The Wisdom of Life

by Arthur Schopenhauer

Overview

In The Wisdom of Life, an essay from Schopenhauer's final work, Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), the philosopher favors individual strength of will and independent, reasoned deliberation over the tendency to act on irrational impulses. He examines the ways in which life can be arranged to derive the highest degree of pleasure and success, presents guidelines to achieving this full and rich manner of living, and advises that even a life well lived must always aspire to grander heights. Abounding in subjects of enduring relevance, Schopenhauer's highly readable work appears here in an excellent translation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788196033149
Publisher:	Sanage Publishing House Llp
Publication date:	12/15/2022
Pages:	118
Sales rank:	682,417
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.28(d)

About the Author

Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 - 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind noumenal will. He was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance. His work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
I.	Division of the Subject	3
II.	Personality, or What a Man is	9
III.	Property, or What a Man Has	28
IV.	Position, or a Man's Place in the Estimation of Others
1.	Reputation	34
2.	Pride	39
3.	Rank	41
4.	Honour	42
5.	Fame	66

Introduction

A leading German metaphysician of the nineteenth century, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) exerted an influence far beyond the hermetic world of philosophy, with adherents ranging from Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche to Leo Tolstoy and Thomas Mann. Among Schopenhauer's chief contributions to the field of philosophy are his rejection of the idealism of his contemporaries and his embrace of a practical variety of materialism. He jettisons the traditional philosophic jargon for a brisk, compelling style that employs direct terms to express the metaphysics of the will. In The Wisdom of Life, an essay from Schopenhauer's final work, Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), the philosopher favors individual strength of will and independent, reasoned deliberation over the tendency to act on irrational impulses. He examines the ways in which life can be arranged to derive the highest degree of pleasure and success, presents guidelines to achieving this full and rich manner of living, and advises that even a life well lived must always aspire to grander heights. Abounding in subjects of enduring relevance, Schopenhauer's highly readable work appears here in an excellent translation.