Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - HCJ

Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer was a German philosopher and one of the great pessimists and he was known for his philosophical clarity. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, claimed that the world is fundamentally what humans recognize in themselves as their will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fully satisfied. He became a student at a University in 1809. There he studied metaphysics and he studied under a man who advised him to concentrate on Plato and Immanuel Kant, which is where he draws some of his influence from - Schopenhauer accepted Kant's double-aspect of the universe — the phenomenal (world of experience) and the noumenal (the true world, independent of experience).

Nietzsche: Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher. He wrote critical texts on religion, philosophy and science. Nietzsche's influence comes notably from existentialism. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental tradition. His key ideas include the death of God, perspectivism, the Ubermensch, and the will to power. Central to his philosophy is the idea of "life-affirmation", which involves an honest questioning of all ideas that drain life's expansive energies.

Nietzsche is renowned for saying that “god is dead” and that all that will follow this is violence – which in turn will lead to the end of mankind, Nietzsche also tries to find a “super-man” person. Nietzsche now shows his true pessimism about life, he says that there won’t be humans forever, so he believes that we will all die and that nothing we do matters at all, but he says this as a good thing... crazy right? In 1872 Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. However, his colleagues expressed little enthusiasm for the work. He renamed his book “Hellenism and Pessimism”. Nietzsche criticises Schopenhauer and calls him a Nihilist – he believes that Christians are the worst, they merely wait for death when we have just one life, we must live it to the fullest and ensure we die with no regrets, he believes that the Ubermensch does not apologise for its actions and therefore has no regrets.

Well that’s all for now, just for my revision purposes really, plus my notes are sort of bare for these two which isn’t good! Anyway, more to come sometime soon, so...

Stay classy :) x