Schopenhauer, an unknown man, lectured to an empty room and continued to do so until it was borne in upon him that he would have either to change his hours or abandon his course: he abandoned his course and with it his career as a university lecturer.

4. One day in August 1821, still in Berlin, Schopenhauer was involved in an altercation at his lodgings with a sempstress, one Caroline Luise Marguet, aged 47, which ended with his throwing her down the stairs. He alleged she was making too much noise; she maintained she was only talking to a friend on the landing and sued him for injuries which, she claimed, made it impossible for her to carry on her profession. Schopenhauer resisted the claim and litigation dragged on for nearly five years; at one moment, while he was visiting Italy, all his goods and property in Berlin were placed under distraint until he should return to attend court. In March 1826 he was sentenced to pay Mlle Marguet 60 talers (about £9) a year for the rest of her life. She lived until 1852: when Schopenhauer received a copy of her death certificate he wrote across it: Obit anus, abit onus (the old woman dies, the debt departs).

5. From the age of 45 until his death 27 years later Schopenhauer lived in Frankfurt-am-Main. He lived alone, in ‘rooms’, and every day for 27 years he followed an identical routine. He rose every morning at seven and had a bath but no breakfast: he drank a cup of strong coffee before sitting down at his desk and writing until noon. At noon he ceased work for the day and spent half-an-hour practising the flute, on which he became quite a skilled performer. Then he went out for lunch at the Englischer Hof. After lunch he returned home and read until four, when he left for his daily walk: he walked for two hours no matter what the weather. At six o'clock he visited the reading room of the library and read The Times. In the evening he attended the theatre or a concert, after which he had dinner at a hotel or restaurant. He got back home between nine and ten and went early to bed. He was willing to deviate from this routine in order to receive visitors: but with this exception he carried it through for 27 years.

The temperamental quality which these details all exemplify goes by different names depending on the nature of the circumstances under which it is manifested. In regard to 1 it might be called constancy or fixity, in regard to 2 perseverance or doggedness, in regard to 3 obstinacy or self-will, in regard to 4 pigheadedness or intractability, in regard to 5 inertia or immovability. If we try for a non-emotive description we might call it the inability to abandon or modify an attitude of mind once adopted. Consider the daily two-hour walk. Among Schopenhauer's disciples of the late nineteenth century this walk was a celebrated fact of his biography, and it was so because of its regularity. There was speculation as to why he insisted on going out and staying out for two hours no matter what the weather. It suggests health fanaticism, but there is no other evidence that Schopenhauer was a health fanatic or a crank. In my view the reason was simply obstinacy: he would go out and nothing would stop him. It is a minor manifestation of that rooted immovability of mind. (Schopenhauer's definition of obstinacy will be found on page 170. I think that by the time the reader comes to it he will find it less a definition of obstinacy than a splendid instance of it.)

My purpose in flogging this point is to try to make it seem at any rate possible that, if a pessimistic attitude towards life had grown up in Schopenhauer's mind as a result of his early experience of it, that attitude would persist unchanged throughout his adult years and down to his death; so that the cause of his pessimistic disposition could plausibly be sought in youthful experiences which, while in themselves not at all uncommon, might make on him an uncommonly lasting impression. What would then be singular about Schopenhauer would not be his pessimism itself but only the fact that it endured long enough for him to bring to its exposition and analysis the power of a very gifted adult intelligence. For that disillusionment with life which Schopenhauer expounds and tries to account for in almost all his writings was the consequence not of any unique or very uncommon occurrence but of experiences which tens of thousands and perhaps millions of other young men have undergone in our epoch, experiences which have brought the taste of ashes to their mouth and whose effects they have overcome or even forgotten simply because they lacked Schopenhauer's immovability of mind.

Early Life

 

The family background of almost all German philosophers has been scholarly or clerical: their fathers have been teachers or clergymen. Schopenhauer's father was a trader and his family background was mercantile. In origin the Schopenhauers were Dutch, and Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer (1747–1805) is a recognizable Dutch type: a businessman with a taste for culture and stylish living.