Imho, suffering is built in to the nature of thought, which explains why suffering is a universal property of the human condition, whatever the time and place etc. Does Schopensour have anything to say along those lines? — Jake
If suffering arises from thought itself, then it seems such schemes would be addressing the heart of the issue. Your, um, thoughts? — Jake
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) was a German philosopher known for his atheism and pessimism—in fact he is the most prominent pessimist in the entire western philosophical tradition. Schopenhauer’s most influential work, The World As Will and Representation, examines the role of humanity’s main motivation, which Schopenhauer called will. His analysis led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires cause suffering and can never be fulfilled; consequently, he favored a lifestyle of negating desires, similar to the teachings of Buddhism and Vedanta. Schopenhauer influenced many thinkers including Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Einstein, and Freud.
In “On the Sufferings of the World” (1851), Schopenhauer boldly claims: “Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim.” In other words, suffering and misfortune are the general rule in life, not the exception. Contradicting what many philosophers had stated previously, Schopenhauer argued that evil is a real thing, with good being the lack of evil. We can see this by considering that happiness or satisfaction always imply some state of pain or unhappiness being brought to an end; and by the fact that pleasure is not generally as pleasant as we expect, while pain much worse than imagined. To those who claim that pleasure outweighs pain or that the two balance out, he asks us “to compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.”[ii] And he quickly follows with another powerful image: “We are like lambs in the field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who choose out first one and then another for his prey. So it is that in our good days we are all unconscious of the evil Fate may have in store for us—sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or reason.”[iii]
Schopenhauer continues by offering multiple ideas and images meant to bring the reality of human suffering to the fore: a) that time marches on and we cannot stop it—it stops only when we are bored; b) that we spend most of life working, worrying, suffering, and yet even if all our wishes were fulfilled, we would then either be bored or desire suicide; c) in youth we have high hopes, but that is because we don’t consider what is really in store for us—life, aging, and death; (Of aging Schopenhauer says: “It is bad today, and it will be worse tomorrow; and so on till the worst of all.”[iv]); d) it would be much better if the earth was lifeless like the moon; life interrupts the “blessed calm” of non-existence; f) if two persons who were friends in youth met in old age, they would feel disappointed in life merely by the sight of each other; they will remember when life promised so much, in youth, and yet delivered so little; g) “If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist?”[v] Schopenhauer argues that we should not impose the burden of existence on children. Of his pessimism he says:
I shall be told … that my philosophy is comfortless—because I speak the truth; and people preferred to be assured that everything the Lord has made is good. Go to the priests, then, and leave the philosophers in peace … do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to the lessons you have been taught. That is what those rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please, and you will get it.[vi]
Schopenhauer also argues that non-human animals are happier than human beings since happiness is basically freedom from pain. The essence of this argument is that the bottom line for both human and non-human animals is pleasure and pain which has as it basis the desire for food, shelter, sex, and the like. We are more sensitive to both pleasure and pain than non-human animals, but we also have much greater passion and emotion regarding their desires. This passion results from our ability to reflect upon the past and future, leaving us susceptible to both ecstasy and despair. We try to increase our happiness with various forms of luxury as well as desiring honor, other persons praise, and intellectual pleasures. But all of these pleasures are accompanied by the constant increased desire and the threat of boredom, a pain unknown to the brutes. Thought, in particular, creates a vast amount of passion, but in the end, all of our struggles are for the same things that non-human animals try to attain—pleasure and pain. But humans, unlike animals, are haunted by the constant specter of death, a realization which ultimately tips the scale in favor of being a brute. Furthermore, non-human animals are more content with mere existence, with the present moment, than are we who constantly anticipate future joys and sorrows.
And yet animals suffer. What is the point of all their suffering? You cannot claim that it builds their souls or results from their free will. The only justified conclusion is “that the will to live, which underlies the whole world of phenomena, must, in their case satisfy its cravings by feeding upon itself.”[vii] Schopenhauer argues that this state of affairs—pointless evil—is consistent with the Hindu notion that Brahma created the world by a mistake, or with the Buddhist idea that the world resulted from a disturbance of the calm of nirvana, or even with the Greek notion of the world and gods resulting from fate. But the Christian idea that a god was happy with the creation of all this misery is unacceptable. Two things make it impossible for any rational person to believe the world was created by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being: 1) the pervasiveness of evil; and 2) imperfection of human beings. Evil is an indictment of such a creator, but since there is no creator it is really an indictment of reality and of ourselves.
Schopenhauer continues: “If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, and to banish all doubt as to the right way of looking at it, you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary, a sort of penal colony.”[viii] He claims this is the view of Origen, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Cicero, as well as Brahmanism and Buddhism. Human life is so full of misery that if there are invisible spirits they must have become human to atone for their crimes.
If you accustom yourself to this view of life you will regulate your expectations accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents … as anything unusual or irregular; nay, you will find everything is as it should be, in a world where each of us pays the penalty of existence in [their] own particular way.[ix]
Ironically there is a benefit to this view of life; we no longer need to look upon the foibles of our fellow men with surprise or indignation. Instead, we ought to realize that these are our faults too, the faults of all humanity and reality. This should lead to pity for our fellow sufferers in life. Thinking of the world as a place of suffering where we all suffer together reminds us of “the tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every [person] owes to [their] fellows.”[x]
Summary – Schopenhauer thinks life, both individually and as a whole, is meaningless, primarily because of the fact of suffering. It would be better if there was nothing. Given this situation, the best we can do is to extend mercy to our fellow sufferers. — https://reasonandmeaning.com/2015/11/17/arthur-schopenhauer-on-the-sufferings-of-the-world/
Then again, how insatiable a creature is man! Every satisfaction he attains lays the seeds of some new desire, so that there is no end to the wishes of each individual will. And why is this? The real reason is simply that, taken in itself, Will is the lord of all worlds: everything belongs to it, and therefore no one single thing can ever give it satisfaction, but only the whole, which is endless. For all that, it must rouse our sympathy to think how very little the Will, this lord of the world, really gets when it takes the form of an individual; usually only just enough to keep the body together. This is why man is so very miserable.
Life presents itself chiefly as a task — the task, I mean, of subsisting at all, gagner sa vie. If this is accomplished, life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of doing something with that which has been won — of warding off boredom, which, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need. The first task is to win something; the second, to banish the feeling that it has been won; otherwise it is a burden.
Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us — an illusion which vanishes when we reach it; or else when we are occupied with some purely intellectual interest — when in reality we have stepped forth from life to look upon it from the outside, much after the manner of spectators at a play. And even sensual pleasure itself means nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment its aim is attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what we mean by boredom. The hankering after what is strange and uncommon — an innate and ineradicable tendency of human nature — shows how glad we are at any interruption of that natural course of affairs which is so very tedious. — https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/pessimism/chapter2.html
When Schopenhauer says that all life is suffering he means that all life, that is, everything that lives and strives, is filled with suffering. Life wants, and because its wants are mostly unfulfilled, it exists largely in a state of unfulfilled striving and deprivation. Schopenhauer says it thus:
All willing springs from lack, from deficiency, and thus from suffering. Fulfillment brings this to an end; yet for one wish that is fulfilled there remain at least ten that are denied. Further, desiring lasts a long time, demands and requests go on to infinity, fulfillment is short and meted out sparingly. But even the final satisfaction itself is only apparent; the wish fulfilled at once makes way for a new one; the former is a known delusion, the latter a delusion not as yet known. No attained object of willing can give a satisfaction that lasts and no longer declines; but it is always like the alms thrown to a beggar, which reprieves him today so that his misery may be prolonged till tomorrow. Therefore, so long as our consciousness is filled by our will [which is as long as we are will-filled living beings], so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with its constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we never obtain lasting happiness or peace. Essentially, it is all the same whether we pursue or flee, fear harm or aspire to enjoyment; care for the constantly demanding will, no matter in what form, continually fills and moves consciousness; but without peace and calm, true well-being is absolutely impossible. (Die Welt, vol I, p 196)
We have seen this theme in The Book of Ecclesiastes and we could have seen it as well in Leo Tolstoy's A Confession, as well as in Blaise Pascal's Pensées, so it should not really be new to us.
Pascal tells us in his Pensées, for example, that we all do actually realize life to be so full of suffering, emptiness, and unsatisfaction that the only way we can tolerate it is by filling our lives with a whole variety of diversions and entertainments.
Misery.--The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this [diversions] we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death. (Pensées # 171)
Diversion.--As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all. (Pensées # 168)
And Pascal reminds us also about Ecclesiastes and Job.
Misery.--Solomon and Job have best known and best spoken of the misery of man; the former the most fortunate, and the latter most unfortunate of men; the former knowing the vanity of pleasures from experience, the latter the reality of evils. (Pensées # 174)
What Schopenhauer adds to this awareness of universal suffering is, as we saw above, that the root of all life's suffering lies in wanting, desiring and fearing, i.e., in willing
You will see much of Schopenhauer's thinking on this theme in pp 311-26 of Die Welt, so you might want to pay particular attention to those pages.
For example, on p 315 he tells us
The ceaseless efforts to banish suffering achieve nothing more than a change in its form. This is essentially want, lack, care for the maintenance of life. If, which is very difficult, we have succeeded in removing pain in this form, it at once appears on the scene in a thousand others, varying according to age and circumstances, such as sexual impulse, passionate love, jealousy, envy, hatred, anxiety, ambition, avarice, sickness, and so on. Finally, if it cannot find entry in any other shape, it comes in the sad, grey garment of weariness, satiety, and boredom, against which many different attempts are made. Even if we ultimately succeed in driving these away, it will hardly be done without letting pain in again in one of the previous forms, and thus starting the dance once more at the beginning; for every human life is tossed backwards and forwards between pain and boredom.
And even what we call "happiness," he says, is really only a temporary cessation of some particular suffering. Schopenhauer tells us that
All satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is really and essentially always negative only, and never positive. It is not a gratification which comes to us originally and of itself, but it must always be the satisfaction of a wish. For desire, that is to say, want [or will], is the precedent condition of every pleasure; but with the satisfaction, the desire and therefore the pleasure cease; and so the satisfaction or gratification can never be more than deliverance from a pain, from a want. (p 319)
Furthermore, all this suffering is without any purpose or meaning (pp 161-65). It is all pointless and in vain. — http://philosophycourse.info/lecsite/lec-schop-suff.html
Looking through the mechanical lens....
We have to eat and drink regularly to survive. We typically don't turn this never ending life long requirement in to a big complex problem. We calmly accept the fact that a price tag for living is eating and drinking, and we do the regular maintenance which is required. Simple. — Jake
Well ok, if one wishes to turn this fundamentally simple situation in to a huge complex issue for entertainment purposes there's no law against that. But shouldn't the clear minded honest philosopher disclose that this is what they're doing? — Jake
And here is probably the most important takeaway- if existence was satisfying IN AND OF ITSELF there would be no need for need. — schopenhauer1
Existence can be satisfying in and of itself. Very useful information, but the price tag will be it might spoil your Schopenshour hobby. Your call of course. — Jake
And here is probably the most important takeaway- if existence was satisfying IN AND OF ITSELF there would be no need for need. — schopenhauer1
So I agree that we often don't experience existence as being satisfying in and of itself.
That's different than a suggestion that dissatisfaction is somehow a property of existence, and there's nothing that can be done about that etc, as your quote seems to imply. — Jake
However, as human animals, it is in our nature to be dissatisfied, IF it is defined as Schop is defining it, which I think you are missing. — schopenhauer1
However, as human animals, it is in our nature to be dissatisfied — schopenhauer1
However, if you think we are not dissatisfied at almost all times, then as Schop explains, why do we need goals in the first place? — schopenhauer1
Perhaps you could clarify Schop's definition for us in simpler clearer words, if you feel that we are somehow obligated to limit discussion to his definitions. — Jake
When Schopenhauer says that all life is suffering he means that all life, that is, everything that lives and strives, is filled with suffering. Life wants, and because its wants are mostly unfulfilled, it exists largely in a state of unfulfilled striving and deprivation. Schopenhauer says it thus:
All willing springs from lack, from deficiency, and thus from suffering. Fulfillment brings this to an end; yet for one wish that is fulfilled there remain at least ten that are denied. Further, desiring lasts a long time, demands and requests go on to infinity, fulfillment is short and meted out sparingly. But even the final satisfaction itself is only apparent; the wish fulfilled at once makes way for a new one; the former is a known delusion, the latter a delusion not as yet known. No attained object of willing can give a satisfaction that lasts and no longer declines; but it is always like the alms thrown to a beggar, which reprieves him today so that his misery may be prolonged till tomorrow. Therefore, so long as our consciousness is filled by our will [which is as long as we are will-filled living beings], so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with its constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we never obtain lasting happiness or peace. Essentially, it is all the same whether we pursue or flee, fear harm or aspire to enjoyment; care for the constantly demanding will, no matter in what form, continually fills and moves consciousness; but without peace and calm, true well-being is absolutely impossible. (Die Welt, vol I, p 196)
It is in our nature to be physically hungry. The physical hunger arises again and again, over and over, day after day, all throughout our lives, until we die. Observe how we don't turn this reality in to fuel for cynicism, despair and grand philosophy. Instead, we make peace with the necessity of managing this chronic need, and address the need in a practical manner. — Jake
It is also in our nature to suffer from chronic psychic hunger, that's true, agreed. But again there is no need cynicism, despair and grand philosophy. Just as with physical hunger we have the option to address psychic hunger in a straightforward practical manner. And just as is true with physical hunger, there is no permanent solution. Just as is true with physical hunger it's a case of ongoing management. — Jake
What unites physical hunger and psychic hunger is that they are both inevitable by products of mechanical processes, digestion and thinking — Jake
The dissatisfaction is a product of thought. Thought can be managed to some degree. It is possible to experience reality as being sufficient in and of itself. I'm guessing that Schop knew nothing about any of this given the time and place where he lived. Just a guess, could be wrong, not a Schop expert here obviously. — Jake
What choice other than physical suicide do we have? — schopenhauer1
What Schop means by reality not being sufficient in itself is that we would not ever get bored, we would not ever be restless, we would have no need for anything if mere existence was itself satisfying — schopenhauer1
My point is that there is no reason for cynicism, despair and relentless gloominess because there are things we can do to address the problem. — Jake
There's no problem. All Schopenhauer did was lower the bar for what entails suffering to such an extent that everyday life is suddenly filled with it. In other words, Schopenhauer was a pussy. — Benkei
You're, of course, free to adopt Schopenhauer's definition of suffering and equate a lot of things with suffering that have nothing to do with any common sense idea of what suffering means (e.g. pain, distress or hardship). Boredom doesn't come close. Striving for better things, reaching goals aren't suffering. The possible resulting search for something new after great achievements isn't hardship. Only an emotional pessimist will lower the bar for suffering to a level where taking a crap is an existential problem.
All willing springs from imagination. — Benkei
It still stands that this definition is a characterization of what is the case. We will because we cannot help it. It is in our nature as restless animals. The counterpoint to this would be that existence would be satisfying in and of itself without any needs- but that is not our world. — schopenhauer1
To the degree I understand him, Schopensour the philosopher (and the poster) does seem to be writing about topics that are worth discussing. I do think we cram our lives with busyness primarily to avoid facing an inner emptiness, that we create meaning out of nothing to have a story to fill the silence with. Hopefully that is a generally accurate summary. — Jake
The counterpoint to this would be that existence would be satisfying in and of itself without any needs- but that is not our world. — schopenhauer1
All Schopenhauer did was lower the bar for what entails suffering to such an extent that everyday life is suddenly filled with it. In other words, Schopenhauer was a pussy. — Benkei
I don't see how one could find something satisfying other than from the position of having been unsatisfied? They seem to go together. We are restless, or we are resting, lively or lifeless, hungry or sated; comfortable or discomforted, etc. Call it all suffering, why? — unenlightened
I think that's unnecessarily judgmental. — Benkei
What's wrong with creating meaning in an inherently meaningless world? — Benkei
To accept is to keep living. To deny is to suicide. Very interesting choice we are given. — schopenhauer1
Unless you mean that you have never been in a dark enough place — ArguingWAristotleTiff
Hemlock is just never on the breakfast menu for me, and it seems to be always there for him - — unenlightened
I don't think it is a mistake to find life burdensome, any more than it is to find it a fascinating and joyful privilege, well worth a few slings and arrows. But it is perhaps a mistake to make one's own condition a universal philosophy. — unenlightened
All satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is really and essentially always negative only, and never positive. It is not a gratification which comes to us originally and of itself, but it must always be the satisfaction of a wish. For desire, that is to say, want [or will], is the precedent condition of every pleasure; but with the satisfaction, the desire and therefore the pleasure cease; and so the satisfaction or gratification can never be more than deliverance from a pain, from a want. — Schopenhauer
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