The Wisdom of Life — Arthur Schopenhauer
“Besides, other people’s heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man’s true happiness — a fanciful happiness perhaps, but not a real one.”
Start — 9/22/16 Finish — 9/25/16
Directives:
· A man is made happy not by fame, but by whatever brings him fame — by his merits or the disposition and capacity from which his merits come from.
· Nothing contributes to our happiness more than our health. We should never sacrifice it for any other form of pleasure of happiness.
· To be happy means to be self-sufficient. To leave our happiness in the hands of other people, the things we have, or the rank we hold is to leave our happiness to a roll of a die.
· Reputation, honor, rank, and fame have their usefulness, but have no true, direct control over our happiness.
· What goes on in other people’s head shouldn’t be of much concern to us. When we come to see how superficial and futile are most people’s thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their sentiments… it’s the only logical conclusion.
Notes:
· Three distinct human differences
o What a man is: health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence
o What a man has: property, possessions
o What a man is in the eyes of others: reputation, honor, rank
· The first difference is what really matters — the happiness we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings
o Since everything which exists or happens for a man exists only in his consciousness and happens for it alone, the most essential thing for a man is the constitution of his consciousness (which is usually much more important than external circumstances)
o The objective half of life — what we are — will determine to some extent the limitations upon our happiness, and is entirely decided by the hand of fate; however, the subjective half, or how we interpret our life, will be comparably more important for our happiness/pleasure
· Nothing contributes to cheerfulness more than our health
o We should thus try as much as possible to maintain a high degree of health — avoiding all kinds of excess, all kinds of violent/unpleasant emotions, mental strain, lethargy, unhygienic behaviors
o It is the greatest of follies to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness (gain, advancement, fame, sensual pleasures) since it really is the largest determinant of our true happiness
· Nothing is better protection against misery and boredom as inward wealth, that of the mind, because the greater it grows, the less room it leaves for boredom
o The more we have in ourselves, the less we will want from other people
o To be happy means to be self-sufficient… for all other sources of happiness are in their nature most uncertain or easily exhausted
· The intellectual man will take a more vivid interest in pleasures of sensibility (observation, thought, feeling, poetry, music, learning, reading, meditation…) as they generate real happiness more than pleasures of physical energy or vital energy
o A man who is privileged to have enough of his needs satisfied to devote time to this sensibility leads two lives: the personal one and the intellectual one — the latter gradually becoming his true one over time, the former just a means to it
o The life of the mind is not just a protection against boredom, but the dangerous effects of boredom — bad company, the dangers, misfortunes, and losses which a man who places his happiness in the objective world will encounter
o It is only with the rare collision of both higher intellect and undisturbed leisure time that a man can avoid both pain and boredom on each side of the spectrum of suffering
· What a Man Has
o If an object in a man’s horizon looks as though he can get it, he is happy; if difficulties come in the way, he is miserable; and what lies beyond his horizon (what he thinks to be in the realm of possibilities) has no effect
o “Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it as an abstract satisfaction of all.”
· A Man’s Position
o Reputation — the sphere of what we are for other people is their consciousness, not ours; this is something that can only affect us only indirectly in so far as it affects other people’s behavior towards us, and even then it can only affect us if it modifies what we are in and for ourselves
o Pride and Vanity — vanity is pride’s worst foe, for it courts the applause of the world in order to gain the necessary foundation for a high opinion of one’s own worth, whilst pride is based upon a pre-existing conviction of it
o Honor — honor, like reputation, has no direct or immediate value, but is important indirectly in its usefulness when we need to work with others to achieve our own aims; we should do away with the superstition about honor that it disappears when you are insulted — true appreciation of his own value will make a man really indifferent to insult
o Fame — fame derived from works (rather than action) tend to not rely upon chance, are wholly dependent on the author, and are much long-lasting (even if they are not appreciated until after death); not fame, but that which deserves to be famous, is what a man should hold in esteem
Phrases/Quotes:
· A quiet and cheerful temperament, happy in the enjoyment of a perfectly sound physique, an intellect clear, lively, penetrating and seeing things as they are, a moderate and gentle will, and therefore a good conscience — these are privileges which no rank or wealth can make up for or replace.
· And still men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has.
· This is the true source of boredom — a continual panting after excitement, in order to have a pretext for giving the mind and spirits something to occupy them. The kind of things people choose for this purpose shows that they are not very particular, as witness the miserable pastimes they have recourse to, and their ideas of social pleasure and conversation; or again, the number of people who gossip on the doorstep or gape out the window.
· To the life of the intellect such a man will give the preference over all his other occupations: by the constant growth of insight and knowledge, this intellectual life, like a slowly-forming work of art, will acquire a consistency, a permanent intensity, a unity which becomes ever more and more complete…
· Illiterate leisure is a form of death, a living tomb. — Seneca
· The more contemptible and ridiculous a man is, the readier he is with his tongue. — Seneca
· What goes on in other people’s consciousness is, as such, a matter of indifference to us: and in time we get really indifferent to it, when we come to see how superficial and futile are most people’s thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their sentiments, how perverse their opinions and how much of error there is in most of them…
· The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise, he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellow-men.
· For this reason: the more a man belongs to posterity, in other words, to humanity in general, the more of an alien he is to his contemporaries; since his work is not meant for them as such, but only for them in so far as they form part of mankind at large; and so what he does, fails of recognition because it is strange.
· Hence the truth of the remark, that fame shuns those who seek it, and seeks those who shun it; for the one adapt themselves to the taste of their contemporaries, and the others work in defiance of it.
· Besides, other people’s heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man’s true happiness — a fanciful happiness perhaps, but not a real one.
· Life is such a poor business that the strictest economy must be exercised in its good things.
Thoughts:
This was a fairly short essay with about as bold a title as The Conquest of Happiness. These philosophy pieces tend overlap a bit, and emphasize similar themes. Schopenhauer’s work is well-structured, easy to follow, and generally free of any sort of pomposity or unnecessary philosophical jargon. It cuts straight to the issue, namely how a man can find happiness given the seemingly large differences between him and his fellow man.
Schopenhauer seems to hold a somewhat questionable opinion that most men are born dull and mediocre, and without the need for an intellectual or higher pleasure will never know true happiness. It would be akin to expecting an animal to know reason. It is only those men (and women, although it seems evident that Schopenhauer did not believe in the equal capacity of women) who are blessed with mental power that may eventually achieve real happiness if they have their other basic needs satisfied. I’m not sure if I agree with this rather cynical point of view of the mass of humanity, but it’s not necessarily the main point of the essay.
Self-sufficiency and self-worth are stressed as the true generators of happiness. The things we own or the reputation we achieve can be taken from us in an instant, and are very vulnerable to chance. But we will always have what we are — and it is our job to cultivate it. We will find real meaning in work that we get lost in, and hopefully our mental powers are enough to produce something worthy of aiding posterity (whether we are alive to enjoy the recognition or not). Schopenhauer does a really great job of tearing apart the stupid things people do to thwart their own pursuit of happiness — chasing fame, being offended by attacks on their honor, finding too much pleasure in material things, etc. And all of it is still as relevant today as it was in the nineteenth century.
Status Anxiety is probably a more relevant (and enjoyable) type of treatise on these topics, but Schopenhauer’s section on fame seemed to me both unique and insightful. This essay wasn’t anything special, but I still want to check out other works by him.
