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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ Wehry (00:03.134)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host PJ Weary and I'm here today with Dr. David Bather-Woods, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. And we're here to talk about his book, Arthur Schopenhauer, The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist. Dr. Wood, it's wonderful to have you on today.
David Bather Woods (00:21.61)
It's a pleasure, thank you for inviting me.
PJ Wehry (00:25.017)
So Dr. Woods, to start us off, why this book?
David Bather Woods (00:29.688)
Well, I really like books of this kind. I love philosophical biographies. I love biographies in general, just to get the story of somebody's life. And there are some biographies of Schopenhauer out there, but a lot of them are on the long side and quite comprehensive. This one, I wanted to just get some of the ideas and look at how they intertwined with the events of his life.
and, I tend to find that learning more about the story of somebody's life makes the ideas somehow more excited, makes you feel more motivated to read. Sherbert now is a philosopher who he was actually kind of my gateway into doing philosophy in general. One of the first serious philosophers I read, you know, practically in his entirety. And, and so I'd been wanting to do this sort of book for ages.
And then I suppose the other thing is that Chauvin's reputation precedes him as a pessimist. And at the moment, people are of a slightly more gloomy mindset. So I thought it was quite interesting to explore how he coped with his pessimistic disposition, how he lived with it. And I suppose a lot of these types of philosophical biographies are running question in them is how to live, how to live well. And
I thought it was quite interesting to explore that question from the perspective of somebody who raised very serious questions about whether it's even possible to live well. That's one of the tensions that the book plays with as it tells Schoenau's life story.
PJ Wehry (02:12.712)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, is you said it helps people be excited about it? Pardon me. My wife brought me some Earl Grey tea. So I know. Yeah. So I. Yeah. Speaking of excited. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. This is something we regularly drink. I didn't like just do this to like establish camaraderie, but I'm happy it's there. I'm happy. Yeah. So you mentioned that.
David Bather Woods (02:20.206)
Lovely. Perfect. I approve. As a British man, I approve.
PJ Wehry (02:40.328)
By reading someone's biography, this philosophical biography, it helps produce excitement to learn. Does it also give a unique dimension of, a unique facet to the learning experience? Does it help, does it help illumine certain things and kind of how does that work? What is unique about that if it does?
David Bather Woods (02:59.758)
I mean, I think it does for a few reasons. I think philosophical biography is a really interesting genre. For me, I've always been more of a concrete thinker. I find it hard to think through ideas if they're disassociated from their context and their origin in somebody's mind. And I sometimes like to think, even though I try not to certainly make
I do sometimes like to make a connection between the ideas and what that person was trying to pursue, what goals they were trying to achieve in their life. And I suppose the other thing is that
If you decontextualize somebody's ideas, it can be really actually quite hard to see how they fit together. In an ideal world, a system of thought would be perfectly rationalizable and you'd be able to see how everything fits together. But actually in practice, the way an individual person accumulates ideas over the course of their lives is way more haphazard and arbitrary. And it's kind of a fun puzzle figuring out how they all
you know, bags together in one person's mind. So there's that. And I just find human beings interesting. I think in lots of fields of study by nature, you're dealing with abstractions and more or less every intellectual endeavor, aside from biography, you have to deal with abstractions. have to deal with kind of generalizations and universals, but with a
Person, when you study a person, you're studying something entirely specific, entirely unique. It's the most unique object you can possibly study is the mind of another person. I think that's quite an exciting thing to do as well. So that's, think, what appeals to me with philosophical biographies in general. And obviously for me, Schopenhauer's natural choice, he spent so long studying his work.
PJ Wehry (05:14.524)
And so forgive me if we're going too far afield here, but you've mentioned your love for philosophical biographies. there besides obviously buying a reading your excellent one, which should be at the top of everyone's list. What would you recommend? What are some of your favorite philosophical biographies besides your own?
David Bather Woods (05:24.205)
you
Mm-hmm.
David Bather Woods (05:32.227)
Yeah. So the one that immediately springs to mind is, was an inspiration to me for this biography, which was Sarah Bakewell's book on Michel de Montaigne, sort of Renaissance, the French philosopher who was, who invented the essay form. And the reason I recommend that, even though there are other biographies of Montaigne, there are arguably more scholarly biographies of Montaigne, although that might be a bit of a...
PJ Wehry (05:49.897)
Mm-hmm.
David Bather Woods (06:01.184)
specious distinction. Her one is about, her one is called how to live rather than like just a life of Montaigne. It leads with a question. And I think again, biography since its historical inception, since Plutarch's lives or what have you, has always been more than about just putting down the facts of a life. It's always been about setting up models for how
PJ Wehry (06:03.443)
Yeah.
David Bather Woods (06:31.362)
these human beings did live, what we might emulate. And so, again, I thought it was a kind of nice, slightly cheeky challenge to put Schopenhauer into that frame because of, well, I guess I've already mentioned that he strongly questioned that it's possible to live well, being the pessimist that he was, but he was also deeply flawed. One of my other favorite, not a philosophical biography,
But I remember reading a long biography of Charles Darwin when I was starting my PhD, just out of interest really. And I remember thinking what a wonderful man he was, such a good husband and father. didn't seem to be any scandal. The closest scandal was that he was probably too closely related to his wife who was a first cousin, I think. That was the most...
PJ Wehry (07:27.23)
Yeah.
David Bather Woods (07:27.47)
in terms of family scandals, you compare that to say, Marx and Hegel, people in sort of Schopenhauer's generation, who were not good family men, as far as I could see, who had children outside of wedlock with the other women in their household and things like that. you know, John Stuart Mill is another one. So, Phyllis Rose's book, Parallel Lives, which is a portrait of five marriages in Victorian England.
She looks at John Stuart Mill's marriage to Harriet Taylor. And again, he seems like a very decent man, whether you agree with his philosophy or not. So Schopenhauer was not always a decent man. He's a flawed character. So I thought it was interesting to try to answer that question as to whether he too lived well, whether he too is a model.
for others to follow. And I did find things in his life that were admirable, certainly, apart from the fact that he became one of the greatest philosophers of the century.
PJ Wehry (08:35.474)
Yeah, you're right. Well, and it's a
It is funny how you'll find weird things in someone's philosophy and then you read their biography and you're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. That is just weird. That's just because, you know, like I'll have friends who love Augustine and like he's a little weird about sex though. And then you read his biography and you're like, oh, okay. That like, that checks out. That's just, he's got a personal struggle here. And we're like, okay. And then,
David Bather Woods (08:44.745)
You're so cute.
David Bather Woods (08:48.823)
Yes.
David Bather Woods (09:02.989)
Yeah. Yeah. And Rousseau as well, another, you know, he like Augustine, his biography is, autobiography is named the Confessions because they had so many skeletons in the closet. Yeah. There's lots of philosophers who are deeply flawed characters, which is ironic given that, you know, all the way back to Socrates philosophy supposed to be one strain of it at least is supposed to be how to live well, how to live
Where well doesn't just mean how to be happy all the time, but how to be decent and moral and noble and what have you. And again, you could think of lots of philosophers who've not managed to achieve that.
PJ Wehry (09:45.522)
Or I look at someone like Kant who I've always been confused. Like, I'm like, there's no joy involved in your morals, your ethics at all. And then you read his life and you're like, this is a pretty boring person. You're like, that was like your thing. okay, I can't, I'm sorry. That's not how I work, you know? Anyways, but that's, go ahead.
David Bather Woods (09:48.248)
Mmm.
David Bather Woods (09:53.262)
Mmm.
David Bather Woods (09:56.757)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
David Bather Woods (10:02.827)
Yeah.
David Bather Woods (10:06.414)
Well, that's an interesting one. you know, Nietzsche said that all philosophy is unconscious autobiography. And Nietzsche was prone to read the light, you know, there's a bit of the genealogy of morals, which reads a bit like a proto psychoanalysis of Schopenhauer's sexuality how it drove a lot of his thinking. But the interesting point that Nietzsche is making is actually that sometimes the
the reflection you find of a philosopher in their life story, it really is a mirror image in the sense that it's kind of flipped backwards. So, Schopenhauer was this incredibly robust, you know, of virile man with indomitable will and his whole philosophy was about the exact opposite, which was something that Nietzsche hated, which was that it was all about the denial of the will.
the renunciation of the ego and so on. Whereas Nietzsche, by contrast, was this physically very frail, of spiritually quite gentle and sensitive man by the stories you hear about him. People took a lot of pity on him and wanted to care for him because he seemed to be so ill and poorly all the time. then you have this philosophy of the Ubermensch and strength and power and health.
PJ Wehry (11:04.179)
Yes.
David Bather Woods (11:33.526)
He was like the mirror image, you know, the opposing image in his philosophy too. So sometimes the relationship between the life and the thought is actually a perfect inversion as well as a reflection.
PJ Wehry (11:46.258)
Yes. Almost like they're trying to fill gaps in their life or something like that. Yeah. Okay. my apologies. We're like way, you know, I'm enjoying this, we're 12 minutes in. My fault. Let me ask you then, since we've established the biography and the importance of philosophical biography, how does Schopenhauer's
David Bather Woods (11:52.322)
Yeah, of course. It's natural.
I know, getting off the head of ourselves.
David Bather Woods (12:03.406)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (12:14.622)
biography, what does that reveal about him? You've already mentioned that he was a very virile, strong-willed man. And that's a fascinating thing for the world's greatest pessimist, right? And I also love that there's this kind of cheeky, you're like, we always give like these models who are to use cons like this exemplar, the best of a category. And you're like, here's the world's greatest pessimist. So this is how you should live. And I just I love that idea.
David Bather Woods (12:24.919)
Yeah.
David Bather Woods (12:32.908)
Yeah.
David Bather Woods (12:39.32)
Yeah, exactly.
Well, let me tell you about his life then I suppose, let's go all the way back to the start. So Chopinet was born in 1788 in Danzig, which is now Gdansk in Poland. Although at the time it was a free city, but then it was annexed by Prussia. one of the regions of what would become Germany after unification. And he died 72 years later in 1860 in Frankfurt.
and by that point he is becoming quickly becoming known as one of the greatest philosophers of the century, but it wasn't always bound to be that way. In fact, it was very much not on Schopenhauer's family's radar for him to become a thinker and a scholar. He came from a generations of shipping merchants. So Danzig was in the Hanseatic league and when they, you know, a trading league around Europe.
And when they moved from Danzig, they actually moved to Hamburg, another trading port. And Schopenhauer was educated in a way that would have prepared him to take over the family business one day until a hugely pivotal moment in his life when he's 17, his father is discovered dead in the canal behind the family home. And the family, although they present it publicly as accidental, and they would stick to that line, privately
they suspected suicide. And what it meant actually was that Schopenhauer and his mother and his sister, once the family business was liquidated, could pursue a totally different life, which was focused actually on using that independent wealth to go into the life of the mind. In Schopenhauer's case, philosophy, in his mother's case, she was a novelist, a travel writer, a Saloniste.
David Bather Woods (14:43.03)
And his sister even became a writer of poems and short stories and novels and travel writing, as well as a visual artist. She made these cutout silhouettes that were really delicate, exquisitely beautiful depictions of elves and nymphs and so on. So they became an artistic family instead of a business family. But for a long, yes, go for it.
PJ Wehry (15:03.753)
Forgive me, I've never... You said Salon East. Is that someone who participates in a salon?
David Bather Woods (15:11.062)
And well, more specifically hosts a salon, but good question because yeah, she hosted a regular salon on a Thursday evening in Weimar. And her most distinguished guest was Goethe, who was the greatest poet, still regarded as the greatest poet in German language, I think. And
PJ Wehry (15:15.612)
I didn't know that. Okay. Yes.
David Bather Woods (15:36.953)
Schopenhauer eventually, who venerated Goethe, would be able to collaborate with Goethe more on scientific matters, on optics and color theory. But yeah, she rubbed shoulders with all the big intellectuals and artists of her day. And so she actually almost instantly became successful, whereas Schopenhauer did not. He went to the University of Berlin, which was recently founded, studied under Fichte, amongst other post-Canthian philosophers.
didn't succeed too much there and fled when he thought that Berlin was about to be invaded by Napoleon. And then returns to Berlin about seven years later, having written some books, The Fourfold Rule of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, his doctoral dissertation, and The World of My Representation, his kind of masterpiece, which he writes the first volume of in 1818, when he's just under 30, which is very depressing for anyone who's over 30 to think that.
Jobinara had already written his masterpiece by that age, but still it doesn't sell. It's never recognized, it's not recognized for decades to come. He goes back to Berlin to become a teacher, but in the 10 years that he spends there, he never really gets much, he gets like a handful, literally a handful of students in the sense of about five students at a time. Whereas Hegel, who's the big philosopher of the day is
attracting huge audiences and publishing these enormous complicated books. So he has this miserable 10 year period in the 1820s until the 1830s when the cholera pandemic, which has been ripping all the way from, well, it's the origin apparently is from River Ganges in India, but it just emanates out all over the world, really, including Europe.
And it hits Berlin and Hegel dies, maybe not of cholera, but in that period. And Schopenhauer flees to Frankfurt. When he's in Frankfurt, again, success isn't immediate. He has a few more publications that fall on deaf ears, like the two fundamental problems of ethics, which were originally two prize essays that he submitted to two Scandinavian.
David Bather Woods (18:04.718)
societies of science, one essay on the basis of morality and the other one on free will. Those are published in the 1840s again to not much acclaim, if any. It's only in the 1850s, by which point Schopenhauer is himself in his 60s, that he starts to be reviewed and in particular in Britain. So in early 1850, in 1853, he's reviewed in a periodical called the Westminster Review.
which was founded by Jeremy Bentham, the famous utilitarian philosopher. At one point it was edited by John Stuart Mill. But actually the time that they published this review of Schopenhauer, it was effectively edited by the novelist George Eliot, or Marianne Evans, as her name was, who was a specialist in, particularly in German philosophy. And they write this review to basically say, look, a German who we understand finally.
If you can read German, you can read the open heart, rather than if you can read German, that doesn't necessarily mean you can read Hegel. Doesn't necessarily mean you can read even native Germans who struggled to read Hegel and Kant and so on. The only thing they didn't like in these Victorian liberals was his pessimism, this ultra pessimism, which was a kind of obstacle to progress, of course. But then in the for the remaining seven years of his life, he starts to
You know, there are essay competitions about his work. There are lecture series about his work at German universities. There are people visiting. There's a guy who actually appears from the United States, a guy called Edward Young, who's just graduated Harvard Divinity School. And he appears in Frankfurt to talk to Schopenhauer about, about his philosophy. So he's becoming internationally famous at this point. are, photography has been invented in 1839, the daguerreotype.
Schopenhauer has about 30 daguerreotypes or photographs taken of him in his lifetime. So he becomes famous. And then for the remainder of this entry, he's an agenda setting philosopher. You know, I've already mentioned Nietzsche, but Nietzsche was in large part responding to the challenge of Schopenhauer and pessimism, how to affirm life despite its sufferings and things like that. And he's selling by the tens, maybe, you know, literally the hundreds of thousands, whereas Hegel goes into a bit of a
David Bather Woods (20:30.348)
down period for a while until he's revived at the turn of the century in Britain, actually, among other places. So by the end of the century, he's become something that would have been at the time of his father's death, unthinkable, which is this great, great philosopher, but it took a lot of patience on his part, a nerve, not to bend the will there and to give up. And he never did give up. And that's one of the things I found admirable about his life.
is the integrity and the patience to invest in himself, to back himself, and then to wait it out and not compromise. There are some terrible stories about Schopenhauer on the way, but the overall arc of his life, I think, is a success story.
PJ Wehry (21:19.954)
Hmm. So what are those? mean, but it's it's it's kind of like a logarithmic. It's like it's really low for a long time before it takes off. So.
David Bather Woods (21:28.364)
Yes, and then chipped up. Yeah, it's really, really low for a long time.
PJ Wehry (21:34.77)
What are some of those low points and how, like, do you see those show up in his philosophy?
David Bather Woods (21:38.167)
Yeah. Yeah, they do. mean, he obviously the Berlin years where he's really ignored the actually that my book starts actually kind of in media res in that it starts during the cholera pandemic chapter one. And then it goes back to tell the whole of the story. But in the when he moves to Frankfurt in early 18
Well, he moves in late 1831, but in early 1832, he basically locks himself away in complete self isolation for two whole months. And it's not just like we all did during the pandemic. wasn't for purely for health reasons. It was, it seemed a depressive stint. He was really tired of the world. It had taken its toll on him. He'd an utter failure in Berlin.
You know, things continued in that vein for a long time. His sister and his mother passed away. He didn't have much love for his mother. He did have a lot of affection for his sister and that did affect him deeply. And actually, again, at the time, by the time all his family had died, because Adele Schopenhauer's sister dies in 1849. So that's four years before the Westminster Review article. All three of his closest, you know, his immediate family members
When they died, he was a failure. Well, he wasn't a success yet. And that's hard to have proven yourself by the end of your life, but not in the eyes of the people you love, regardless of how difficult that relationship was, especially with his parents, both his father and his mother. It was not an easy relationship with either of them, but still, they're your parents.
PJ Wehry (23:12.008)
Yeah. Yeah.
David Bather Woods (23:36.277)
if you haven't succeeded in your goals, despite decades of trying by the time that they die, that's got to be hard to live with. He did, when he had his better years in Frankfurt, the last decade of his life, he did have a kind of following of youthful, they weren't actually philosophers, a lot of them were lawyers by training. They were kind of middle-class German men, but they still, they read Schopenhauer with
keen interest and sent him letters and promoted his works in periodicals and wrote about his works, things like that. And then he really felt seen and accepted. So he did have eventually people in his life who could witness his success. But all those things, yeah, would have taken a toll on a person, would have been hard to live with.
PJ Wehry (24:27.7)
So, and part of this discussion as you talk about.
years and decades of patience and persistence. You kind of, one of the ways you, you talk about him in the book is that, is his ambition and how that plays against his pessimism and the way that you, you have a specific way of resolving that tension. Can you talk a little bit about that?
David Bather Woods (24:56.32)
Yeah, well...
There is a tension there, I suppose, because, I mean, to go back to the point about the life can sometimes be an inversion of the thought.
A key tenant of Schopenhauer's pessimism is that the achievements that we pursue in life with such seriousness are often when we actually reach them deeply unfulfilling and very rarely worth all the effort. And so it is ironic that he put so much effort into pursuing this goal of becoming
great philosopher. I mean, to be honest, having said that, what he was really pursuing was recognition as a great philosopher because he was never really, I don't think he was ever, or at least he never presented himself in any doubt that he was a great philosopher. Even since the first prefaces of his works, he was kind of saying, if this falls on deaf ears, that's on you. I'll have my time. People will realize what I'm worth and whatever. I don't know if that was a front.
but it seemed pretty sincere that he, what he was looking for recognition for the, for the great philosophy that he, that he knew he was. I suppose though, another way to look at it is that although Sherman Howe was an, a pessimist about the value of the things that we pursue, that they never make us as, as, as happy as we think that they're never worth the trouble that they cause. One thing he was.
David Bather Woods (26:38.496)
Optimist might not be the right word about it, but one thing he really valued above all and thought it was really worth pursuing was truth, was knowledge, was insight in philosophical form, but in other forms as well. And to the extent that he, you know, his philosophy captured these profound philosophical truth, then he was a success in those terms as well. Not only successful,
in being recognized as a great philosopher, but successful in capturing something that's really worth capturing, which if happiness is not worth capturing, which truth certainly is. So by that measure, he's made a success of his life as well.
PJ Wehry (27:25.308)
And when you talk about insight by other means, if I don't know if I'm real quick, but you mentioned that he had a high regard for poetry. I mean, his mom's a Saloniste. That's my five dollar word for the day. And so she has Goethe in. so, of course, I mean, he would have been exposed to what would be considered the best of German poetry. How would?
David Bather Woods (27:28.238)
Mmm.
David Bather Woods (27:38.85)
Hahaha
David Bather Woods (27:45.39)
Yeah, finest poetry of its day.
PJ Wehry (27:53.876)
How does his high regard for poetry show up in his thought? I don't think we have to explain why it showed up in his thought biographically. mean, you've already, like, it's like, oh, I hung out with Goethe.
David Bather Woods (27:57.977)
Good, so.
David Bather Woods (28:02.262)
Yeah, exactly. Biographically, he's diffused. You know, he's hanging out with the greatest poets of his day. So that's no surprise. So Schopenhauer's aesthetics, his actual philosophy of art, puts enormous value on art because his philosophy, all of his philosophy is set against this pessimism whereby life is essentially suffering.
And the suffering is rooted in, arises from the will to life, because we are involved in this endless cycle of desire and satisfaction that is ultimately hollow and temporary. Another stream of influence on him was Buddhism, which we may be able to talk about later. But aesthetic experience, particularly of natural beauty, but also great works of art, for him is a kind of temporary break from the demands of the will.
where we become totally absorbed by the object of cognition. actually kind of almost literally lose ourselves in an aesthetic experience. And for that moment forget our quotidian worries and demands and just contemplate something disinterestedly, but with a kind of deep and serious engagement. In addition, so that's on the kind of subjective side where you transformed into this will, this
subject. And the objective side, he's quite well, he's literally a Platonist in that he has his own interpretation of the Platonic ideas. And whereas Plato thought that the Platonic ideas were captured by rational means like contemplation in the form of philosophical dialogues and so on. Schopenhauer actually thought that the Platonic ideas are perceived in concrete form in the exemplars of nature that are presented by
works of art. And so he thinks that art, as well as giving us a kind of welcome break from the will to life, gives us a kind of deeper cognitive penetration of natural objects by presenting them in often in states of extremity, often in states of tension to kind of bring out the essence of the thing. But they allow us to see the universal timeless truths of things. You're not just looking at
David Bather Woods (30:31.544)
When you're looking at a, I don't know, a Turner painting of the sea, you're not just seeing any old sea. fact, you don't care which sea it is, that doesn't matter to you too much, unless you're a historian. What you care about is the nature of, well, maybe the nature of water, the nature of light, or the nature of, if there are humans in it, the nature of, you know, human, well, in...
scenes often if there's a boat it looks like it's in trouble. But the hubris of human beings trying to dominate nature and the magnificent power of nature, what have you, these timeless universal things. And there's something to both those things, right? I think he's something there, even if he were to put aside all the metaphysical framing about the world to life and the platonic ideas and so on. The idea that when you go to an art gallery, there's a moment of tranquility and contemplation.
PJ Wehry (31:03.109)
Yeah, yeah!
David Bather Woods (31:29.046)
where a truth is illuminated for you that goes beyond the individual thing that you're actually looking at, the canvas and the paint or what have you. That captures something about art, something deep. So it's no surprise that a lot of his fondest admirers were not actually philosophers, although there were some, I've already mentioned Nietzsche, but were actually a lot of artists, particularly writers and poets.
Because Schervenhauer is himself such a good writer, they may have seen him as a bit of a kindred spirit as well as a supporter of their art.
PJ Wehry (32:10.132)
When you're talking there about the tension and the extremity that art is giving us exemplars of nature, would he include particular specimens from nature? Could those also be exemplars or does it have to be art?
David Bather Woods (32:27.81)
Yeah, that's interesting. So he's living in a time before abstraction in visual arts, you know? So the paradigms of sculpture, the paradigms of painting he was looking at were very much figurative. So it was, I've just said, a painting of water, of the sea, for instance, or of animals or what have you. The only abstract art form really was music. And yet ironically,
It's music that he thinks, music he seems to think is even kind of off the scale because it's not precisely because it's not depicting a platonic idea of a natural form, but seems, well, he becomes quite almost mystical here. He says these things like, even if there were no world that would still be music and that music is itself a direct copy of the world to life. And that when somebody's doing music, they're doing what they're really doing is kind of metaphysics.
All these things that are a little bit hard to interpret, certainly in a literal way, but speak to somebody who is in love with music and deeply fond of music as an art form, even if you can't quite put his finger on what makes it so special and different. But other than music, most of the art forms he has in fact in mind are ones that are literal.
Even architecture, he thinks of as displaying, well, to use a musical metaphor that he uses, the base notes of nature, the basic building blocks like gravity and light and space. He thinks that architecture is supposed to be giving us an insight into platonic forms of those universal forces. even architecture, which isn't figurative, unless you've got sculptural details and so on,
Schopenhauer still thinks of as presenting natural forms. Again, so art theory today might be not so based on presenting natural forms given abstraction and conceptual art and so on, but obviously that would be anachronistic to judge Schopenhauer too much on the basis of later art movements.
PJ Wehry (34:49.748)
Yes, I am curious. mean, it is exactly the I think what you just said we shouldn't do. But it's it is interesting that photography, like most of the art he would experience was figurative, you know, going with like Walter Benjamin, which, of course, is much later. But being like you see a lot of that abstract art, you said he didn't really see abstract art. Part of that is we see that in response to photography. So we I mean,
David Bather Woods (34:56.686)
You
David Bather Woods (35:01.358)
David Bather Woods (35:15.758)
show.
Yes.
PJ Wehry (35:19.124)
Do think that's part of the reason? I mean, not that we know what he would have said because...
David Bather Woods (35:21.122)
Maybe. So we can begin to speculate on what Schopenhauer might have said because I mentioned earlier, photography is really invented in Schopenhauer's lifetime. The earliest, most successful, kind of earliest really successful form of portrait photography was based on the Deguerre type invented by Louis Deguerre, who was actually a almost exact contemporary of Schopenhauer. They were both 51 at the age, at the time that
PJ Wehry (35:33.428)
Yeah.
David Bather Woods (35:50.841)
Daguerre, you know, revealed his invention to the world and the method by which he created these recorded images. And by the early 40s, 1840s, technology was good enough that you could do portraits of people. And as I mentioned, Chabonet had his portrait taken several times, sometimes at the behest of other people, including news outlets and things like that. Now, the thing is, in Chabonet's lifetime, by 1860, so,
a kind of historian of photography would be able to correct me, but to my knowledge, photography in them was still seen as a documentary form rather than an artistic form. Of course, it had aesthetic appeal and things like that, but the aesthetic appeal might be derivative from the subject matter rather than the style of the artist or what have you. Even though, again, if you were to study and analyze, I'm sure you could look at early style in the first two decades of photography.
But Srebrenica did know that photography was, as well as being a big scientific invention, it was an important cultural invention and it might change our visual culture deeply, even just sticking to the documentary kind of function of photography. So the way that fame would interact with photography, Srebrenica was beginning to suspect that it would supersede
PJ Wehry (37:06.772)
Mmm.
David Bather Woods (37:16.578)
the way that newspapers up until that point would have to verbally describe people of interest and people of note. And they would have to send reporters to kind of catch people as they were leaving places. And then there would be a written report of what the person looked like or a sketch or something like that. Now, by the time Sherwin Howe died, newspapers weren't able to my knowledge to print photographs, even if they took, there was actually a story I tell in the book of a photographer coming to Sherwin Howe's door.
PJ Wehry (37:43.219)
Right.
David Bather Woods (37:46.615)
in 1858, but the photograph that that photographer ended up taking was then used as the basis of a woodcut illustration. But was very close to realizing that this is what was going to happen is that people would be chased around photographed and put in the newspapers. And yeah, although again, he's not making the link that it would become a, you know, a serious artistic medium.
He knows that it's going to change visual culture. And that's pretty prescient, I think. You mentioned Benjamin, but obviously he's a good few decades after. So he can tell the history differently.
PJ Wehry (38:29.617)
Yeah, so he's...
PJ Wehry (38:34.526)
Yes, absolutely. No, as we were talking about that shift because of photography, like in painting, I was just referencing what he said. But yeah, that's not fair. Like you said, that would be very necronistic to be like, didn't Schopenhauer talk about Benjamin? Like, okay. It's like as we have a lot of, I think, philosophers in our own time that people will look at.
David Bather Woods (38:46.478)
Mmm,
David Bather Woods (38:52.887)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (39:02.298)
And it's like, well, why didn't they fully see where the internet and, you know, AI is going to go? And it's like, OK, like, like everyone's a little confused. It's OK. So speaking of pessimism, no. Now, part of part of the story for Schopenhauer is there's this story of staying single. Do you mind talking a little bit about why?
David Bather Woods (39:10.742)
You
David Bather Woods (39:15.158)
Yeah.
David Bather Woods (39:28.767)
yes.
PJ Wehry (39:30.79)
So he stays single and he has a, I want to make sure I, do you, what's name of the chapter? The second sex, how Schopenhauer underestimated women, which I'm assuming is kind of.
David Bather Woods (39:33.165)
all his life.
David Bather Woods (39:41.807)
Oh, yeah. Okay. Cluster of it. Yeah. Okay. So there's a cluster of issues that one is so, and it picks up on a lot of threads of the book. But so it picks up on a few threads of the book that unites them, which is, Chopin has solitary disposition, which he kind of transformed into a virtue by presenting solitude as distinct from loneliness.
PJ Wehry (39:51.38)
I'll let you talk about what you want to.
David Bather Woods (40:09.838)
as the proper condition of an independent thinker, that you physical and mental distance from others in order to maintain your independence of mind. There's that. The other thing, is that he thought that, well, actually, so I waver about this point. You can hear the hesitation in my voice. His official line is that,
PJ Wehry (40:36.084)
Yeah.
David Bather Woods (40:39.99)
having a wife and child and having a family life specifically would be an obstacle to being a great philosopher because your focus would be split between the kind of platonic ideal of truth on the one hand and the imperatives of making a living to support your family on the other. He seemed to think when he discusses university philosophers,
in his essay on university philosophy. He mentions having a wife and child a few times, as if this was something that was of equal concern to these philosophers in a way that maybe made them more concerned on career progression, on popularity, on readership, on, I don't know, sales figures of books, things like that, which he thought were kind of a distorting influence on the pure pursuit of truth. The reason why I waver about that is that actually, if you read the biographies of
men who become married, like intellectual men, often it's kind of a free service to, know, this is one of the critiques of marriage, the marriage institution. And there are kind of counter biographies of like, one of the books I read while I was reading this biography was Wifedom by Anna Funda, which is about George Orwell's first wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy. And you can see that
Orwell's writing career just wouldn't have been the same without the support of a devoted housewife at home or have you who could take care of the domestic stuff and things like that. So it's actually a curious point that Chauvin I was making, which is that he seemed to think that having a family would make the life of an intellectual harder, but in some respects it would have made it easier, which again makes me feel like it was a bit of a rationalization of his own condition.
And actually going back to a point I made earlier, which is that George Orwell is a good example of this. So I've given you examples of men who I think who were good partners and family men like Darwin, like John Stuart Mill, men who weren't like, for instance, Marx, who famously had a child with his housemaid, which was then kind of artfully disguised as maybe being Friedrich Engels child or something like that. was some kind of story to how it was presented. I actually think that Schopenhauer was doing a favor.
David Bather Woods (43:08.172)
to women by not getting married, given that most of the men of his day, you know, it was a bit of a mercy. Most of the men of his day, you know, weren't afraid of inflicting themselves on women and their wives and so on. Anyway, but as I've mentioned, he was this... Okay.
PJ Wehry (43:26.196)
I'm sorry, that's a really funny take. I'm not against it. It's just really funny for you to be like, it's probably just as well he didn't marry.
David Bather Woods (43:32.185)
He was very generous of him to not get married. I don't think he would have been a good, that's the thing. Like there are plenty of men who don't make good husbands, but they get married anyway. Whereas Schopenhauer was never going to make a good husband, you know, bless him. He knew that he shouldn't pretty much, you know, he came kind of close. There was somebody in Berlin who he nearly married, but she wouldn't follow him after he left for the pot.
PJ Wehry (43:51.784)
Yeah,
David Bather Woods (44:00.815)
left, he fled the pandemic and she didn't come with him because she already had a child from a previous relationship. That was the closest he came. And again, it was probably for everyone's, you know, best interest. But okay, so go back to that second sex. So in his essay on women, which is mostly, you know, 90%, you know, misogyny and sexism, where he uses this phrase, the second sex, he really does think that
women are naturally inferior to men, rather than socially unequal. And what that means is that the degree to which women were being granted greater social equality, he thought was a distortion of the natural state of things, because the terribly sexist stance to take. Nevertheless, serious feminist thinkers, including Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote this whole book, The Second Sex, were readers of Schopenhauer and were really impressed by Schopenhauer's
PJ Wehry (44:54.664)
Second sex.
David Bather Woods (44:58.862)
philosophy and other respects, his style and so on. And even the content of that essay on women, one of the interesting, so a scholar, Pearl Brillmeyer has done really interesting work on this, that Trubinhow's philosophy was even influential on first wave feminists or kind of mid 19th century, late 19th century feminists, so sort of between the first and the second wave of feminism, particularly in Britain.
because he had some interesting points, if you can sort of disentangle it from all the irredeemable stuff. For instance, he raised serious questions about the institution of marriage. He thought that marriage was not in its current form, was neither serving men nor women. And in particular, the way that it was doing a disservice to women was that social equality was not universally
applied to all women, but only particularly middle-class women who were able to be married to middle-class or upper-class men, which meant that particularly working-class unmarryable women, women who had no interest in being married, were really socially disadvantaged. Now he drew conclusions from that that may not be tolerable to a feminist. Like for instance, he was quite interested in
polygamous marriage. And the model he put in his published work was one that seemed to favor men in that it was generally polygynous marriage, you multiple women. But the mere idea that the fact that he saw the marriage institution as a historical phenomenon, that marriage isn't done the same way over the course of history, that it isn't done the same way all over the world. The idea that the current form of marriage might be on a model that doesn't
serve the interests of either gender. Those are interesting questions to a feminist as much as they were to Schopenhauer. So it's kind of ironic that he has these afterlives in feminist thinking, even though he's just the epitome of an anti-feminist thinker in so many other respects.
PJ Wehry (47:09.128)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (47:19.156)
Well, there's an interesting thing there about even if you really disagree on solutions, it's amazing how people on very different sides can agree on problems. Well, that seems to be the case because it doesn't sound like any of his solutions were really considerate. he is. Yes. I'm not saying this should be either. No, I don't want to get myself in any trouble.
David Bather Woods (47:26.894)
Hmm.
David Bather Woods (47:31.628)
Yeah, that's right. It is interesting. It's really interesting.
David Bather Woods (47:41.515)
No.
Yeah, sometimes people, yeah, they meet in the middle, starting out in totally different places, they somehow meet in the middle, find some common ground. There might be other examples too, like, Schopenhauer actually ended up being quite a influence on early gay rights thinkers as well, because actually, in late 19th century Europe, it was Germany who were leading the way there.
And one of the texts that a lot of these people like Magnus Hirschfeld and others craft there being what we're reading would have been this chapter in short chapter, but a chapter nonetheless in Schopenhauer's book where he talks about some forms of same sex relationship. And so, you know, that's an interesting fact as well that Schopenhauer was influential in those sorts of areas.
Similarly, and I mean, this is better documented, but he was way ahead of his time in terms of animal welfare or animal ethics. And there's a story I briefly tell in the book about how Schöpner had an influence on Alfred Nordvall, who was the first person in Sweden to start a animal protection society modeled on
Again, Germany was leading the way here along with Britain in terms of they had animal protection societies too, but this particular Swedish thinker who then went on after Schopenhauer died to become, you know, sort of a chair of a royal commission into animal cruelty and those sorts of things. And so, yeah, and I think he still respected Schopenhauer in terms of the history of animal ethics. Obviously it's been dominated by different ethical theories now, obviously particularly the work of Peter Singer and so on.
PJ Wehry (49:24.98)
Hmm.
David Bather Woods (49:39.439)
which comes from a totally different ethical perspective because Shobana was not a utilitarian by any means. But still, it's interesting that he's not thought of as this social thinker at all. And yet, if you look, if you study really carefully the uptake and reception of his philosophy, he's been taken up by people who are devoting themselves to really serious social and ethical causes, which is a kind of
I think an interesting unexpected thing about his life story and the story of his afterlife.
PJ Wehry (50:08.692)
Hmph.
PJ Wehry (50:17.406)
Well, I want to be respectful of it. One, thank you. Sorry. Let me say that first. That was really interesting. I was watching the time. wanted to make sure I'm being respectful of your time. And I'm a little sad we did get into the Buddhist influence at all. I think, but that's what buying the book is for. besides buying and reading your excellent book, Arthur Schopenhauer, The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist, what would you
David Bather Woods (50:20.558)
Haha.
David Bather Woods (50:27.554)
That's okay.
David Bather Woods (50:35.627)
Yeah.
David Bather Woods (50:41.528)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (50:46.83)
recommend to someone who has listened for last 50 minutes to either meditate on or do over the next week.
David Bather Woods (50:56.462)
Well, that's a really good question. I one thing I guess I haven't raised, but I think is important message in Shobana's philosophy is the centrality of compassion to his ethics. There might be a tie into Buddhism here because of course that's a value in Buddhist thought as well. But Shobana I think has a really distinctive ethical theory to offer. I mentioned he's not a utilitarian. He doesn't think that,
ethical behavior lies in the maximization of kind of abstract utility. However, that utility is defined and measured. He's very actually for a philosopher whose theoretical philosophy is metaphysics and epistemology is very Kantian influenced. And he thought that's where Kant's really greatest achievements lay. He's very anti-Kantian in his ethics. He doesn't believe in kind of absolute oughts. He doesn't believe in an imperatival structure of ethics. He doesn't believe in kind of abstract unconditional duties and obligations. And
I think he casts out on some big parts of virtue ethics as well, because even though he does speak about certain virtues, like the virtue of compassionate self and the virtue of justice, at the same time, classical virtue ethics is about the reason for cultivating the virtues is to make one's earthly life go well and be good. And he doesn't believe you can have a good earthly life in that sense of like, of achieving eudaimonia. So he doesn't fit neatly into any of these
you know, big three, as it were, ethical theories. The philosophy of compassion does have a history, of course, going back as far as Buddhism, if you go to, you know, world philosophies, but also more recently in history for Shobana, people like Rousseau, or even Hume and Smith, the Scottish thinkers. But in these times, in these times, it seems so dark, where pessimism is very tempting and something that
PJ Wehry (52:48.979)
Hmm.
David Bather Woods (52:51.338)
always presents itself as a challenge, not just something to acknowledge, but something to try to overcome, or at least to, if not to overcome, then to manage. I think the thing that offsets that a little bit or adds some light is the idea of compassion, the idea that we should pay attention to one another and that we should try to alleviate each other's sufferings and actually approach each other with more patience and with more forbearance, with more understanding.
Given that, what he's describing is something that's universal to the human condition, something we're all dealing with in some way or other. And he divided compassion into two forms. There was justice, which he summarized as the maximum harm no one. So justice for him is a negative virtue of basically non-interference, both in a moral and a political context.
PJ Wehry (53:29.138)
Hmm.
David Bather Woods (53:48.358)
And the other form of compassion he acknowledged was kindness, loving kindness or mentionly, but literally the love of humanity. And that's the kind of active form of compassion, which is to help others. So harm no one and help others to the extent that you can. That he thought was the kind of prime principle of all ethical systems, really, whatever direction you're coming at it from, you kind of end up arriving at that principle. So yeah, so Shurkan, I would say if you're going to practice one principle this week,
PJ Wehry (54:11.473)
Hmm.
David Bather Woods (54:15.906)
harm no one and help others to the extent that you can and do it in the spirit of compassion. That's basically the essence of his ethics in a nutshell.
PJ Wehry (54:16.297)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (54:24.924)
I love that answer. I love that we started with your excitement about philosophical biographies, because how should we live? And then you end with, hey, this is how we should live. And beautiful answer. I'm excited if this helps any of our listeners be more compassionate this week. I think that's a great thing. So Dr. Woods, yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
David Bather Woods (54:32.29)
Hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
David Bather Woods (54:45.676)
Yeah. And for animals too. Just even if you're just nice to your dog, which Schopenhauer was, he loved his dogs. Even if you're just kinder to your dog this week, that's, that's a Schopenhauerian win.
PJ Wehry (55:01.268)
Yeah. Dr. Woods, it's been an absolute honor to have you on today. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
David Bather Woods (55:06.371)
That's my pleasure. Thank you very much. was a pleasure.