The Kantian Foundation of Schopenhauer's Pessimism

Dennis Vanden Auweele

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351721592
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Filosofia
• Sous-sujet: Storia e teoria della filosofia

This book connects Schopenhauer's philosophy with transcendental idealism by exploring the distinctly Kantian roots of his pessimism. By clearly discerning four types of coming to knowledge, it demonstrates how Schopenhauer's epistemology can enlighten this connection with other areas of his philosophy. The individual chapters in this book discuss how these knowledge types—immediate or mediate, representational or non-representational—relate to Schopenhauer's metaphysics, ethics and action, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and asceticism. In each of these areas, a specific sense of pessimism serves to disarm a number of paradoxes and inconsistencies typically associated with Schopenhauer's philosophy. The Kantian Foundation of Schopenhauer's Pessismism shows how Schopenhauer's claim that he is a true successor to Kant can be justified.

1
Schopenhauer’s Philosophical Pedigree

Schopenhauer matured at a time when philosophy was trying to find its proper bearings from the revolutionary impact of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Kant’s philosophy is undoubtedly among the most inspiring and thought-provoking of the entire modern era. One of the reasons that Kant still engages many philosophers today, as well as causes wildly different interpretations both in the past and the present, is that he remained vexingly unclear on a great number of issues. Keeping both his popularity and ambiguity in mind, it should not come as a surprise that a myriad of very different thinkers arose in the Kantian aftermath, often claiming to be Kant’s true successors. Most of these successors built upon Kant’s architectonic rationality and completed the system of reason Kant never finished. Only one proponent of Kant, perhaps even his greatest adulator, understood Kant’s philosophy in a very different light. Schopenhauer advanced the view that transcendental idealism, if thought through correctly, leads to a profound sense of pessimism. Needless to say, he often stood alone in his interpretation of Kant, as well as his advocacy of pessimism. Nevertheless, this chapter seeks to provide a first tentative suggestion that Schopenhauer was on the right track and that he built upon at least one forgotten strait of Kant’s transcendental philosophy.

By this, I do not mean to dismiss or even diminish the influence that several other sources might have had on Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Indeed, there is something to be said for the idea that Indian thought, Plato’s philosophy, Goethe and even Christianity are significant factors that profoundly influence Schopenhauer’s philosophy (we will return especially to Christianity). The reason for focusing on Kant in this monograph is obvious: despite the fact of Schopenhauer’s very vocal praise of Kant, not many commentators have explored the connection between their respective philosophies in terms of organic development. Such development is of the kind that Schopenhauer took an element of Kant’s philosophy, often ignored or dismissed, and followed its train of thought to its logical and organic conclusion. This preliminary chapter seeks to sketch out the contours of the aftermath of Kantian philosophy (section one); then it discusses the potential influence of Indian thought on Schopenhauer (section two) and finally summarizes some of the elements of Kant’s philosophy that organically lead towards Schopenhauer’s philosophy (section three). Particularly those elements in this final section will be explored more comprehensively when Schopenhauer’s philosophy is presented more systematically in the chapters to come.

Section 1: The Kantian Aftermath

By the end of Kant’s life, transcendental philosophy had already become the standard for academic discussions on a variety of subjects. In fact, there were entire courses at various universities uniquely devoted to clarifying and edifying Kant’s transcendental idealism, most importantly his Critique of Pure Reason— a work that still commands the interest of many scholars. Among these professors that made a career of teaching ‘Kantianism’ (while offering relatively minor criticism) was first and foremost Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose idealistic revisionary reading of Kant significantly influenced Fichte, Jacobi, Schelling and Hegel. Schopenhauer’s primary source for Kant’s philosophy was, however, a slightly less appreciative reader of Kant, namely Gottlob Ernst Schulze. Schulze inspired Schopenhauer’s life-long admiration for Kant, but also urged Schopenhauer to study Plato’s dialogues closely.¹ In his anonymously published Aenesidemus, Schulze launched a skeptical attack on Kant’s epistemological model or, more precisely, Reinhold’s reading of Kant’s epistemology. Schulze argued that Kant’s introduction of an unknown thing in itself as the cause of sensory intuitions was inconsistent with Kant’s argument that causality is valid only for subjective consciousness and therefore loses all validity outside of it. Accordingly, Schulze suggested to remove the in itself from Kant’s philosophy and emphasized the need to remain skeptical about anything outside of self-consciousness. Schulze advocated that a more rigorous sense of idealism was the proper conclusion to be drawn from Kant’s epistemological premises in the First Critique.

Although Schulze’s skeptical attack on Kant’s philosophy finds only some resonance in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, young Arthur did take most of his first teacher’s advice to heart, as he would carefully study both Kant and Plato. At times, he could even be read as attempting to reconcile the respective insights of Kant and Plato (e.g., WWV1 201–202). Schopenhauer would, contrary to Schulze, remain true to transcendental idealism by emphasizing the rigorous (toto genere) distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal. Schopenhauer’s slightly naïve allegiance to one unfashionable aspect of Kant’s philosophy fell on deaf ears ever since the more overtly idealistic preoccupations of Schelling, Fichte and Hegel clearly began to dominate the philosophical field. At a young age, Schopenhauer was enthralled by these philosophical projects, particularly when he moved to Berlin to attend Fichte’s and Schleiermacher’s Berlin-lectures. While initially deeply enthusiastic, Schopenhauer would turn his back on both after only a short time. Besides doctrinal, methodological and existential disagreements, Schopenhauer himself would single out several minor issues that annoyed him. For instance, Fichte’s excessive use of philosophical terminology vexed Schopenhauer, and Schleiermacher’s obstinate refusal to read the original texts of philosophers (dabbling with secondary studies),² which he combined with syrupy patriotism,³ rubbed the Anglophile Schopenhauer the wrong way.⁴ Initially, one would find nothing but praise of Schelling in Schopenhauer’s notes and publications (see especially the first version of Schopenhauer’s doctoral dissertation), but his approval would wane after a while and make way for disdain similar to what Schopenhauer experienced for Fichte, Jacobi and Hegel.

After these earliest engagements with Kant’s philosophy (Reinhold, Schulze, but also Christian Garve), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling in his System des transcendentalen Idealismus (1800) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte in his Wissenschaftlehre (1794–1813) dedicated themselves to challenging Kant’s critique of idealism. Joined later on by Hegel, they would reinforce Kant’s claims on noumenal rationality and transpose this rationality to a system that would initially be named ‘philosophy of identity’. Accordingly, they advocated a more positive use of dialectical reasoning so as to apply the rational method germane to the Enlightenment to the full range of reality and through this, in Schopenhauer’s view, they blatantly miss “the amazing Kant’s” (UWS 1) most important contribution to the history of philosophy, namely his separation of appearances from the in itself. Kant himself even denounced, in an open letter of 1799, Fichte’s idealistic revision of his philosophy. While Schelling, Fichte and Hegel were largely sympathetic to Kant’s theoretical philosophy, they would object to Kant’s speculative agnosticism and extended rational dialectics beyond Kant’s critical boundaries in such a way that rationality was postulated to govern the full range of reality. Despite the fact of Kant’s public objection to Fichte’s idealism, his First Critique could be read as leaving the door open for a Fichtean ‘science of reason’ since Kant himself admits that “a critique” is always “propadeutic” and must lead to “a system of pure reason (science), the whole (true as well as apparent) philosophical cognition from pure reason in systematic interconnection, and is called metaphysics” (B 869 / A 841).

Contrary to Fichte’s and Schelling’s appeal to dialectical rationality to complete the system of reason, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi influentially argued that the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason would necessarily lead to a form of nihilism, fatalism and atheism. In particular, Jacobi believed that Kant’s philosophy inadvertently leads to atheism by rejecting any truth from theology or religion that could clash with Enlightenment rationality. Jacobi was personally intermingled in the so-called Atheismusstreit that would ultimately condemn Fichte for advocating pantheism, which was, at that time at least, considered as equally offensive as atheism. Alternatively, Jacobi espoused renewed faith in revelation to counter the ensuing nihilism by fervently espousing a robust sense of transcendent orthodox theism: “God is outside of me, a living Being existing on Its own, or else I am God”.⁵ Jacobi did aptly envision a future in which nihilism and, at least methodological, atheism would enter the scene. Friedrich Schleiermacher in his turn opposed the stark dualism that Jacobi detected between reason and faith by initiating a philosophical/theological movement that would become increasingly popular throughout the 19th and 20th century—mostly among theologians, however—namely liberal theology. Schleiermacher’s main interest was to reconcile the principles of the Enlightenment with Protestant Orthodoxy, effectively making him the philosophical father of what is now called ‘Traditional Hermeneutics’, later on continued by Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Schleiermacher developed his hermeneutics mainly in an attempt to find the proper way of interpreting the New Testament. In his Hermeneutics and Criticism, a work spanning twenty years and published posthumously, he developed different forms of hermeneutics, such as grammatical (technical) and psychological (holistic). One of his main interests was to first clearly discern interpretation from criticism and then combine these in a comprehensive project of ‘general hermeneutics’. To read Kant as such a liberal theologian misses, in my view, a lot of the rationalist and Enlightenment tendencies of Kant’s appreciation of religion.⁶

In his post-idealistic philosophy (from especially 1809 onwards), Schelling would distance himself from Fichte and Hegel. In fact, Schelling’s metaphysics of will and freedom in his Freiheitsschrift (1809) come rather close to Schopenhauer’s philosophy in The World as Will and Representation— something that has prompted repeated allegations of plagiarism. Schopenhauer himself noted a striking similarity between Kant’s, Schelling’s and his own philosophy repeatedly (e.g., BGE 82–84). In the first edition of his doctoral dissertation, Schopenhauer even praises Schelling for giving a “very worthwhile and clarifying exposition of Kant’s teaching” (UWS 76–77). In later editions of this work, Schopenhauer would remove the praise of Schelling and replace it with something coming rather close to a charge of plagiarism: “So here Schelling stands to Kant in the fortunate position of Amerigo to Columbus: someone else’s discovery is stamped with his name” (BGE 83). While Schopenhauer closely read Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift,⁷ it is doubtful whether the ‘misanthropic sage of Frankfurt’ was aware of Schelling’s positive philosophy and philosophy of mythology/revelation in Berlin of the 1840s. The similarities between their respective projects have been pointed out by at least one scholar.⁸

In the wake of Kant’s death, numerous issues were up for debate and philosophers galore would propose their respective points of view throughout what Rüdiger Safranski calls ‘the wild years of philosophy’.⁹ The philosophical scene was open to defend such a myriad of philosophical positions as absolute/subjective idealism, fideism, Romantic naturalism or liberal theology.¹⁰ Most of these philosophical positions took their cues from Kant’s epistemological model in the First Critique, and even Schopenhauer claims to pick up only on Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Obviously, Kant’s practical philosophy and aesthetics were equally of interest to his immediate successors. But, Schopenhauer, like many others, would explicitly distance himself from Kant’s moral and religious philosophy.¹¹ How authors such as Reinhold, Fichte and Hegel engaged Kant’s philosophy has been the subject of many excellent studies.¹² For his part, Schopenhauer would claim that Kant’s distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal finally had silenced the long-standing philosophical debate between realism and idealism, and was moreover the single most impressive accomplishment of any philosopher ever since Plato. Kant did, however, not follow through in drawing the correct, rigorous conclusions of that separation. As such, Schopenhauer claims not only to be Kant’s successor, but also his corrector. In his view at least, his own philosophical system is “the correct conclusion [Ergebniss] of Kantian philosophy” (WWV2 13). While most of Schopenhauer’s assertions are certainly up for debate, a charitable reading of his philosophical project would try to uncover what specific line of argumentation Schopenhauer picks up from Kant and then continues to its correct conclusion. Before attending to this point, we have to make a slight detour to what some believe is a more significant inspiration for Schopenhauer’s philosophy, namely the Indian Upanishads.¹³

Section 2: The Indian Factor

Schopenhauer is often praised for his willingness to discuss non-Western philosophy. With the exception of Leibniz, Schopenhauer was likely the first modern philosopher to discuss charitably and elaborately Eastern thought. This is most overtly so for the Indian Upanishads. The Upanishads are a part of Vedic writings (Veda literally means ‘knowledge’), which are ancient spiritual texts of the Indian Hindu culture. These treat a vast diversity of subjects of a philosophical and spiritual nature and supposedly prepare a human being to pierce through the ‘shroud’ or ‘veil’ of Maya to perceive the world as it truly is, mainly through religious rituals and mysticism. There is serious debate whether or not Schopenhauer properly understood the meaning and purpose of these texts.¹⁴ This discussion is the subject for comparative research and, for our present purposes, it is mainly of interest in what sense Schopenhauer interpreted these texts and how he incorporated their subsequent insights, through a Kantian and Platonic transformation, in his philosophical project. I do not believe that Eastern wisdom has a privileged place as a formative influence of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. As such, this monograph focuses on the Kantian inspiration of Schopenhauer.

Schopenhauer’s exposure to Indian thought happened gradually, but clearly he believed that there was something to be gained, especially from the Upanishads. In 1801–2, the French Indologist Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805) published the first translation of, what he transcribed as the, Oupnek’hat in a European language, namely Latin (he authored but never published a French translation as well).¹⁵ This text is notoriously difficult to read because Anquetil-Duperron kept the Sanskrit grammar and translated the Sanskrit, word for word, into Latin. Interestingly, Schopenhauer praises this translation, even though the quotes he gives of this text are usually paraphrases: “I read this translation with the fullest confidence, which is immediately and joyfully confirmed. For how the Oupnek’hat thoroughly breathes the holy spirit of the Vedas!” (PP2 422).

While Schopenhauer certainly would increasingly expose himself to other texts of Eastern lore such as the Sanhita, Bhagavadgita and Samkhya philosophy (see: PP2 420–425), it is helpful to explore Schopenhauer’s report to the Upanishads further. The common assumption is that Schopenhauer was ...