SCHOPENHAUER, ARTHUR German philosopher, was born at Danzig on Feb. 22, 1788, the son of a wealthy merchant, who removed to Hamburg in 1793 when the free city, for which he had the strongest patriotic feeling, sur rendered to Prussia. His mother, nee Johanna von Trosiener, who was 20 years younger than her husband, became a novelist of repute. The marriage was an unhappy one, and the two children, Arthur and Adele, suffered in their nerves. The elder Schopen hauer wanted his children to see the world, and they spent much time in Holland, France and England.
Education.—The son's education was intermittent. He spent two years (1797-99) at Havre, four years in an elementary school at Hamburg, six months in England, and then entered a merchant's office in Hamburg. He had been there for three months when his father, who had shown signs of mental malady, fell or threw him self into the canal.
His mother settled in Weimar, where she gathered round her a small salon. Arthur left his merchant's office, and spent two years in studying the classics. In 1809 (aged 21) his mother handed over to him the third part of the paternal estate, which gave him an income of LI5o, and in Oct. 1809 he entered the University of GOttingen, where he read especially Plato and Kant. Among his few acquaintances were Bunsen, the subsequent scholar diplomatist, and Bunsen's pupil, W. B. Astor. Even then he found his trustiest mate in a poodle. After two years at Gottingen he took two years at Berlin, where he heard Fichte and Schleier macher. Here he also dipped into various fields of learning, notably into the classics under Wolf. Between 181i and 1813 the lectures of Fichte (later published by Schopenhauer from his notes in his Nachgelassene W erke) dealt with what he called the "facts of consciousness" and the "theory of science," and struggled to present his final conception of philosophy. Though Schopenhauer listened usually in opposition, his speculation was undoubtedly influenced by Fichte.
In Berlin Schopenhauer was lonely and unhappy. One of his interests was to visit the Hospital La Charite and study the evi dence it afforded of the interdependence of the moral and the physical in man. In the early days of 1813 sympathy with the national enthusiasm against the French carried him so far as to buy a set of arms, but no farther. He hurried away to the quiet Thuringian town of Rudolstadt, where, in the inn "Zum Ritter," he wrote, helped by books from the Weimar library, his thesis for the degree of doctor in philosophy at Jena. His first book, t]ber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (1813), appeared at Rudolstadt. In the winter of 1813 Schopenhauer spent a few months at Weimar with his mother. But the strain of daily association was too much for their antagonistic natures. His splenetic temper and her volatility culminated in an open rupture in May 1814. From that time till her death in 1838
Schopenhauer never saw his mother again. At Weimar he made some acquaintances who influenced the course of his thought. Conversations with the orientalist, F. Mayer, directed his studies to the philosophical speculations of ancient India, made available in Friedrich Schlegel's Language and Wisdom of the Old Hindus, and Anquetil Duperron's version of the Upanishads. Most im portant was his contact with Goethe, who interested him in his investigations on colours. Schopenhauer took up the subject in earnest, and wrote fiber das Sehen und die Farben (1816). The essay was written at Dresden, where he settled after the rupture with his mother. It had been sent in ms. to Goethe in the autumn of 1815, who, finding in it a transformation of his own ideas, in clined to regard the author as an opponent.
"The World as Will and Idea."—The interest of his life at Dresden was the composition of a work which should give expression in all its aspects to the idea of man's nature and destiny which had been gradually taking shape in his mind. More and more he learned from Cabanis and Helvetius to see in the will and the passions the determinants of intellectual life, and in the character and the temper the source of theories and beliefs. The conviction was borne in upon him that scientific explanation could never do more than systematize and classify the mass of appear ances which to our habit-blinded eyes seem to be the reality. To get at this reality and thus to reach a standpoint higher than that of aetiology was the problem of his as of all philosophy. It is only by such a tower of speculation that an escape is possible from the spectre of materialism, theoretical and practical; and so, says Schopenhauer, "the just and good must all have this creed : I believe in a metaphysic." The mere reasonings of theoretical science leave no room for art, and practical prudence usurps the place of morality. The higher life of aesthetic and ethical activity —the beautiful and the good—can only be based upon an intuition which penetrates the heart of reality. At the end of 1818 the book appeared (with the date 1819) as Die Welt als und V orstellung (The World as Will and Idea), in four books, with an appendix containing a criticism of the Kantian philosophy (Eng. trans. by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, 1883). Long before the work was published Schopenhauer had rushed off to Italy. He stayed for a time in Venice, where Byron was then living, but the two did not meet ; he also visited Rome, Naples and Paestum. About this time the family fortunes of his mother and sister and himself were threatened by the failure of the firm in Danzig, and Schopenhauer showed considerable business ability in saving something from the wreck.