This selection of his writings on religion, ethics, politics, women and many other themes is taken from Schopenhauer's last work, Parerga and Paralipomena, which he published in 1851. He depicts humanity as locked in a struggle beyond good and evil, each individual absolutely free within a Godless world in which art, morality and self-awareness are our only salvation. This innovative and pessimistic view proved powerfully influential upon philosophy and art, affecting the work of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein among others.

    In The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims, two essays from his last work, Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), he discusses how to order our lives to obtain the greatest amount of pleasure and success; then he offers guidelines for living life to its fullest. But for Schopenhauer a life well lived should always reach beyond itself to a higher plane.

    Among Schopenhauer's chief contributions to the field of philosophy are his rejection of the idealism of his contemporaries and his embrace of a practical variety of materialism. He jettisons the traditional philosophic jargon for a brisk, compelling style that employs direct terms to express the metaphysics of the will.In The Wisdom of Life, an essay from Schopenhauer's final work, Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), the philosopher favors individual strength of will and independent, reasoned deliberation over the tendency to act on irrational impulses. He examines the ways in which life can be arranged to derive the highest degree of pleasure and success, presents guidelines to achieving this full and rich manner of living, and advises that even a life well lived must always aspire to grander heights. Abounding in subjects of enduring relevance, Schopenhauer's highly readable work appears here in an excellent translation.

    The Parerga (Volume 1) are six long essays; the Paralipomena (Volume 2) are shorter writings arranged under thirty-one differentsubject-headings. These works won widespread attention with their publication in 1851, helping to secure lasting international fame for Schopenhauer. Indeed, their intellectual vigor, literary power, and rich diversity are still extraordinary even today.

    He responded to and expanded upon Immanuel Kant's philosophy concerning the way in which we experience the world. His critique of Kant, his creative solutions to the problems of human experience and his explication of the limits of human knowledge are among his most important achievements. His metaphysical theory is the foundation of his influential writings on psychology, aesthetics, ethics, and politics which influenced Friedrich Nietzsche, Wagner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud and others. He said he was influenced by the Upanishads, Immanuel Kant, and Plato. References to Eastern philosophy and religion appear frequently in his writing. He appreciated the teachings of the Buddha and even called himself a Buddhaist. He said that his philosophy could not have been conceived before these teachings were available. He called himself a Kantian. He formulated a pessimistic philosophy that gained importance and support after the failure of the German and Austrian revolutions of 1848.

    "The Lily in the Field & the Bird of the Air" contemplates the teaching authority of these creatures based on three different passages in the Gospels. The first of "Two Ethical-Religious Essays" mediates on the ethics of Jesus' martyrdom; the second contrasts the authority of the genius with that of the apostle. The remaining works--"Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays" (1849), "An Upbuilding Discourse" (1850), & "Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays" (1851)--are meditations on sin, forgiveness & the power of love.

    This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: open; Jerusalem without inhabitants; her walls levelled with the ground; her people dispersed through the world, and the world in arms. The eagles of Rome were heard screaming wildly. Rome was seen without Caesars and without gods; the cities depopulated and the deserts peopled; as the governors of nations, men who did not know how to read, and were clad in skins; the multitudes obeying the voice of him who said at the Jordan, Do penance, and of the other who said, He who wishes to be perfect, let him leave all things, take up his cross, and follow me; and kings adoring the Cross, and the Cross raised on high in all places. What is the cause of these great changes and transformations ? What is the cause of this great desolation and universal cataclysm ? What has occurred ? Nothing; only some new theologians are going about through the world announcing a new theology. CHAPTER II. Of society under the empire of Catholic theology. THAT new theology is called Catholicity. Catholicity is a complete system of civilisation, so complete, that in its immensity it embraces everything?the science of God, the science of the angel, the science of the universe, and the science of man. The infidel falls into ecstasy at sight of its inconceivable extravagance, and the believer at sight of its wonderful grandeur. If there be any one who, on beholding it, passes by with a smile, people, more astounded at such an amount of stupid indifference than at that colossal grandeur and that inconceivable extravagance, raise their voice, and say, Let the fool pass. All humanity has studied for the space of eighteen centuries in the school of its theologians and its doctors; and at the end of so much application, and the end of so much study, up to to-day the abyss of its science has not b...