The pursuit of liberty is a traumatic experience, but does it constitute happiness? It is hard to imagine that happiness can be found in a painful exercise, and, if we are to agree with Schopenhauer’s definition of the negative character of happiness as being nothing better than freedom from pain, there is a philosophically challenging contradiction here, which needs to be resolved one way or another, or else, this confusion over one of the basic concepts of our consideration will make everything else tainted with futility.
Is it possible that Schopenhauer is plain wrong, and that our selfish pursuit of freedom, like our pursuit of pleasure, is recklessly mindless of the consequences, and thus freedom falls into the same category as lust, and represents a form of self-indulgence? Or is he even “wronger,” failing to discern our love for pain in our love for thrills, the spices of life, which make a life without pain boring and miserable?
But perhaps it is all a matter of definitions, and we can turn this argument around any which way we want it to go, depending on how we shape it through the infusion of extra meanings into the words which we use.
…Perhaps, this is another argument about form, rather than substance?...
There is a sure way to reconcile our masochistic love for painful pursuits with Schopenhauer’s aversion to pain by insisting on a difference in principle between the pursuit itself and its outcome. It may well be that it is not the pain as such, that we are seeking, but the novelty of the experience, the challenge of a rough ride, foolishly expecting Schopenhauer’s freedom, that is, exemption from pain at the end of the ride.
But no matter how we put it, regarding the question of freedom, there is only one answer, which is in perfect agreement with Spinoza’s opinion on this subject. (In his Ethica, Spinoza suggests that those who think they are “free,” do not understand the causes of their own actions…) Unhappy are the free, for at the end of their painful quest they shall discover that freedom is just another form of unfreedom, and that all their wonderful sacrifice along the way had been for nothing.
Is it possible that Schopenhauer is plain wrong, and that our selfish pursuit of freedom, like our pursuit of pleasure, is recklessly mindless of the consequences, and thus freedom falls into the same category as lust, and represents a form of self-indulgence? Or is he even “wronger,” failing to discern our love for pain in our love for thrills, the spices of life, which make a life without pain boring and miserable?
But perhaps it is all a matter of definitions, and we can turn this argument around any which way we want it to go, depending on how we shape it through the infusion of extra meanings into the words which we use.
…Perhaps, this is another argument about form, rather than substance?...
There is a sure way to reconcile our masochistic love for painful pursuits with Schopenhauer’s aversion to pain by insisting on a difference in principle between the pursuit itself and its outcome. It may well be that it is not the pain as such, that we are seeking, but the novelty of the experience, the challenge of a rough ride, foolishly expecting Schopenhauer’s freedom, that is, exemption from pain at the end of the ride.
But no matter how we put it, regarding the question of freedom, there is only one answer, which is in perfect agreement with Spinoza’s opinion on this subject. (In his Ethica, Spinoza suggests that those who think they are “free,” do not understand the causes of their own actions…) Unhappy are the free, for at the end of their painful quest they shall discover that freedom is just another form of unfreedom, and that all their wonderful sacrifice along the way had been for nothing.
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