Schopenhauer, Optimism and Progress
Arthur Schopenhauer is generally perceived to be the Romantic counterpart of Hegel that
ambiguously – for some even contradictorily – combines Platonic realism with Kantian
Transcendental Idealism. He would then be the morose, seamstress-pushing pessimistic antithesis to
Hegel’s dialectical optimism that ultimately gives way to the Nietzsche’s synthesis, namely existential
vitalism. This regrettable caricature of Schopenhauer’s philosophy has served to obscure his unique
philosophical contribution to the history of Western thought, an obscurity that has been exacerbated
by his unfortunate historical position as marooned between canonical philosophers such as Kant,
Hegel and Nietzsche, giving way to undeserved neglect.
In this essay, I defend a point of view on Schopenhauer’s philosophy that would vindicate
him as more of a self-standing philosopher with a more nuanced point of view with regard to
philosophical and moral progress than Kant and Hegel. While Kant could be taken to put a halt to any
possibility of progress1, Hegel believed that the self-realization of the world-spirit naturally leads to
limitless progress through self-reconciliation. Contrary to Kant, Schopenhauer believed that the
human agent was dully able to progress theoretically and morally by forms of non-representational
knowledge such as art, religion and (proper) philosophy. Contrary to Hegel, Schopenhauer did not
believe that such progress was facilitated by the rational nature of the human agent (or worldhistory), but through intuitive insight into the nullity of human existence in a chaotic world. Such
knowledge soteriologically ‘silences’ the particular human will and turns that agent into a ‘nothing’.
From this first framework one can already glean that Schopenhauer entertains a middleposition between optimism and pessimism on the subject of progress. He is pessimistic about the
attunement of the natural world and the natural human agent to facilitate progress. Nevertheless, he
is optimistic about the very possibility of having progress. This essay focusses mainly on these areas
where Schopenhauer is particularly optimistic about making progress (philosophical insight and
compassion) so as to balance the text-book characterizations of him as the apotheosis of Romantic
pessimism.
Bio
Dennis Vanden Auweele is a Ph. D. fellow of the Research Foundation – Flandres (FWO) at
Institute for Philosophy of the University of Leuven. At the moment, he is finishing up his
doctorate entitled ‘The Horror of Existence: Pessimism in Kant and Schopenhauer’ on the
subject of post-Enlightenment pessimism and its relationship with religion/theology. Dennis
is additionally interested in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, (contemporary)
philosophy of religion and foundations of ethics. Recent publications: ‘The Poverty of
Philosophy: Desmond’s Hyperbolic Gifts and Caputo’s Events’. In: American Catholic
1
While Kant definitely believed that societies could evolve positively and that natural science could go a long
way in detailing the mechanics of nature, he remained particularly adamant that metaphysical knowledge was
impossible from a speculative perspective. Additionally, moral progress was seriously limited, likely even
impossible, by the human agent’s propensity to evil. I cannot develop Kant’s moral pessimism here, but I have
done so elsewhere: D. Vanden Auweele, ‘The Lutheran Influence on Kant’s Depraved Will.’ International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion 73 (2013) 117-134.
Philosophy Quarterly 87 (2013) 411-432; ‘For the Love of God: Kant on Grace’. In:
International Philosophical Quarterly 54 (2014) Forthcoming; ‘New Perspective on
Schopenhauer’s Ontology of Will’. In: Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 94 (2013) Forthcoming.