I have recently read Yalom's "The Schopenhauer Cure", and while I was greatly impressed by the beginning of the book, I found to my dismay that its ending was a senile, political conversion scene. It was pathetic, similarly to the ending of "God's not Dead" (the movie). The latter displays how a philosophy professor who is a die-hard atheist has a deathbed conversion to Christianity after he is hit by a car which crushes his lungs. Similarly, "The Schopenhauer Cure" shows how Philip, an ex-sexual addict who has been saved by Schopenhauer's philosophy, has a conversion away from his pessimism/misanthropy after spending months in a therapy group, in training to become a counselor himself. What disgusts me about both of these so called "works of art" is that they are untruthful to reality - they betray it in order to fulfill political motivations. One to show the supremacy of the Christian worldview, and the other to show the wrongness of Schopenhauer, and the rightness of life-affirming philosophers like Nietzsche. Both presume that there is a "right" way of being, and try to show how one who lives "wrongly" should/must be converted.

What I find totally assumed, and never questioned through the book, is the idea that "everything is permitted"; everything is merely human, all too human, and as such excusable. Rebecca sleeping with a random man for money in Vegas, Pam using Tony as a sex toy, Gill being a drunkard, and not taking care of his wife, etc. At the opposite end, Schopenhauer is said to have been laughed at by his contemporaries, to have failed to enjoy the pleasures of life, to have failed to explore the beauty of human relationships, and to have failed to appreciate other "bipeds". In contrast to these "human, all too human" characters, someone like Philip, or Schopenhauer appear painted in a bad light - as if one must engage in the same problems/activities as others to fit the correct standard. Schopenhauer's ideal of the "strong" man that is undisturbed by the movement of external circumstances and remains detached from the crowd is degraded, and shown to ultimately be untenable - everything, in other words, is reduced to being "human, all too human" - even Philip, a character built entirely around the personality of Schopenhauer, is shown to be "human, all too human" in the end. Why?

Because Yalom believes that it is psychologically healthy to be "human, all too human". That is what he identifies to be the standard of good; psychiatric/psychological treatment ought to lead one to this condition. But the fact that this is the average condition of mankind in this day and age is not sufficient reason to justify making it a standard of psychological health. There were periods in history when this wasn't the standard of the majority. How can modern man have the arrogance to say that his standard is now better than that of the many many other cultures that existed before? Why do we think that the democratisation of the world (both in politics and in social matters) is something good? Cultures have existed in the past which have believed the opposite. What gives us a right to condemn them as being wrong?

It could be argued that the man who needs nothing from others - someone like Philip/Schopenhauer - is the one who is actually psychologically superior. As such, Philip's fall to the condition of "human, all too human" at the end, with his emotional outburst, is just that - a fall, a corruption of a superior individual by a degrading environment. It could be argued that Schopenhauer's misanthropy was justified if we are to judge by his standard - why should a man of his superior stature seek relationships with bipeds? He will look for others of his stature, and if he finds none, then nothing is lost, simply because there is nothing to be gained from the bipeds in the first instance.

Ethically speaking - it seems to me to be a great injustice when the majority attempts to impose its standard upon individuals who are different. What do you think about any or all of this? And what do you think about the book? :)

(I put this in Books and Papers, but I'm not sure it's the place where it belongs... if a moderator believes it's better to go in "The Lounge" or anywhere else, please don't hesitate to move it! Thanks, and apologies for not knowing better where to put it!)