Author: Arthur Schopenhauer

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-07

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 9781330863657

Excerpt from On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and on the Will in Nature; Two Essays: Translated by Mme; Karl Hillebrand His meaning, though always clearly expressed, is not always easy to seize, even for his countrymen; as a foreigner, therefore, I may often have failed to grasp, let alone adequately to render, that meaning. In this case besides, the responsibility for any want of perspicuity cannot be shifted by the translator on to the Author; since the consummate perfection of Schopenhauer's prose is universally recognised, even by those who reject, or at least who do not share, his views. An eminent German writer of our time has not hesitated to rank him immediately after Lessing and Gothe as the third greatest German prose-writer, and only quite recently a German professor, in a speech delivered with the intent of demolishing Schopenhauer's philosophy, was reluctantly obliged to admit that his works would remain on account of their literary value. Gothe himself expressed admiration for the clearness of exposition in Schopenhauer's chief work and for the beauty of his style. The chief obstacle I have encountered in translating these Essays, did not therefore consist in the obscurity of the Author's style, nor even in the difficulty of finding appropriate terms wherewith to convey his meaning; although at times certainly the want of complete precision in our philosophical terminology made itself keenly felt and the selection was often far from easy: it lay rather in the great difference in the way of thinking and of expressing their thoughts which lies between the two nations. The regions of German and English thought are indeed separated by a gulf, which at first seems impassable, yet which must be bridged over by some means or other, if a right comprehension is to be achieved. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.