Greetings,
Once more I find myself preparing for the season of Lent. I am considering what to do for my Lenten devotions and observances this year. John Wesley, following Jesus’ expectations, fasted at least once a week (for much of his life it was twice a week) and urged all Methodists to do so. So how shall I expand my fasting? What act of penance and devotions shall I do each day of Lent? What will I “give up for Lent?” And, perhaps most important, what additional acts of mercy shall I do during Lent?
At the same time, my Lenten observances need to fit around my schedule of meetings and efforts to lead the members of the Maryland General Assembly into the light. The Assembly has made some progress this year, but on many matters of urgent importance, the members are still unwilling to move forward. You have heard me bemoan the current climate of polarization and the decline of civil discourse. We are no longer allowed to have reasoned disagreements. We are seldom willing to listen to "the other side," much less have an intelligent debate about issues. I enjoy reading contrasting opinions as long as they are well thought out. One needs to read the conservative Christianity Today, the liberal Christian Century, and the very liberal, yet very orthodox Theology Today. This week we remember that February 22 is also the birthday of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), so I spent some time with his writings.
Along with Friedrich Nietzsche, Schopenhauer was one of the great pessimists of 19th-century German philosophy. He had much to be pessimistic about. For most of his life he met the "resistance of a dull world," which took the form of indifference to his work. He was continually overshadowed by his philosophical foe, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Not until a few years before his death did international acclaim come to Schopenhauer. He eventually had a profound influence on modern existentialism, psychology, philosophy of history, and literature.
He considered himself the successor of Kant, but equated Kant's thing-in-itself with a blind, impelling force manifesting itself in individuals as the will to live. Schopenhauer saw the world as a constant conflict of individual wills resulting in frustration and pain. Pleasure is simply the absence of pain and can be achieved only through the renunciation of desire (a concept that reflects Schopenhauer's studies of Hindu scripture). His most important work is The World as Will and Representation (1818). His doctrine of the primacy of the will influenced Nietzsche and Freud. The publication in England of an attack on Hegel's philosophy led to the appearance of favorable treatises on Schopenhauer's work. Translations of his books were made, and he was praised throughout Europe. Amid the prevailing Romanticism of the time his emphasis on vitalism, intuition, creativity, and the irrational found a warm reception. He spent his last years revising his books. He died suddenly in Frankfurt on Sept. 21, 1860.
The following are some of my favorite quotations from his writings. One certainly may not agree with all he says, but it is all thought-provoking, and therefore very worthwhile.
"How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do."
"In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods."
"National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right."
"The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable."
"Rascals are always sociable - more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company."
"Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost."
"Hatred is an affair of the heart: contempt that of the head."
"There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome-to be got over."
"Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try to win one another's money. Idiots!"
"Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect."
"All the cruelty and torment of which the world is full is in fact merely the necessary result of the totality, of the forms under which the will to live is objectified."
“The only obstacles to happiness are pain and boredom.”
Having spent a lot of time recently with those with whom I frequently agree, Neibuhr, MacDonald, Chesterton, Spurgeon, Barth, and Lewis, a good dose of Schopenhauer was invigorating.
Yours & His,
DED
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