"The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, a Dialogue, Etc" by Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by T. Bailey Saunders). Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
The Essays of Schopenehauer: Religion: A Dialogue, etc., was originally published in 1890, written by Arthur Schopenhauer, and translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders. The essays were taken from papers, that Schopenhauer wrote towards the end of his life named entitled Parerga und Paralipomena. Which delineate the nature of surplusage and illustrate his main philosophical position.
Schopenhauer, in his Dialogue on Religion, borrowing from, in admixture, David Hume's Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion (1779) and Cicero's dialogue The Nature of the Gods (45BC), employs two characters: Philalethes, the voice of philosophy, and Demopheles, the voice of the people, and thereby compares the philosophical view with the "metaphysics of the masses"; a few representative quotes: "They found it easier to burn Vanini that to confute him."-- Arthur Schopenhauer (c.1830), Dialogue on Religion (pg. 5)"You've no notion of how stupid most people are."-- Arthur Schopenhauer (c.1830), Dialogue on Religion (pg. 21); voice of Demopheles
Schopenhauer is one of the few philosophers who can be generally understood without a commentary. All his theories claim to be drawn direct from the facts, to be suggested by observation, and to interpret the world as it is; and whatever view he takes, he is constant in his appeal to the experience of common life. This characteristic endows his style with a freshness and vigor which would be difficult to match in the philosophical writing of any country, and impossible in that of Germany. If it were asked whether there were any circumstances apart from heredity, to which he owed his mental habit, the answer might be found in the abnormal character of his early education, his acquaintance with the world rather than with books, the extensive travels of his boyhood, his ardent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and without regard to the emoluments and endowments of learning. He was trained in realities even more than in ideas; and hence he is original, forcible, clear, an enemy of all philosophic indefiniteness and obscurity; so that it may well be said of him, in the words of a writer in the Revue Contemporaine, ce n'est pas un philosophe comme les autres, c'est un philosophe qui a vu le monde. It is not my purpose, nor would it be possible within the limits of a prefatory note, to attempt an account of Schopenhauer's philosophy, to indicate its sources, or to suggest or rebut the objections which may be taken to it. M. Ribot, in his excellent little book, [Footnote: La Philosophie de Schopenhauer, par Th. Ribot.] has done all that is necessary in this direction. But the essays here presented need a word of explanation. It should be observed, and Schopenhauer himself is at pains to point out, that his system is like a citadel with a hundred gates: at whatever point you take it up, wherever you make your entrance, you are on the road to the center. In this respect his writings resemble a series of essays composed in support of a single thesis; a circumstance which led him to insist, more emphatically even than most philosophers, that for a proper understanding of his system it was necessary to read every line he had written. Perhaps it would be more correct to describe Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellungas his main thesis, and his other treatises as merely corollary to it. The essays in this volume form part of the corollary; they are taken from a collection published towards the close of Schopenhauer's life, and by him entitled Parerga und Paralipomena, as being in the nature of surplusage and illustrative of his main position. They are by far the most popular of his works, and since their first publication in 1851, they have done much to build up his fame. Written so as to be intelligible enough in themselves, the tendency of many of them is towards the fundamental idea on which his system is based. It may therefore be convenient to summarize that idea in a couple of sentences; more especially as Schopenhauer sometimes writes as if his advice had been followed and his readers were acquainted with the whole of his work.
