Hans

@hans1671102377 · 22 Feb 2023

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Schopenhauer: selfishness, malice & pity

FIL:Today marks 235 years since Arthur Schopenhauer was born. According to the pessimistic German thinker, man is driven by blind selfishness.
With relentless persistence, Schopenhauer pointed out that everything that exists, lives, and breathes is the embodiment of an unreasonable, blind, purposeless and insatiable will to live that is infinite in his pursuit. We often assume that the will is an independent, spiritual ability on the basis of which we act purposefully. But the will, in a schopenhauerian sense, is outside our control. We do not have the will, but are subject to it. We are not alive, but are lived by this unconscious, relentless urge. By “will”, Schopenhauer means both the whole of our psychological processes and the principle that controls them. The example of this is sexual desire, but there are also many motives, emotions, moods and experiences that, outside our conscious self, can control and keep us under our control.
Schopenhauer, a long-time poodle owner and one of the founders of animal protection in his hometown of Frankfurt in 1841, is ashamed of this morality “which denies the eternal being, that is in everything that has life and that seems unfathomable and meaningful from all eyes []”. In short, the true basis of morality is that we recognize our own true being in others (and also in animals).
I can totally relate to this.
#philosophy #Schopenhauer
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https://www.filosofie.nl/schopenhauer-egoisme-kwaadaardigheid-medelijden/