Arthur Schopenhauer

The nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schop0enhauer embodied the deepest melancholy, projecting his dark perspective to encompass all of humankind in near-cosmic gloom. In “On the Vanity and Suffering of Life,” oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/texts/schopenhauer/vanity.pdf he declared that “Everything in life proclaims that earthly happiness is designed to be frustrated, or recognized as an illusion.” True Schopenhauer admitted, in a late essay on the wisdom of life, he had once written that “to secure and promote a feeling of cheerfulness should be the supreme aim of all our endeavors after happiness.” Now he knew the “sublime melancholy which leads us to cherish a lively conviction of the worthlessness of everything, of all pleasure and of all mankind, and therefore to long for nothing but to feel that life is a burden that must be borne to an end that cannot be very distant.” Like so many others, he pointed, as if for reassurance, to Aristotle, interpreting him as holding “that genius is allied to melancholy and people of very cheerful disposition are only intelligent on the surface.” Persons of genius should cherish solitude, avoiding the snares and pitfalls of friendship and above all marriage. ~ Page 111