Schopenhauer

Whittaker, Thomas, 1856-1935Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 116K words
Chapters: 12

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Schopenhauer by Thomas WhittakerAuthor: Whittaker, Thomas, 1856-1935,Language: English, Class: B: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Release Date: Dec 12, 2011

Editor's review

This is an introduction to Schopenhauer's thought by Thomas Whittaker, one of the early English-language works systematically presenting Schopenhauer's philosophy. The book surveys Schopenhauer's metaphysics, doctrine of the will, aesthetics, and ethics; it is concise and relatively plain in language, suitable as a first step into Schopenhauer's philosophical system. Unlike the aphoristic, emotional expression of the original works, this book leans toward academic summary and commentary, helping readers first build a conceptual framework; returning to The World as Will and Representation afterwards will go much more smoothly. Because it was written early, the book carries the scholarly tastes and habits of expression of its time, and readers need some tolerance for late nineteenth-century British philosophical writing. As reading practice, it suits chapter-by-chapter progress in a quiet setting, with notes mapping core terms such as will, representation, and Idea. As a public-domain e-book it is easy to obtain and also suitable as supplementary material for philosophy courses or a shared reading text for book clubs.

Who it's for

A good fit for

General readers wanting a systematic introduction to Schopenhauer but daunted by the length of the originals
Lower-year philosophy students using it as supplementary reading for conceptual clarification
Book clubs needing a moderately long, clearly structured shared text
Self-learners interested in nineteenth-century Western philosophical history

Not a good fit for

Readers who want to read Schopenhauer's own aphoristic works directly
Specialist researchers seeking the latest contemporary Schopenhauer scholarship
Readers used to modern popular philosophy who have no patience for early academic prose

Reading tips

Read the table of contents and introduction first, drawing a map of relations among core terms such as will, representation, and Idea
After each chapter, restate the main points in three to five sentences, then compare with relevant passages in Schopenhauer's originals
Skip passages of commentary where possible and prioritize the summaries of Schopenhauer's thought
Use a philosophy dictionary to check English renderings of German terms appearing in the book, reducing obstacles to understanding

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book written by Schopenhauer himself?

No. It is by Thomas Whittaker, an introductory commentary on Schopenhauer's philosophy, a study rather than an original work by Schopenhauer; readers can use it to build an overall framework first.

What level of English difficulty is it?

It is late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century academic English, with long sentences but not obscure vocabulary. Readers with university-level English reading ability and familiarity with basic philosophical terms can finish it with a dictionary.

After reading it, can I directly understand Schopenhauer's originals?

It lays a conceptual foundation but cannot fully replace the originals. After finishing, it is advisable to go on to the preface and first volume of The World as Will and Representation, applying the framework to the original text.

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About the author

Whittaker, Thomas, 1856-1935 Author · British · 1856–1935

Thomas Whittaker (1856–1935) was a British philosopher whose main field of activity was the writing of the history of philosophy. He was one of the founders of the Aristotelian Society, an academic body that provided a stable platform for regular discussion and the publication of papers in British philosophy. In his own research he focused on Neoplatonism, attending to the development of that tradition in late classical thought and to its later influence. As far as the available public sources show, details of his life are limited, and his scholarly profile emerges chiefly through his writings and his work for the Society. One work of his is held in the collection, the monograph Schopenhauer; it belongs to the genre of commentary on philosophers, guiding general readers through Schopenhauer's metaphysics and doctrine of the will and his place in the German philosophical tradition, in a clear and plain style that shows a historian of philosophy combining exposition with assessment.