(03/02/99)

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 He left a mountain of unpublished "pensées", (more than  Pascal and Pierce), deserving the title of "master of introspection", (the ideal job for an anxious mind in a sick and passive body):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 "hautist with liturgies",
(maybe an ignored and very special type).

PESSIMIST, 14 years old
 But great mysteries remain:
         Arthur is more than a case in the history of philosophy:
      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,  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, 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...

     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
   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?

        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!):

   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
      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.
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"..." 

 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 "Enlightenment"
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 1:
    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 2:
    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).