Essays and Aphorisms (Classics)
PENGUIN 
CLASSICS
ESSAYS AND APHORISMS
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER was born in Danzig in 1788, where his family, of Dutch origin, owned one of the most respected trading houses. In 1793 the business moved to Hamburg, and in 1804 Arthur, who was expected to inherit it, was apprenticed as a clerk to another Hamburg house. He hated the work, so in 1807, two years after his father's suicide and the sale of the business, he enrolled at the grammar school at Gotha. In 1809 he entered Göttingen University to study medicine and science; the following year he took up philosophy. In 1811 he transferred to Berlin to write his doctoral thesis (1813). During the next four years he lived in Dresden and wrote The World as Will and Representation (1818), a complete exposition of his philosophy. Although the book failed to sell, Schopenhauer's belief in his own philosophy sustained him through twenty-five years of frustrated desire for fame. During his middle life, he travelled widely in Europe. In 1844 he brought out a greatly expanded edition of his book, which after his death became one of the most widely read of all philosophical works. His fame was established in 1851 with the publication of Parerga and Paralipomena, a large collection of essays, dialogues and aphorisms. From 1833 until his death from a heart attack in 1860 he lived in Frankfurt-am-Main.
R. J. HOLLINGDALE translated eleven of Nietzsche's books and published two books about him; he also translated works by, among others, Schopenhauer, Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffman, Lichtenberg and Theodor Fontane, many of these for Penguin Classics. He was the honorary president of the British Nietzsche Society. R. J. Hollingdale died on 28 September 2001. In its obituary The Times described him as ‘Britain's foremost postwar Nietzsche specialist’ and the Guardian paid tribute to his ‘inspired gift for German translation’. Richard Gott wrote that he ‘brought fresh generations – through fluent and intelligent translation – to read and relish Nietzsche's inestimable thought’.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Essays and Aphorisms
Selected and Translated with an Introduction by
R. J. HOLLINGDALE
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This translation first published 1970
Reprinted with new Chronology and Further Reading 2004
30
Translation and introduction copyright © R. J. Hollingdale, 1970
Chronology and Further Reading copyright © Christopher Janaway, 2004
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
978-0-141-92175-4
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Born in Danzig in February 1788
Died in Frankfurt-am-Main in September 1860
CONTENTS
Introduction
ESSAYS
On the Suffering of the World
On the Vanity of Existence
On the Antithesis of Thing in Itself and Appearance
On Affirmation and Denial of the Will to Live
On the Indestructibility of our Essential Being by Death
On Suicide
On Women
On Thinking for Yourself
On Religion: a Dialogue
APHORISMS
On Philosophy and the Intellect
On Ethics
On Law and Politics
On Aesthetics
On Psychology
On Religion
On Books and Writing
On Various Subjects
List of Correspondences
Chronology
Further Reading
INTRODUCTION
Two Backgrounds
THIS volume contains a selection from Schopenhauer's last writings: the collection of essays, aphorisms and thoughts to which he gave the name Parerga and Paralipomena. Its object is to introduce the reader unfamiliar with them to the splendours and miseries of German metaphysics as reflected in the mirror of one very marked personality.
Schopenhauer is not difficult to understand provided one knows first something of the problems German metaphysical speculation was engaged in during his lifetime, and then something of his own background and experience. The combination – personal problems and subjective attitudes expressed in the language of metaphysics – is of the essence. Much of what in other nineteenth-century literatures went into novels, plays and poetry, in Germany went into philosophy, and this includes much of what was most original.
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