Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On Fri, 13 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

On Thu, 12 Dec 2024 21:31:39 +0100, D wrote:
>

I find Schopenhauer opaque and too negative, and way too wordy. Kant and
Hume I never read in the original but only filtered through Coplestones
history of philosophy and did not feel like I needed the originals.

>
Schopenhauer is the original Debbie Downer. In Hollingdale's introduction
to the 'Essays and Aphorisms' selection he theorizes the philosophy
reflects the personality which was molded by events. The family business
went bankrupt and it was a struggle for him to get his money. However he
was stubborn and persistent, making out better than the other creditors.
>
Then there was his fling at teaching when he scheduled his class in the
same time slot as Hegel's. Nobody came. He could have rescheduled but
chose to resign.
>
'Will' didn't fly off the shelves. His mother was an author in her own
right. He said that his works would be around long after hers were gone.
She replied with something like, 'Yeah the entire first edition will still
be unsold.' They didn't get along well.
>
It's been years but iirc Hume's 'An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding' was quite readable. His first attempt 'Treatise of Human
Nature' was stillborn so he tried again.
>
Hume triggered Kant's rebuttal and Schopenhauer thought highly of him. I
think he gets mentioned once by Nietzsche lumped with the 'English
physiologists'.
>
I don't think I made it through Copleston's entire History but I
definitely remember the cheap paperback volumes. I did make it as far a
Zeno, that's for sure.
>

Very interesting! And wasn't there, as was so often the case among philosophers, the fact that Schopenhauer wasn't the most popular man with the ladies as well?
Nietzsche certainly seemed to derive a lot of energy from a broken heart.
Zeno? Well, it does sound you made quite an attack on the first book out of 12! ;) My least favourite part of that series is the middle ages and the christian philosophers and theologians. For some reason, very, very uninteresting to me. But greek, yes, rome, yes, then nothing, up until the enlightenment, when things start to become interesting again.