Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on the Text
- Chronology of Schopenhauer's Life and Works
- 1 The Affirmation of the Will
- 2 A Tour for a Trade
- 3 A Father's Death; A Philosopher's Birth
- 4 The University Years
- 5 The Better Consciousness, Causes, Grounds, and Confrontations
- 6 Goethe, Colors, and Eastern Lights
- 7 The Single Thought of Dresden
- 8 Failure in Berlin
- 9 Ich Bin Kein Berliner
- 10 The Frankfurt Philosopher
- 11 The Dawn of Fame and the End of Life
- Works Cited
- Index
9 - Ich Bin Kein Berliner
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on the Text
- Chronology of Schopenhauer's Life and Works
- 1 The Affirmation of the Will
- 2 A Tour for a Trade
- 3 A Father's Death; A Philosopher's Birth
- 4 The University Years
- 5 The Better Consciousness, Causes, Grounds, and Confrontations
- 6 Goethe, Colors, and Eastern Lights
- 7 The Single Thought of Dresden
- 8 Failure in Berlin
- 9 Ich Bin Kein Berliner
- 10 The Frankfurt Philosopher
- 11 The Dawn of Fame and the End of Life
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Schopenhauer's early years in Berlin were punctuated by periods of discontentment and despair, and his unhappiness moved him to struggle with feelings of self-abandonment. In a revealing reflection recorded in his secret diary, the philosopher set out to steel his nerve and to return to himself:
When at times I felt unhappy, this was by virtue of a misunderstanding, of a flaw in my person. I then took myself to be other than I was and then lamented that other person's misery and distress, e.g., for a Privatdozent who does not become a professor and has no one to hear his lectures; or for the one of whom the philistines speak ill and the gossips spread stories; or for the defendant in an assault case; or for the lover who will not be heard by the girl with whom he is infatuated; or for the patient who is kept at home by illness; or to be other similar people who are affected by like miseries. I have not been any of these. All of this is strange cloth from which at most the coat had been made that I wore for a while and that I then discarded in exchange for another. But then who am I? The man who has written the World as Will and Representation and has provided a solution to the great problem of existence that perhaps will render obsolete all previous solutions, but which in any case will engage thinkers in the centuries to come. I am that man, and what could disturb him in the few years in which he has still to draw breath?
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- Information
- SchopenhauerA Biography, pp. 402 - 465Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010