The Philosophy of Schopenhauer
by Bryan Magee

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Book Reviews of The Philosophy of Schopenhauer

Book Review: The revival of one of the greatest philosophers of all time
Summary: 5 Stars

The sentiment expressed by Wagner in the previous quotation articulates how I felt when I had discovered Schopenhauer and that is probably true for most readers of these philosophers. There is something in his ontological and aesthetic conclusions that induce a feeling of nausea and repellence and yet they are filled with much liberation. It's sort of like the feeling a prophet gets when he receives a divine revelation.
Magee does a magnificant job in making Schopenahuars ideas accessible to the public. The final chapter added to this 2nd edition dispels the popular misconceptions (misconceptions that I have run across) concerning Schopenhauers treatment of the will. What S really says is that we have direct phenomenal knowledge of the noumena but that 'phenomenal' knowledge is still nevertheless a representation. I don't think to S, the representation of an perceptual object is an illusion but merely that in order to perceive things, the brain develops a conceptual framework so that objects in the external world can be apprehended. Many people who object to his uses of representation often assume that he is saying that what we perceive is something completely different than what it is in itself. What Schopenhauer really saying is that we shouldn't ascribe too much importance, regarding our knowledge, to the object and ignore the perceiving subject as this would greatly retard our quest for understanding.
Magee also points out how avant-garde Schopenhauer was for his time because of his anticipation of Freud's unconscious, Einstein's relativity, and Schrodinger's Quantum Mechanics. One can conclude that Scopenhauer would have not at all have been surprised by these breakthroughs in modern science since he enunciated philosophical ideas that were very similar.
I must say that I find Schopenhaurs treatment of music flawed in that he seems to believe "that in aesthetic contemplation, the individual is no longer an individual but the pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge." In this respect I might think Nietzsche was right in the Gay Science when he pointed out how typical it was for many followers of Schopenhauer to adopt the erroneous metaphysical aspects of his philosophy. Music, as with everything, is a manifestation of the phenomenal world. Interaction with music is not will-less if Scophenhauer really thinks everything to be a result of the will. In that sense we see his pessimism getting into the way of his philosophical doctrine. Magee was right when he pointed out the impossibility of renunciating the Will.

In further regard of S's treatment of music, I prefer Wagners theory of Art to be by far much superior to that of Schopenhauers.

"Wagner saw art as a celebtration of the purely human, of this life of ours in the world of experience, whereas Scheopnhauer saw this life as a burden and this world as a vale of tears, and regarded art as concerned with Platonic Ideas and the noumenal; Wagner's theories were historicist, which Schopenhauer would have despised; Wagner believed that the creative artists should address himself to 'the people', whereas Schopenhaur considered only a minority capable of being interested in great art; Wagner considered the main function of art as expressive, whereas Schopenhauer saw it as cognitive."

Even though he was overlooked by many, Schopenhauer was definitely the pinnacle of empirical epistemology. Magee interestingly emphasizes that Scopehnhauers philosophy, much like Wittgenstein's, is in some sense mystical because it doesn't imply that the empirical world is all there is. Unfortunately, we see that because of the limits of human understanding, many post-posivist philosophers have jumped on the religious band wagon. Clearly though, Scophenhauer would have thought it ridiculous to claim to know what the noumenal world (and I do not think he thought of it as separate from the phenomenal world) is as the religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism claim to do (Nietzsche would later show how little 'faith' in these ascetic religions is worth). Regarding the similarities to Scophenhauer's philosophy and Buddhism, I would not find it unreasonable to conclude that Schopenhauer's philosophy is a more sophisticated and more reasonable form of Buddhism insofar that Buddhism takes a metaphysical approach to life but does not apply phenomenal concepts to the metaphysical world.

I HIGHLY recommend buying this book. Magee has done a tremendous service to the revival of Schopenhauer.

Summary of The Philosophy of Schopenhauer

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