ARTHUR, A PHILOSOPHER FOR THE IIIrd MILLENNIUM?
At last, I've solved
my big problem, finding a brain I could talk to. By Buddha!
my "autistwin" died 77 years before my birth! First we must rehabilitate
Arthur, not a "pessimist" but just "one of us".
1/ THOSE STRANGE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE 19th
CENTURY!
Darwin, (obviously a "prosopamnesian"),
dominated and guided the Century that discovered psychology,
(Maine de Biran...) Even philosophers adapted to "evolution": the most
adapted species "survived", (better said "overfloated") and
started the exploration of the last continent, our brain: like any new
land, mind demands explorers accepting risks: till
mind-death, i.e. madness... A bit of strangeness was therefore
usual and useful, among true philosophers of this changing 19th century:
Kant,
Comte, James, Jung, Mill, Pierce had this "advantage"!... Sometimes
madness was in the family: Kierkegaard buried half his family before
20 years old.
Auguste Comte
went so deep into "psychOS" that, without his low-class wife, he would
have finished in a French Bedlam. But, immediately after, he produced
his best work, without profitting by this experience: he built the
strangest religion, a poor copy of what he wanted to destroy! William
James really did good use of his experience, wih a strange end: a ludicrous
love for "My Bergson"! Jung had more taste, Tony
and Sabrina...
Less known, first
of all in time, the "creator of psychology", Maine de Biran, (1766-1824).
Because of a poor health, he began "humanities" when 15 years old, (like
Schopenhauer...) studies based on the Stoic Greek philosophy, and the "Exemplary
Lives" (I know!). He therefore decided to leave a "monument of
his passage on earth..." Our Proust of philosophy contributed
with a few papers to the Institute, (like Rousseau or Schopenhauer),
and was a good enough "civil servant" in all the regimes he crossed,
(surviving like Talleyrand and Fouché). He left a
mountain of unpublished "pensées", (more than Pascal
and Pierce), deserving the title of "master of introspection", (the
ideal job for an anxious mind in a sick and passive body): "Only an
unsane person has a feeling of the existence..." (a precursor of Kierkegaard
and existencialism?)
A mind refusing
to move in a changing world, with strong insights: "The substitution
of "I WILL" to "I THINK" demands for "I AM", a subject on his way to "I
ACT"...), he could never find a "fix point", (like Pascal).
A "Christian Platonist" or an "Agnostic Theist"? An
awful mix of Platon, Augustine, Plotin, Molina, Teresa and St Francis...
The
title of some chapters he wrote: ( "The interior life of the religious
man", or "Religion as a psychological fact"), could be attributed
to James or the Bergson of "Les deux sources
de l'aMorale et de l'aReligion". This frightened atheist produced a
theosophy that could challenge Auguste Comte's elucubration,
Newton
babbling in "satammism", Descartes rewriting Thomism. He ludicrously
commented the Gospel of John, never understanding nor searching to know
the "why and how" of this adding to the "synoptics": "The
same things are taught by Jesus and the Spirit; one teaching from the exterior
and the other in the interior; that's why they are really two masters..."
Helped by the reading
of the "Imitation of Christ", he died with the "sacraments.
All
these "geniuses" were prepared for, (and preparing), the exploration
of mind. But, by the "Belle Epoque", the
Sorbonnes started a mass-production of sophists, immune against "creative
madness", not ready for any risky exploration. "Alors Bergson vint,
et le premier en France..." And the French Government ludicrously
promoted Henri...
Two exceptions in the 20th century, ( lost for progress): Popper,
a solitaire; Wittgenstein, ("Labelled Autist"
by Dear Temple!), with three brothers committing suicide.
Arthur?
he preceded all of them in time and depth: two uncles were half-nuts,
a grand'mother enclosed, his father, ("Labelled Autist" by a biographer
and probably committing suicide), did not recognize, during his terrible
fits, his own friends, (that it is "prosopamnesia"!
Biographers say
'mania', for "a man demanding the same bank employee to bring
his week money, carrying his own glass in his journeys; needing a loaded
pistol and a sword beside his bed, furious because a maid dusted his Buddha..."
Parents of young autists have a better word: "liturgy".
Arthur
is, therefore and statistically, a "top-autist with liturgies",
(maybe an ignored
and very special type).
PESSIMIST
14
yers old
|
But
great mysteries remain:
Arthur is more
than a case in the history of philosophy, practically a hIgh Q for VIP(hilosophers,
and others):
1/ No other
philosopher produced such a work so young...
2/ a work so "complete";
he could dedicate the rest of his life
3/ just
re-writing his thesis for different publics...
4/ BUT
did he see the SCOPE of his DISCOVERIES? |
2/
"WITHOUT PHYLLIS, NO ARTHUR..."
Arthur recognised and proclaimed
he was the produce of a remarkable father, a man of Enlightenment
that gave a refined education to his son, (all biographers
agree: "an anxious, exacting, and formidable man,
very ambitious for his son...")
PESSIMIST
AT 27 ANS
|
Imagine a young boy
admiring a remarkable father, and seeing him fall into "madness". What
could he imagine? What could the father explain after a crisis? "The UNCONTROLLABLE
WILL". The
"WILL" resulting from Arthur's observations of a father in crisis
and of the explanations of a father's unable to dominate his nerves? Maybe,
the key of his philosophy is contained in this remark: "I
have certaintly suffered from the temper of my father... If Henri
Floris S. had not been what he has been, Arthus S. would not have existed(written
in 1828).
Before dying, Kant and
Nietzsche disappeared into a strange coma... (I thank Dr. Corman,
creator of "morphopsychologie", for proving that Nietzsche was not syphilitic.
But Floris? it could be epilepsia.) I personnaly attended this phenomenon
beyond understanding, beyond acceptance. But I lived another period, as
strange:
a daughter adapting
to her father's "deficit"... |
For both hypothese, Mr. Poisson demands 30 cases! However, I
maintain that 's philosophy and his genius could be an inter-reaction
of both Schopenhauers. Arthur, for one, had this opinion. Anyway,
it's easy to apply to my "autistwin" my usual criteria to detect 'top-autists":
62 ANS
|
__ _1/
tendency to solitude or spleen...
___2/
a great shock during infancy, a feeling of abandon,
(death of a parent, the other re-marries and
disappears);
___3/
minimum help to learn: opportunity to develop alone, awful variety
of true experiences, practice of manual work...
__ _4/
existence of "Locomotives", (people guiding or admired),
___5/
Strange security to become famous, even in his last letter. |
But,
big difference with me, he missed this big jump into "psychOS", like Comte,
Jung, James, Stuart Mill,... This "jump" was for me one of my best investments.
After, I could work as much as I wanted: I would be warned by my "click-clicks".
I had "problems" if,
absorbed in a "problem-to-be-solved", I received a very bad news.
But I could absorb any extraordinary discovery by neurospecialists, like
bicameralism,
"Libet's delay line", "synesthesia"...
I could consciously tried
"voice-hearing", (you have the impression your two brains are quarrelling:
the right lobe refuses to follow the talkative left friend and tries
to impose the tribe's morals!). And also "mind-reading": I laugh
at gullible people going to "voyantes", (that have just a gift for
guessing your thoughts). Ben Franklin had the right word for them:
"Just crooks, using something that should be explored."
3/ "THANKS
GOD, I HAD A 'BAD' MOTHER!"
| |
Arthur had
a lot of problems with his mother? and in 1814 she
threw him out for good, never to see him again. (I know this maternal problem).
Maggee,
very imprudently, jumps on the easy tale of the 'frigid mother'. I prefer
another analogy, (It seems that "autists" have a knack for detecting a
common point between totally different structures and to pile them
up.) |
Mother
|
In Spain,
dominated by "auto-divinised divines", wives are protected against divorce
by the "established church" and can destroy their husbands through
blackmail, sexual or sentimental. This aspect is important
to understand Arthur's sexual adventures, his search for young girls
inferior to himself in education, and fortune, and health, and "will".
Spain produced a lot of small low-class "don Juàns" unable to marry
a mature woman. At most, they begin by a "marriage of establishment", with
a girl chosen or imposed by the family. Then, divorce and fresh-flesh hunting...
The daughters will be a copy of her mother and will imitate her:
Sister,
(died
a spinster)
|
In spite of her fortune and social
relations, she did not marry! The indifferent letter Arthur wrote
to her sister some days before her death, is significant, as much as his
next letter, with no feelings, giving details to receive his 'heritage'...
Personally, I list among the
characteristics of "prosopautism", an indifference to death, for one's
death and others'. It should come from the fact that we have no "head in
the head". Therefore, at the time of danger, we don't call for help; and
react more quickly, saving our skin when others die, (guess my position
in the James-Cannon debate!)
Was Arthur jealous of his
sister? much younger. When she was born he was sent to Le Havre,
(the happy period of his time, acquiring perfect French). |
I think that "jealousy, (kind of excessive competition), could be the spring
to "top-autism", (but Mr. Poisson demands 30 cases). Maybe Goethe saw something
when saying: "He just want, with a kind
of penetrating stubbornness, to mix up our modern philosophy"?
Goethe, in letter to Knebel, Nov. 24, 1814, (Schop was 26!)
I've just re-read his "Quadruple"
and the
4/ Now, let's justify a title of "Philosopher of
the 19th Century"
In my time, books of philosophy amounted to some
10.000. More than I could read, even obeying my teacher, "read good
books only!", (therefore, I'm thankful to Arthur, writing so
few and so good books). Today? the problem has not changed: how to
select them?
Anyway, my solution,
(55 years old), is still good, and maybe more necessary than in my time:
I propose to reduce "philosophy" to "visions"! For many thinkers, commenting,
explaining their "intuition", ended in an awful 'faux-pas', weakening
their discovery, (Piaget is a good example).
However, in a discovery, the aftermath
is more important for humanity than the discovery. Therefore, I appreciate
Arthur's visions, like his comment on the Kantian ship passing by,
(surely found without Phyllis' help!)
"DE LA QUADRUPLE RACINE DU PRINCIPE
DE LA RAISON SUFFISANTE", traduction par Cantacuzène, 1882,
pages 128 à 141: Chapitre §23 "Contestation de la démonstration
donnée par Kant concernant l'apriorité du concept de causalité"):
 |
Maybe the strangest text
in the history of philosophy. I imagine Kant and Schopenhauer helping
poor Albert about the mocking atom:
"A Bullet
in Space", said Immanuel.
"Also
a Wave in Time!", corrected Arthur.
And, at 25, in 1813, he changed the notion of time-space of his time. Through
pure and true philosophy! A century in advance! |
Kant walking along the beaches of
Koenigsberg, and observing ships, could guess
"spatial relativity". But finding it in temporal relativity, by looking
at two points of a wall is cleverer! So I repeat: "Maybe the genius
of Arthur was permanent jealousy..." It's obvious in his anti-Goethian
book on colours, provoking a separation...
As in the song:
"What you do, I can do, Better than you..." |
Most progress have come of this game: Berkeley trying "to do better" than
Locke, and Hume "trying better", and Kant "awaken to do better". All people
wanting to understand "how did Newton's brain
function".
Darwin, through pure
autistic inertia, published his masterpiece in 1859, but this peevish
kid, Schopenhauer, died in 1860. It's probable that he would have tried,
(and succeeded), "to do better".
It's
also obvious that any great change in thinking, (let's say a "noodigm"),
is due to a "genius with autistic characters", making a synthesis of all
"partial opinions", creating a language; redefining words, first
of all "space and time", then "motus"...
True even of Darwin, but I leave that demonstration
to more clever than me.)
I don't
pretend "to do better than" professor Cambier, (of Henri Mondor
Hospital) "...PROGRESS is OFTEN the work of MINDS SILENCING WHAT THEY HAD
LEARNT; to give free run to the REVEALING INTUITION of a THOUGHT
WITHOUT LANGUAGE. From Archimede to Einstein, we have a lot of examples...,
" (The reconciled brain").
I don't want "to do better", just to correct: "They didn't "silence"
anything; THEY REFUSED THE SCHOLASTIC TRAINING", case of Einstein,
Darwin, Newton, and especially Schoppy, my "autistwin". We use our right
lobe, difficult point for understand to that is our world, especially for
the "psycialists" selecting "left-lobed super-gifted kids"
through the BINET system..., (French is better since BINETte is slang for
"face"!
("REVEALING INTUITION" is so capital an idea that we should spend
20 years on it!)
5/ ARTHUR THE MENACE?
A rule well known in science,
quite obvious in any thinking:
"If Robinson on his island finds all
the knowledge of the third Millennium,
it wouldn't be knowledge..."
Therefore, Humanity
lost more than the 19th Century...
Arthur understood he "needed", (and looked for, and tried to produce) personal
enemies, (I remember Alain, (Chartier) saying: "I need a 'tête
de turc' to think..."). Einstein, Darwin, Newton were lucky: they had
a lot of "foes", high-class fellows. Vinci just joked, producing
a Joke'Onde since he could not produce a "noodigm". Schoppy tried
to find some, among the "famous" of his time, Fichte, Hegel... He
failed and was denied a deserved prize by the Danish Academy for insults
to established philosophers, (I beat him!); and we had Hegelianism, Marxism,
Sovietism,... and Freudism and Bergsonism and Lacanism... Now, what
next?
POSTHUMOUS
PESSIMIST
|
He was rebuked
by governments and universities and churches. Arthur tried to translate
Kant
into English, to "kick" Hegel
and his friends . Imagine the world economy? No Hegel
is no Marx,
that's no Lenin,
therefore no Stalin, no Mao-Mao, no Fidel,
no Sekou, no Thorez, no Carillos...
I, for one, can assure you,
it's not a quiet
life to be Cassander...
|
Now,
one minute of silence for one more lost occasion!
Einstein, Vinci, Edison,
Newton, Zenon, Darwin were more than born problem-solvers: they could
not suffer a non-solved problem. It was like living beside a bomb.
It was their way to calm their anxiety.
Popper, correctly recommands
to young philosophers to take some present problems and try to give them
some solution. Adding: "When you solve a problem you improve your capacity
of solving problems..." I prefer: "You improve your capacity to
see problems", (the first step to solve them? "A well-defined
problem is half-solved").
Why Arthur could not
see the next step? becoming the "Newton of psychOS"? Because he had no
ennemies? because he wanted a universitarian reconnaissance?
Therefore we can compare him
with Descartes, (whom he admire), who had in store the Newtonian calculus
(just calculting the surface of its drawings...) and the bicameralism,
(global shapes for the right lobes and formulas for the left one...). Both
fell into solitude: René producing theOSophism and Arthur repeating
himself.
0ne minute of silence
for two lost occasions!
6/ "When troubles don't
come to me, I run into them..."
(C'est moi tout craché!):
over-fed
AUTOPORTRAIT
|
I totally differ
from Arthur on one capital point:
I have no "mania",
no "liturgy", only
decent, useful
habits, and good customs
not perjudicious
to anybody. For instance the efficient
habit to remake
a plan of work every
three months,
(for fear of losing my time and
my life!) |
I thought
that Arthur had studied Latin and Greek as I did. False! He started
them at the age of 18, (a nice example of "persevération").
AUTOPORTRAIT
in 12 minutes
|
Latin, for
me it was a brain-opener, "à
la manière des Lumières".
Your private teacher gives you a page to chew. Then he answers your questions,
then you're prepared to 'revelation' and he fills you with True Greek Philosophy.
Latin, at Renaissance, was a
trick to teach true philosophy in spite of "Satammus". My strange
Latin gave me more: the secrets of "satammism", bundled in: "Quos
vult perdere Jupiter prius dementat..."
And I practised! When the Fascist Church tried
this trick on me, I returned it. They invited me for an exam by their "psychialist"
and, in 2 minutes, the fellow understood he was passing the exam... |
Anyway
Arthur was a real linguist, able to translate Kant into English or French...."
Being also a language-lover, I started a lot, (even Ki-Swahili, a linguistic
marvel). I was obsessed by the linguistic paradox, such as set by Wittgenstein
and Saussure:
"Language is the tool
to think
but it prevents thinking
by imposing ready-made thinkings".
Brain is a train
on rail? with conclusion included in the premisses.
With malaria!!!
|
But
every day I find more strange coincidences.
For instance, Arthur wrote a
page on the problem of painting open mouths, (Arthur was one of
the best critics on Arts...)
When
my teacher advised us to avoid painting teeth, I prepared a picture for
the annual exhibition:
"Pourquoi les peintres
ont une dent contre les dents"
collecting one hundred
portraits. Even saints under torture don't show their teeth! only "low-classes"
do: beggars, and robbers, and whores... |
Arthur
had troubles with his profs? (like Donna and Temple, expelled from college).
I did worst! A letter would be sent, read to me: I said:
"I was jealous, I'm sorry,
I won't do it again..." OVER!
We've got other common points: we are the only
two "philosophers" that could draw our auto portraits. I beat him!
He's less prosopamnesian than me, (only Darwin is my better), and less
absent-minded (Newton the winner), and less ambidextrous, (Vinci the artist!).
Not dead yet, I hope to beat Arthur on "Guinness of Isolation", within
three years. Our faith that we will survive in eternity, (it's our
way to resist the blow of life and the injustices of Establishments!)
Kant said, while dying: "People
will need a century to understand me..."
And more intimate
similtudes, explaining that I understand the special relations between
the two Schopenhauer.
"PESSIMIST"
at
65 YEARS
|
Arthur found
his books in the "Hell" at the Library of Milan, and had long troubles
with "justice".
Me? I'm a
top'autist condemned for "autism and prosopamnesia" by two tribunals.
Now, the
Messianic Churches are bloody sorry; and bleedingly soring? |
7/
"WE HAVE DONE IT !",
Who could explain this strange saying, just before he died?
"I
manage my heritage so that I could live without working, like a dandysopher,
like a "schnorrer". NO! he waited for his time to come!
Just imagine you have a curse on your family, two uncles half-nuts, a Bedlamised
grandmother , a father autist and prosopamnesian, committing suicide...
You would live in anxiety: "Any day it
will happen to me". With no family to
help Arthur. I live this state: I laugh now at me: it was only "destroyed
internal clock" for excesses of stress...
Therefore, I don't care about Schop's pessimism, a recipe of philosophers,
with variances, doubt, anxiety, cynicism, (a form of Irish humour, or stoicism,
(the logical complement). From Byron and Chateaubriand to Maupassant and
even Picasso, "pessimism" was an obligatory fashion! "le
coeur en écharpe". Therefore I
would propose a thesis for young fellows:
"The
role of France in turning Arthur into a "pessimist"..."
"PESSIMIST"
at
68 YEARS!
|
Who
could, should, rehabilitate Arthur?
Holland,
ignoring she has produced the greatest philosopher of the 19th Century.
He had not a drop of German blood and even explained: "No "p" between
two vowels in German". |
As Holland has produced interesting studies on "prosop'autism",
(see "In medio stat Vir(autis)tus),
they could have a "break" on my treasure-trove, "Schopenhauer
as a statistically established prosopautist".
Popper ask you to "break-it":
it could reinforce it as well!
69 YEARS
|
Strangely,
Arthur greatly admired the two, (important but imported), "DutchSophers",
Spinoza and Descartes.
René I claim
as an autist but Arthur is wrong to consider him as the re-starter of modern
sophy. Locke did it when he wondered:
"How did Newton's brain
function?"
As to Spinoza, he's a good candidate
for autism, (like many, since we are all autists in a relative degree...) |
Biographers should
write what they can understand. Look inside letters, memos, notes,
and in the "Manuscripts Remains", (in which any sentence can
be a "glow of Branly" or a "dust of Fleming").
"So little things could change so many biographies so much".
8/ "...therefore
the true title of the Critiques of the Pure Reason would be "Critiques
of occidentalist Theism"
|
Arthur was
the first European thinker to understand that True Buddhism allied to "World
Lumières" could be the way to produce a balanced Humanity. |
Without knowing this one more common point,
I decided during my 'isolation', (1949), to be a true philosopher,
first acquiring as much experience as possible, then at 50, imitating
Buddha, i.e. returning to teaching. Today, I send messages through
Internet, hoping to find a second Arthur, still living; and exercising.
Maybe he wants to meet an autistwin, and sends messages?
As a conclusion, anxiety is necessary for animals to survive
and for man to create. But "Too much is too much" may be the definition
of "disorderly autism". But the definition of "true genius" could
be "the correct management of a slightly over-average anxiety". The only
remedy? to make a great discovery, when still young, not falling
into any sorbonist easiness. Which leads to:
Top-Autism
could be the source of any progress of Humanity...
More independant, Arthur
is a more typical top-autist than Isaac, Albert, Charles, Leonard...
and, therefore, could probably be:
9/ THE PHILOSOPHER
FOR THE IIIrd MILLENNIUM!
70 ANS,
with no teeth
|
BRYAN
MAGGEE, page 452-453:
"Schopenhauer thought
he had shown that the noumenon whatever it is, must be one and undifferentiated.
In doing this, he
established a basic point of correction between Western and Eastern pholosophies.
Like
Hindu and Buddhist thinkers, he believed the One to be unknowable and ineffable.
The fact that all human beings are phenomenal manifestations of an
undifferentiated One means that in the ultimate ground of our being, we
are all identical. This explains compassion - our end is compassion, (not
as Kant would have it, rationality), that is the foundation of ethics.
These ideas constitute huge steps from Kant, and I ,(Maggee), think they
are the right direction... |
The best biography of
Arthur, (my opinion!), would be Bryan Maggee's,
(after rectifications by
a " problem inside prosopautist");
| "... Schopenhauer received
a broad and enriching education in school, enhanced by the travel and
social contacts that his wealthy family made possible. Sent to France
at the age of 9 when his sister was born, he acquired fluent French. After
some years of schooling, at the age of 15 he embarked with his parents
on a two-year trip to Holland, England, France, Switzerland, and
Aus tria. He saw many of the famous sights of the day, and
at times was deeply affected by the poverty and suffering he witnessed.
While his parents toured Britain, however, he was consigned to a boarding-school
in Wimbledon, whose narrow, disciplinarian, religious outlook (a marked
contrast to the education he had hither-to received) made a negative impression
that was to last. This episode says much about Schopenhauer's character
and upbring. He was a seething, belligerent pupil who would not submitto
the stultifying practices that surrounded him, and he seems quite isolated
in bis defiance... It is tempting to view the situation as a microcosm
of his later life. As his life progressed, it became clearer that it
would not be constructed around close relationships with others. He
began to see company as like a fire 'at
which the prudent man warms bimself at a distance'
(Ml,
123), and
resolved to be lonely even when with others, for fear
of losing his own integrity. He later wrote that five-sixths of human beings
were worth only contempt, but equally saw that there were inner obstacles
to human contact:'Nature has done more
than is necessary to isolate my heart, in that she endowed it with suspicion,
sensitiveness, vehemence and pride' (M4,
506). He was
prone to depression, and confessed 'I
always have an anxious concern that causes me to see and look for dangers
where none exist' (M4, 507). |
POSTSCRIPT:
I've just reread Schopenhauer's two firsts
books, (probably the most difficult and the less read), "Quadruple Principe..."
and "Essai sur le Libre Arbitre", translated by Salomon Reinach, (12th
edition, 1913; Freud, student of the Salpètrière, could read
the first one, at the time he saw the commercial possibilities of the "charcotian
sex"...)
Strange comments of the tradutore-traditore
in a continuous flow:
" a sickly vanity, exalted until autolatry and accompanied by
a fierce hatred against more illustrate contemporaries; the secret conscience
that the novelties he extols are not as new as he pretends... etc... etc...
His book, "Quadruple Principe..." the most obscure and the most abstract
of .Schopenhauer.. One hesitates to say as Ribot: "If .Schopenhauer was
translated in our language, owe would be surprised to find it not a bit
German..."
My comments: But admitting that Schopenhauer
has some kind of "autism", most of its excesses are as explicable as Newton's
or Einstein's, (I invented "dry tantrum"). It seems that Schopenhauer wants
to re-write the two first Kantian Critiques. He is obviously near
a correct definition of "conscience", (a), which explains that, in spite
of extraordinary intuitions, (b), he is turning around the bush, (c)...
Some extracts:
a/ (page 31): " We can desire two opposed things, but we
can only have one: and conscience will know what the "will" has decided
a posteriori, by the accomplishment of the action. Conscience therefore
cannot provide enlightenment, precisely because it learns the result a
posteriori..." (one minute of silence for a lost opportunity...)
b/ (page 36): Pushed to end any man saying: "I can
will what I want: what I want, it is me that want it.", he will invent
a will of his will, i.e. speak about a "me of my me"...
c/ (page 40): "It is surprising that the conscience has no
reply to offer to so abstruse a question... Globally, the character is
even hereditary, from the father only, the intelligence coming from the
mother: on this point, I return to chapter 45 of my work (Welt as Wille).
POST-SCRIPTUM:
Je viens de relire les deux premières
œuvres de Schopenhauer, qui sont probablement les plus difficiles à
comprendre et les moins lues. "QUADRUPLE RAISON..." et "ESSAI SUR LE LIBRE
ARBITRE", traduit par Salomon Reinach, (12ème édition, 1913,
ce qui met les premières au moment où Freud,
étudiant à la Salpètrière, voit les possibilités
commerciales du "sexe charcotien"...) Etranges commentaires en coulée
continue du traducteur, (peut-on traduire un penseur que l'on détruit?)
Page 166: " une vanité maladive, exaltée jusqu'à
l'autolâtrie et accompagnée, comme de raison, d'une haine
féroce contre des contemporains plus illustres; la conscience secrète
que les nouveautés qu'il prône ne sont pas aussi nouvelles
qu'il voudrait faire croire... etc... etc... Son livre, "Quadruple
Principe..." jugé le livre le plus obscur et le plus abstrait de
.Schopenhauer.. On hésite à dire avec Ribot: "Si Schopenhauer
était traduit dans notre langue, on s'étonnerait de le trouver
si peu allemand..." (excellent pour donner une fausse opinion d'un penseur!
En admettant que Schopenhauer soit "autiste", la plupart de
ses excès sont aussi explicables que ceux de Newton ou d'Einstein.
Il semble que Schopenhauer veut sortir deux répliques aux deux Critiques
kantiennes. On voit surtout qu'il n'arrive pas à définir
"conscience", ce qui expliquerait qu'il n'y eut pas de suite à sa
vision première.
Page 31: " On peut en effet désirer deux choses opposées,
on ne peut en vouloir qu'une: et pour laquelle s'est décidée
la volonté, c'est ce dont la conscience n'est instruite qu'à
posteriori, par
l'accomplissement de l'acte... la conscience ne peut fournir d'éclaircissement,
précisément parce qu'elle apprend le résultat a posteriori..."
page 36: "Je peux vouloir ce que je veux: ce que je
veux, c'est moi qui le veux." Poussé à bout, il se
mettra à parler d'une volonté de sa volonté, ce qui
revient à parler d'un moi de son moi..."
page 40: "on peut s'étonner qu'à une question
aussi abstruse, la conscience n'ait pas de réponse à offrir...
Dans ses traits généraux, le caractère est même
héréditaire, mais du côté dii père seulement,
l'intelligence par contre venant de la mère: sur ce point,
je renvoie au chapitre 45 de mon ouvrage (Welt as Wille).