FROM THEOGNIS TO LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

While Schopenhauer’s Die Welt is a more or less conventional, although very beautifully written, work of academic philosophy, his Parerga follows the tradition of Montaigne in its structure, and as such it is close to my own heart, being the form, which I myself have chosen here. Published in 1851, when Schopenhauer was already sixty-three years old, Parerga und Paralipomena brought him an instant fame, which, unfairly, he had been denied all his life prior to then. The book (or books) is indeed a delight to read, the multitude of subjects and ideas dazzling and immensely gratifying.

In his Introduction, Schopenhauer teases the reader with his deliberate subjectivity:

“If my object in these pages were to present a complete scheme of counsels and maxims for the guidance of life, I should have to repeat the numerous rules — some of them excellent,— which have been drawn up by thinkers of all ages, from Theognis and Solomon to La Rochefoucauld; and, in so doing, I should inevitably entail upon the reader a vast amount of well-worn commonplace. But the fact is that in this work I am making still less claim to exhaust my subject than in any other of my writings.”

There is no question that my subjective admiration for Schopenhauer’s masterpiece, reinforced by my own choice of a very similar form in Nunc Dimittis, leaves no unexpected twists, or critical conclusions, to spice up this entry. But there are practical matters too, in which this Introduction is, if not explicitly helpful, then at least reassuring. It concerns both the scope and the organization of my own writing. Needless to say, in my work I also issue a number of counsels and maxims for the guidance of life, particularly, in my primary areas of expertise: history, politics, social studies, Americanology, Russology, etc. As far as being assisted by thinkers of all ages, Schopenhauer’s range from Theognis to La Rochefoucauld is expanded in my own version, especially, by the additions of Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, and Russell, and there is a resulting possibility that some of my expansive writing outside my specific areas of unique experience and expertise may, indeed, entail upon the reader a vast amount of well-worn commonplace, which I hope will eventually all disappear after future revisions. But to be sure, I make no claim to completeness, and as Schopenhauer proceeds to say in his Introduction: “An author who makes no claims to completeness must also, in a great measure, abandon any attempt at a systematic arrangement.” This is such sweet music to my senses! I’ve amply expressed my initial irritation with Organization & Structure already, throughout the so-named entries of my Thoughts & Sketches collection. Irritation eventually changed to resignation, to the inevitable lack of both, next to a desire to rationalize such a lack, but now it can safely be called a triumph of confirmation, considering that Schopenhauer ipse, in one short sentence above, rules in my favor! “For his double loss in this respect, the reader may console himself by reflecting that a complete and systematic treatment of such a subject as the guidance of life could hardly fail to be a wearisome business.” Fortunately, I am making no pretense at any sort of guidance. My thoughts are just what they are: my thoughts; beyond that reach I am however incompetent to offer anything like counseling at all. “I have simply put down those of my thoughts that appear to be worth communicating — thoughts, which, as far as I know, have not been uttered, or, at any rate, not just in the same form, by anybody else; so that my remarks may be taken as a supplement to what has been already achieved in the immense field.”

All of which raises a relevant Nietzschean question, to be answered with a relevant Schopenhauerian answer offered in his Parerga und Paralipomena: Am I really that wise, to undertake a labor of wisdom? To which Schopenhauer gives this both hilarious and profound definition of wisdom:

“A man is wise only on condition of living in a world full of fools.” To which I say: Amen, and wisely close this entry without any further comment.