consciousness then okay subjectivity in that sense to physical objects but in what sense that their existence isn't there being at the being of an inanimate physical object isn't exhausted by the way in which it appears to a perceiving subject that's for sure yeah where is another scientifically inaccessible side so it's not necessarily subjective in the same way that we're subjective as human beings I don't think it's subjective at all I think it's a totally misleading way okay so yeah he'll tell us what Daniels wrong men well I think that he thinks that we're looking for the essence of things what things really are okay okay and he starts by thinking well can I discover what I really am you know can I discover what I am independently of the way I appear what am I really was my essence something hey argues that my essence is will I am trying striving wanting needing to do things I'm tending to want things all the time I have desires but always have unconscious needs so I'm a I'm a living organism that's striving and trying to do things and he thinks well actually the whole world's like that in itself means by the notion of will but it doesn't as daniel said correctly it doesn't mean that the rest of the world has consciousness no he just means that everything is in some sense trying to be something everything is striving but the word striving or will has to be has have the notion of the mind or consciousness taken out of it sure so everything is tending in a direction so he says we can think of gravity even as things trying to be in a different place from where they are okay you may say that's just metaphorical but I I think the importance of the influence of this idea is to make human beings just a part of nature okay the essence of ourselves is just the same as the rest of reality we're not special we're just things that are trying to go in certain directions just like the rest of reality okay so let me just see if I got this right he's saying that our essence as human beings is to be willing striving things and he's also saying it's the universe's essence to be a willingness trying thing right and so that our willing and striving is just a sort of example of the universe at work if you like to put it like that but my question is what justification does he have for thinking this to be true well this comes back to his claim that space and time are necessary for individuation right you think given that Schopenhauer things take some time don't apply at the level of numeral reality that left the way the world is apart from perception yeah it follows that the world will neumann reality must be undifferentiated it's an individual just one sin is just so what causes the individual is from Lang that if you can identify the numeral essence of any one single thing in age you can extrapolate from that to the rest of nature he thinks that through our own subjective subjective awareness of our bodies awareness knowledge of normal reality is an effect disclosed to us and we can extrapolate from that to the rest of nature okay the metaphysics of it are notoriously difficult to defend to be honest yeah and his metaphysics as such never really had many followers but I think what's important is the vision of the human condition that it leaves us with so our essence is to will right but the wheel isn't necessarily rational it's not necessarily even conscious so our view there and say okay first first then what is will can anybody say what it actually is rather than what it isn't I mean it's a striving but I mean it's a striking of what well it's a substance it's a he refines a little bit by talking about the notion of will to life so we are naturally predisposed to strive for life and to reproduce life so as it were life is a goal of our existence of our being so we strive to survive and we strive to produce more life to really reduce just like all other parts of organic nature so it's a will to live if you want to put it up well it's a will to life I think it's important to say that because it's not just about me carrying on living it's about me producing more life and he sees the drive to reproduce and hence the sex drive as the human essence and I think that's very important in other words we we are in the grip as it were of this Drive not that we've chosen it yeah and I think this is one of the important things about his position that leads to the the pessimism or the label of pessimism is that our essence isn't something we've chosen or really something we really want it's just we're in the grip of this Drive what it leads to is suffering but sorry to stress the spoke but to say that a drive is the essence of reality I mean what's this Drive made of or who has this Drive there's nothing that has this Drive is that right well all the individual things that make up the world so before they existed this will existed right I don't think you can really say that I think it's that the will is as it were the common essence that all the things that do exist have okay but I'm still not sure what it is apart you know apart from how we see it voice is a notoriously very concept and I always am Schopenhauer characterizes it in various ways he's been he uses terms such as perpetual striving flux he describes the world is inherently chaotic I mean these are terms which enable us to get some kind of handle on what he has in mind but it is as I said in a source leave a concept in shape for that it's not entirely clear how just as an aside how Schopenhauer can go here it can coherently described the will as striving given that he thinks it exists outside of time I mean just describe to us you know in a state of perpetual strife and flux these are properties of the will that are hard to reconcile with it's being a temporal I think okay what's the place of humanity in this world of will and representation what part do we play in it or what so we don't have any special place in the world we're just another organic species what is special about us is that we have language and we have rational concepts we can think and reason I think it's very important historically that sharpen how doesn't think this is a very big deal what reason the ability to have concepts makes us different from animals the ability to do reasoning how the logic to mathematics all of these things are characteristic of human beings the ability to have language no other species has it but really deep down we're all the same because we're all striving after life we're the same as all the other species in essence and I think that's an extremely important because earlier philosophers tended not to say that for example can't humanity has a particular dignity because of its reason because it is able to reason it has rationality and the whole sort of Enlightenment project as it were before Schopenhauer places a lot of emphasis on what's important about humanity is its rationality it's a digital reason Schopenhauer I think looking forward to Freud in a big way suggests that actually rationality is just a kind of almost a kind of froth on the surface it's not really what we're really about his will these drives that somehow we haven't chosen and actually they lead to a kind of terrible condition in which we just end up not getting what we're striving for we end up suffering and that's the characteristic of human life you're pointless suffering because we're driven on by this will that is our essence he's very ahead of his time I mean he's he's prefiguring Darwin he's prefiguring Freud is free freak you in the existentialists is quite a genius real but just one maybe one last question for this part um if the wheel is just one thing then how come we're individuals who do not perceive ourselves as part of one thing how does that work why do we not perceive ourselves as why do we perceive ourselves as individuals if there's no such thing really as individuality that's a very interesting question he thinks that in order to experience anything we've got to divide it up in space and time and see one thing as causing another through time so we couldn't just experience the unity that reality is we we have to structure it and the structures that even be necessary well because there has to be some there has to be some form to experience has to be some order to otherwise it wouldn't amount to experience of a ordered world of objects and this is basically cats view that he's taken on it's a slightly difficult view in other words that it's it's our experiencing the world that breaks it up into individuals that then that's a kind of idealism ok idealism meaning that the world doesn't have the world as we experience it doesn't have a reality wholly independently of the way we experience it or taking away all the double negatives it means the world the world is only what is present to experiencing beings yeah what's positive possibly present to them ok that yeah we've talked a bit about the world as will and representation will being the inner essence of reality in its similar to those driving will that we all have in our lives and then the representation is the world as we experience it to be and and the one comes out of the other but what now we're going to talk about the ethics of the situation I mean what our responses or what their practical implications of this view of reality are so first what should our response be to the nature of the world or what show our attitude to reality be to undergo first annual well I think the first thing we need to say is that the will that will enters the human sphere and they're all of an incessant and inherently painful striving ok but our essences will so it's similar to Buddhism in the sense that they say that everything is desire yeah and the connection between desire and suffering is similar in Chopra now as well I mean Schopenhauer thinks that the desire is necessarily to suffer right the desire something is by definition which open-house view to a lack that thing and to experience a lack or deficiency is to suffer to some degree on it so it's a sort of necessary product of the will that we're going to have desires to do things right ok so how should we respond to that and well I think I think there are various criticisms that could be leveled against Chopin sorrowful and I think he's but but the the idea that desire necessarily involves suffering is is questionable not all instances of desire seem to be like that okay if you have a desire for something and you have an expectation or anticipation of the desire being fulfilled then it seems to me that that sort of desire doesn't always involve suffering no so but um Chris how about what about shopping now what does he recommend that we respond to his view of reality well just just before that I think he has a slightly stronger point about desire and and and suffering which is that when we satisfied a desire like that doesn't really solve anything for us because because by nature with desiring willing beings as soon as we satisfy one desire another one rushes in to take his place so where he has this vision or this picture of human reality as perpetually unsatisfied we we can't help desiring things where as soon as we get them the desire is wiped out their pain the lack that we've suffered is wiped out but then we immediately start wanting something else so we buy at by achieving what we desire we don't turn off desire we can't stop being desiring beings at will so there's nothing we can do about our situation is a sacrilege I think that's part of it we're we're stuck with desires because even if we satisfy them we go on having more why can't we do the Buddhist thing and say look we take the middle path between desiring and not desiring and sort of achieving equilibrium like that well what he thinks that the best situation would be to as it were become detached from desires to actually as it were have a complete change in consciousness whereby you're experiencing the world but you as it were become detached from wanting anything out of the world so you and he describes this as actually becoming detached from the individual human being that you happen to be and becoming a pure mirror or subject that just looks out upon the world but doesn't see human needs and human desires as actually having anything to do with it so the kind of detachment from desire from willing that he uses some quite religious language about that he says that is the only way that our existence can be redeemed it's a kind of salvation from the life of striving and suffering but you've got a hope that it happens to you you can't really bring that about at will because it's about losing will yes you can't bring about will the loss of well so what I mean he does recommend are I mean what is it about art that helps him trance that helps an individual transcend his individuality in his desiring Daniel why well he thinks that an aesthetic experience the same what by which you mean what about our experience of art and beauty right the our sense of ourselves as individuals dissolves there's a kind of merging of the subject and the object as a merging of the perceiving subject with the work of art is helpful I mean I think he's starting from observations of what the psychology of art is like what the psychology of the experience of art is like it does seem to us as if there is a merging of our office of the subject and the object it is it is as if there is this dissolution of individuality he also says that our awareness of space and time received so we're as it were penetrating the this illusory veil of space it's not just getting lost in art it's not just sort of you're so it's so beautiful that you're sort of forget who you are it's more than that isn't it what it's the more that he's sort of saying artistic experience well that gives you because he thinks in aesthetic experience individuality is dissolved he also thinks that we cease to desire and therefore cease to suffer because we we desire things as individuals if our individuality is but why should that individual allottee dissolve by looking at a piece of our or hearing a piece of music or something well this is based on as I said his observations of the psychology of aesthetic experience what what what happens when you undergo when you when you're when you undergo a aesthetic experience is an absorption of yourself with the object okay yeah okay um what Chris what does he mean by the sublime you know quite a difficult question the sublime is a kind of aesthetic experience important to him isn't it it is important to him it's a kind of aesthetic experience in which we are aware of a painful feeling so we at the same time have a pleasure and a kind of painful feeling and it's a rather traditional notion in from the previous century that the sublime is about gaining pleasure in something that we recognize to be painful and perhaps a good example would be tragedy and I think you've talked about that last week the experience of tragedy gives us an idea that like a drum we're a tragic play yeah it's a tragic play I don't use the word tragedy to me in anything other than a tragic drama okay it's misused word but the idea is that we're recognizing something that we know to be painful about human existence it's full of pointless suffering that is undeserved but there's a kind of pleasure that we take in recognizing the thing that's painful there's more to be said about the sublime that perhaps Daniel would like to okay well I mean just a couple of other points about the value of aesthetic experience in general for sure I mean on the on the one hand he ascribes a kind of hedonistic value to it he thinks that is valuable because it delivers us from the the suffering which attends our willing or desire huh but he also thinks that an aesthetic experience we acquire knowledge of the object of our experience the will in other words well he describes the he describes what we come to know in aesthetic experience as the Platonic ideas now what what he means by this is roughly a kind of archetype or you might think of it as the extracted essence of the object that which their work of art depicts so if you're looking at a painting of a tiger for example right you're not looking at a representation of a particular tiger but rather the essence of Tiger hood does that depend on how good the painting is for instance well it does depend on how good the painting in the air yeah yeah but it depends on how good the mind of the artist was yes so can I can I ask the question how does the idea of genius you not relate to what shopping how his idea of art I suppose I mean what makes an artistic genius for shopping now in other words well this has to do primarily with the powers of perception right of the artist I mean defines genius in terms of an individual's possession of extraordinary powers of perception the genius is able to perceive the idea in the particular in the object within the empirical realm he then sorry that means you see a tiger and you get the general idea of tigers from an Italian genius a very powers of perception is able to perceive the essence of the top of the object in the particular he's that he is then able to embody the idea in a work of art and render it more vivid more accessible to those of lesser perception and that's the job of an artist is to is to convey Universal ideas to their people who's experiencing it yeah and my likely gonna I think that relates also to what we were saying earlier that he thinks of the genius is someone who's able to detach themselves from their individual will so they're they're perceiving more objectively than the rest of us they're not looking at something saying is this something to run away from is this something I want is this something good or bad they're actually just objectively mirroring as he says what they're they're able to detach themselves from their individual will and he has an idea of sainthood which is quite similar isn't it well if we could just just just for just to finish off aesthetics because we haven't yet spoken about the most important component for setting experience for Schopenhauer which is that he thinks aesthetic experience conveys to us knowledge of what our true salvation consists in okay yes which in effect is the aesthetic state prolonged as he puts it mm-hmm so aesthetic experience provides us with a glimpse of what what is it sorry what is that state prolonged it's is a continual state of experience involves just temporary cessation of desire and so I'm sorry relief from suffering whereas through through this contemplation of universal ideas right yes the dissolution of individuality and the cessation of desire that comes with that okay so salvation for Shopper now therefore from this world of will and suffering would be a prolonged experience of universal ideas is that not really and that he really talks about these universal ideas and only in connection with art I think would eat this idea of salvation he says the only true salvation we can ever have is by a negation of the will right itself I want to know how you do that yeah you will you don't do it it happens to you okay how did you get it to happen to you well he says that it can happen you you attain a vision of life of which he cause is characteristic of the Saint the Saints ease the suffering all around the world and identifies with all the suffering beings in the world and so suffering is not something particular to this individual willing it's not something particular to this individual you gain a view of the whole and you identify with the whole in some way okay the other route to this kind of vision is to suffer so much yourself that the will to life within you rebels and turns against life the pretty bleak prospect that's what we have to hope for okay that's what you get if you're lucky right yes okay what I mean that's it's not really very so a practical sort of no he's not biology exactly a barren of laughs no well but I think what's important is this idea that human individuality is in some sense a curse that we're all suffering from right this was a very influential idea I think later in the nineteenth century and in the early 20th century his remedy is somehow cease to think of yourself as an individual at all just float above it in this contemplatively you don't want anything anymore so you can't really suffer anymore it's really possible was his personality the result of his pessimistic philosophy or was his pessimistic philosophy the result of his personality pass Schopenhauer is very aware that his pessimism could be taken as as he puts a mere declamation on human misery right so he offers various arguments a a priori arguments arguments which are which he constructs independently of any empirical observations wrong world argument based on simple straightforward analysis of what it is to desire what it is to will and these these arguments are I think intended to avert the charge of him simply projecting on to the world his own melancholy disposition oh yeah but I'm gonna be fair to show ya we have to engage we're going to strike we're going to be in discussing a specimen with pessimism we have to engage with the arguments themselves yes I I don't like the idea that he just had these views because of his personality I think that you have to take it seriously as a philosophical view okay but and it was entirely gloomy he played the flute every day as Nietzsche points out okay that's something okay we're getting near the end of the show oh one asked you guys what do you think shopping I got right and what did he get wrong I'm trying to go first angle well I think I'm the value he ascribes to it to aesthetic experience in human life that's extremely important I think his analysis of suffering is particularly insightful I think in terms of his relevance to contemporary philosophy there's much in his aesthetics which is a value I don't I think it can be divorced from the questionable metaphysics he has I think in terms of his description of what it's like to undergo aesthetic experience that's enormously inside okay I think there's something we haven't really touched on which is his view of morality morality consists in being compassionate to all beings and he's very concerned that it isn't only rational beings who are of moral worth and he thinks that morality is really quite a simple affair it's whether you are able to sympathize and feel compassion for the suffering of other beings and what's very interesting I think and seems very contemporary is that he wants to include all animals in this all animals are equally deserving of our moral compassion and he's he's furious about previous philosophers who see human beings is in some way morally special and I think there's quite a lot in there which is taken up probably not people don't realize that shopping now said this but actually it's very similar to a lot of things that go on in ethics today okay well that sounds like a good sort of enough place to end a discussion I I'm gonna ask you has any of you got any books or incoming projects you want to plug well I'm I'm currently overseeing a translation of all the new translation of all the shop and hers works there Cambridge University Press volumes well - or - it already out at third ones on its way okay rush out and buy them now kids well I'm well advanced on with a book on Nietzsche which interprets Detra is concerned primarily with repudiating the pessimistic verdict on life that he encountered in forever now okay thank you very much and I've got um love solitude and destruction which is a book short stories and the meta revolution which is a meta revolutionary manifesto available on

Channel: Philosophy Overdose

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Keywords: Philosophy, Schopenhauer, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Pessimism, Philosophical Pessimism, Existentialism, The Will, The World as Will and Representation, Aesthetics, Kant, Meaningless, Buddhism, Suffering, Atheism, Idealism, Subject-Object, Philosophical Realism, Thing-In-Itself, Transcendental Idealism, Nihilism, Monism, Ethics, Noumenon, Noumenal, Nietzsche, Kantian, Asceticism, Eastern Philosophy, Western Philosophy, Art

Id: xRuFQp0C0tQ

Length: 41min 38sec (2498 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2016