The Schopenhauer Cure

A Novel

Irvin D. Yalom

To my community of older buddies who grace me with their friendship, share life`s

inexorable diminishments and losses, and continue to sustain me with their wisdom and

dedication to the life of the mind: Robert Berger, Murray Bilmes, Martel Bryant, Dagfinn

Føllesdahl, Joseph Frank, Van Harvey, Julius Kaplan, Herbert Kotz, Morton Lieberman,

Walter Sokel, Saul Spiro, and Larry Zaroff.

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

done in my stead, I chose Weimar, which was almost unknown to me.»

Why Weimar? Johanna was ambitious and yearned to be close to the epicenter of

German culture. Supremely confident of her social abilities, she knew she could make

good things happen, and, indeed, within months she had created an extraordinary new life

for herself: she established the liveliest salon of Weimar and developed a close friendship

with Goethe and many other leading writers and artists. Soon she began a career, first as a

successful writer of travel journals chronicling the Schopenhauer family`s tour and a trip

to southern France; then, with Goethe`s urging, she turned to fiction and wrote a series of

romantic novels. She was one of the first truly liberated women and was Germany`s first

woman to earn her living as a writer. For the next decade Johanna Schopenhauer became

a renowned novelist, the Danielle Steel of nineteenth–century Germany, and for decades

Arthur Schopenhauer was known only as «Johanna Schopenhauer`s son.» In the late

1820s Johanna`s complete works were published in a twenty–volume edition.

Though history (based greatly on Arthur`s scathing criticism of his mother) has

generally presented Johanna as narcissistic and uncaring, there is no doubt that she, and

only she, liberated Arthur from his servitude and started him on his way to philosophy.

The instrument of delivery was a fateful letter she wrote to Arthur in April 1807, two

years after his father`s suicide.

Dear Arthur,

The serious and calm tone of your March 28th letter, flowing from your mind into my

mind, woke me up and revealed that you might be on your way to totally missing

your vocation! That is why I have to do each and every thing to save you, however

possible; I know what it means to live a life repugnant to one`s soul; and if it is

possible, I will spare you, my dear son, this misery. Oh, dear dear Arthur, why was it

that my voice counted so little; what you want now, was in fact then my warmest

wish; how hard I strove to make it happen, despite everything one said against me....

if you do not wish to be taken into the honourable Philistine order, I, my dear Arthur,

truly don`t want to put any obstacle into your way; it is just you who have to seek

your own way and choose it. Then I will advise and help, where and how I can. First

try to come to peace with yourself…remember you must choose studies that promise

you a good salary, not only because it is the only way you can live, for you will never

be rich enough to live from your inheritance alone. If you have made your choice, tell

me so, but you have to take this decision on your own.... If you feel the strength and

heart to do this, I will willingly give you my hand. But just don`t imagine life as a

complete learned man to be too delightful. I now see it around me, dear Arthur. It is a

tiring, troublesome life full of work; only the delight in doing it gives it its charm.

One doesn`t get rich with it; as a writer, one acquires with difficulty what one needs

for survival.... To make your life as a writer you have to be able to produce

something excellent.... now, more than ever, there is a need of brilliant heads. Arthur,

think about it carefully, and choose, but then stay firm; let your perseverance never

fail, and you will safely achieve your goal. Choose what you want...but with tears in

my eyes I implore you: do not cheat on yourself. Treat yourself seriously and

honestly. The welfare of your life is at stake, as well as the happiness of my old days;

because only you and Adele can hopefully replace my lost youth. I couldn`t bear it to

know that you are unhappy, especially if I had to blame myself for having let this

great misfortune happen to you out of my too large pliability. You see, dear Arthur,

that I dearly love you, and that I want to help you in everything. Reward me by your

confidence and by, having once made up your mind, following my advice in fulfilling

your choice. And don`t hurt me by rebelliousness. You know that I am not stubborn. I

know how to give way by arguments, and I will never demand anything from you I

won`t be able to support by arguments....

Adieu, dear Arthur, the post is urgent and my fingers hurt. Bear in mind all I

send and write to you, and answer soon.

Your mother

J. Schopenhauer

In his old age Arthur wrote, «When I finished reading this letter I shed a flood of

tears.» By return mail he opted for liberation from his apprenticeship, and Johanna

responded, «That you have so quickly come to a decision, against your wont, would

disquiet me in anyone else. I should fear rashness; with you it reassures me, I regard it as

the power of your innermost desires that drives you.`

Johanna wasted no time; she notified Arthur`s merchant patron and his landlord

that Arthur was leaving Hamburg, she organized his move and arranged for him to attend

a gymnasium in Gotha, fifty kilometers from his mother`s home in Weimar.

Arthur`s chains were broken.