«We`re just about out of time, but do you want to open it up? Get it on the agenda?»
«To stop me from chickening out next week, you mean?» asked Bonnie. «Well,
that`s not a bad idea. What I was going to bring up has to do with my being homely and
fat and clumsy and Rebecca—and also Pam—being beautiful and...and stylish. But,
Rebecca, you, especially, open up a lot of painful old feelings for me—feelings I`ve
always had about being klutzy, homely, unchosen.» Bonnie stopped and looked at Julius.
«There, it`s out.»
«And on the agenda for next week,” said Julius, rising to signal the end of the
meeting.
14
1807—How
Arthur
Schopenhauer
Almost Became
a Merchant
_________________________
Aperson of high, rare mental
gifts who is forced into a job
which is merely useful is like
a valuable vase decorated with
the most beautiful painting
and then used as a kitchen
pot.
_________________________
The Schopenhauer family`s grand tour ended in 1804, and the sixteen–year–old Arthur,
with a heavy heart, honored his pledge to his father by commencing his seven–year
apprenticeship with Senator Jenisch, an eminent Hamburg merchant. Slipping into a
double life, Arthur fulfilled all the quotidian tasks of his apprenticeship but
surreptitiously spent every spare moment studying the great ideas of intellectual history.
He had so internalized his father, however, that these stolen moments filled him with
remorse.
Then, nine months later came the staggering event that marked Arthur`s life
forever. Though Heinrich Schopenhauer was only sixty–five, his health had rapidly
deteriorated: he appeared jaundiced, fatigued, depressed, and confused, often not
recognizing old acquaintances. On the twentieth of April, 1805, he managed, despite his
infirmity, to travel to his Hamburg warehouse, slowly climb to the upper loft of the
granary, and hurl himself out of the window into the Hamburg Canal. A few hours later
his body was found floating in the icy water.
Every suicide leaves a wake of shock, guilt, and anger in the survivors, and Arthur
experienced all these sentiments. Imagine the complexity of feelings Arthur must have
experienced. His love for his father resulted in intense grief and loss. His resentment of
his father—later he often spoke of his suffering from his father`s excessive hardness—
evoked remorse. And the wonderful possibility of liberation must have evoked much
guilt: Arthur realized that his father would have forever blocked the path to his becoming
a philosopher. In this regard one thinks of two other great free–thinking moral
philosophers, Nietzsche and Sartre, who lost their fathers early in life. Could Nietzsche
have become the Antichrist if his father, a Lutheran minister, had not died when
Nietzsche was a child? And in his autobiography Sartre expresses his relief that he was
not burdened with the search for his father`s approbation. Others, Kierkegaard and Kafka,
for example, were not so fortunate: all their lives they were oppressed by the weight of
their fathers` judgment.
Though Arthur Schopenhauer`s work contains an enormous range of ideas, topics,
historical and scientific curiosities, notions, and sentiments, there are to be found only a
couple of personal tender passages, and each pertains to Heinrich Schopenhauer. In one
passage Arthur expresses pride in his father`s honest admission that he was in business to
make money and compares his father`s forth–rightness to the duplicity of many of his
fellow philosophers (particularly Hegel and Fichte), who grasp for wealth, power, and
fame all the while pretending they are working for humanity.
At the age of sixty he planned to dedicate his complete works to the memory of his
father. He worked and reworked the wording of his dedication, which ultimately was
never published. One version began: «Noble, excellent spirit to whom I owe everything
that I am and that I achieve...any one finding in my work any kind of joy, consolation,
instruction, let him hear your name and know that, if Heinrich Schopenhauer had not
been the man he was, Arthur Schopenhauer would have perished a hundred times.»
The strength of Arthur`s filial devotion remains puzzling, given Heinrich`s lack of
any overt affection toward his son. His letters to Arthur are laced with criticism. For
example: «Dancing and riding do not make for a livelihood for a merchant whose letters
have to be read and must therefore be well written. Now and then I find that the capital
letters in your hand are still veritable monstrosities.» Or: «Do not acquire a round back,
which looks ghastly.... if in the dining room one catches sight of someone stooping, one
takes him for a disguised tailor or cobbler.» In his very last letter Heinrich instructed his
son: «With reference to walking and sitting upright, I advise you request everyone you
are with to give you a blow whenever you are caught oblivious of this great matter. This
is what children of Princes have done, not minding the pain for a short time, rather than
appear as oafs all their lives.»
Arthur was his father`s son, resembling him not only physically but
temperamentally. When he was seventeen, his mother wrote him: «I know too well how
little you had of a happy sense of youth, how large the disposition for melancholic
brooding you received as a sad share of your inheritance from your father.»
Arthur also inherited his father`s deep sense of integrity, which played a decisive
role in the dilemma that confronted him following his father`s death: should he stay in the
apprenticeship even though he hated the world of commerce? Eventually, he decided to
do what his father would have done: honor his pledge.
He wrote of his decision, «I continued to hold my position with my merchant
patron, partly because my excessive grief had broken the energy of my spirit, partly
because I would have had a guilty conscience were I to rescind my father`s decision so
soon after his death.»
If Arthur felt immobilized and duty–bound after his father`s suicide, his mother had
no such inclinations. With the speed of a whirlwind she changed her entire life. In a letter
to the seventeen–year–old Arthur she wrote: «Your character is so completely different
from mine: you are by nature undecided, I myself am too fast, too resolute.» After a few
months of widowhood she sold the Schopenhauer mansion, liquidated the venerable
family business, and moved away from Hamburg. She boasted to Arthur, «I will always
choose the most exciting option. Consider my choice of residence: instead of moving to
my hometown, back to my friends and relatives, like every other woman would have
