Schopenhauer on Human Existence
Time and existence
The futility of existence is revealed in the whole form of existence. . . Time is that by virtue of
which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value.
That which has been no longer is; it as little exists as does that which has never been. But
everything that is, in the next moment has been. Thus the most insignificant present has over the
most significant past the advantage of actuality, which means that the former bears to the latter
the relation of something to nothing. Every moment of our life belongs to the present only for a
moment; then it belongs for ever to the past. Every evening we are poorer by a day. You could,
to be sure, base on this a theory, that the greatest wisdom consists in enjoying the present and
making this enjoyment the goal of life, because the present is all that is real and everything else
merely imaginary. But you could just as well call this way of life the greatest foolishness: for that
which in a moment ceases to exist, which vanishes as completely as a dream, cannot be worth any
serious effort. In such a world, happiness is not so much as to be thought of. In the first place, no
man is happy but strives his whole life long after a supposed happiness which he seldom attains,
and even if he does it is only to be disappointed with it. In the second place, however, it is all one
whether he has been happy or not, in a life which has consisted merely of a succession of
transient present moments and is now at an end. That human life must be some kind of mistake is
sufficiently proved by the simple observation that (1) man is a compound of needs which are hard
to satisfy; that (2) their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only
given over to boredom; and that (3) boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless,
for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence.
What a difference there is between our beginning and our end! We begin in the madness of
sexual desire and the transport of sensual pleasure; we end in the dissolving of all our parts and
the musty smell of corpses. And the road from the one to the other goes steadily downhill:
happily dreaming childhood, joy-filled youth, labor-filled years of manhood, sickly and often
miserable old age, the torment of the last illness and finally the anguish of death – does it not look
as if existence were a mistake, the consequences of which gradually grow more and more clear?
Existence is punishment
In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain
in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not
know what really will appear. For to him who does know, children can sometimes seem like
innocent delinquents, sentenced not to death but to life, who have not yet discovered what their
punishment will consist of. For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented
souls—and on the other hand, the devils—in it. In Hindu mythology, Brahma is supposed to
have created the world by a kind of fall into sin, and he has to atone1 for this sin by remaining in
the world himself, until he has redeemed2 himself out of it. Just so, we come into the world
already encumbered with guilt, and it is only because we have to atone for this guilt that our
existence is so miserable and its end is death. The biblical story of the Fall is consequently the
only thing which attracts me to the Old Testament; I even regard it as the only metaphysical truth
contained in that book. For our existence resembles nothing so much as the consequence of a bad
deed, punishment for a forbidden desire.
As a reliable compass for orientating yourself in life, nothing is more useful than to see this world
as a place of atonement3, a sort of prison colony. When you have done this you will order your
expectations of life according to the real nature of things, and no longer regard the disasters,
1
Zmierit
Vykupit
3
Zmierenie
2
sufferings, torments and miseries of life as something irregular and not to be expected, but will
find them entirely in order – knowing that each of us is here being punished for his existence, and
each in his own particular way. This outlook will enable us to view the so-called ‘imperfections’
of men without surprise, and certainly without anger: for we shall always keep in mind where we
are, and consequently regard every man as a being who exists only as a consequence of his guilt,
and whose life is an act of atonement for the crime of being born.
The conviction that the world, and therefore man too, is something which really ought not to
exist, is in fact calculated to instill in us kindness towards one another: for what can be expected
of beings placed in such a situation as we are? However strange this may sound, it corresponds to
the nature of the case; it makes us see other men in a true light, and reminds us of the most
necessary of all things: tolerance, patience, forbearance and charity, which each of us needs, and
which each of us therefore owes.
The ‘will to live’ is bad
He who is capable of thinking a little more deeply will soon perceive that human desires cannot
begin to be sinful simply at that point at which, in their chance meetings with one another, they
happen to cause harm and evil. Rather, if this is what they bring about, such desires must be
originally and in their essence sinful, and the entire will to live blameworthy. All the cruelty and
torment which the world is full of, is in fact merely the necessary result of the will to live. Unjust
or wicked actions are, for him who does them, signs of the strength of his will to live, and of how
far he still is from true salvation, which is the denial of this will. They are also signs of how
much schooling in knowledge and suffering he still has to undergo, before he can attain this
salvation.
The value of life consists precisely in this, that it teaches us not to want it. For this supreme
initiation, life itself must prepare us.
No life after death
After your death you will be what you were before your birth. Whatever you will be after your
death – even if it is nothing – will then be just as natural and suitable to you as your individual
organic existence is now: the most you have to fear is the moment of transition. Indeed, since
mature consideration of the matter leads to the conclusion that total non-being would be
preferable to such an existence as ours, the idea of the end of our existence—or of a time when
we no longer are—can (from a rational point of view) trouble us as little as the idea that we had
never been. On this view, the ending of the personality cannot be regarded as a loss. Mankind
knows, directly and intuitively, that when this happens it is only a phenomenon coming to an end
[like a ripple on a stream], without the thing in itself [the stream] being affected by it. While
death may be able to end our life [the ripple], it cannot end our existence [the stream]. In any
event, death is not to be considered a transition to a state which is completely new and foreign to
us, but rather a return to one originally our own, from which life has been only a brief absence.
Essay Question
Explain Schopenhauer’s view of human suffering, including: Why do we suffer? Why do we
exist? Is it good to exist? What is the solution to the problem of suffering? What awaits us after
death? Where do you agree, and where do you disagree? Compare with Russell and Nietzsche.