26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Continental View, October 15, 2006
There are several excellent books available that describe and analyze the life and works of Schopenhauer. One is 'Schopenhauer' by Patrick Gardiner, another is 'The Philosophy of Schopenhauer' by Bryan Magee; the Very Short Introduction by Christopher Janaway is also very good. To those must be added this book by Rudiger Safranski, although it is a significantly different treatment. Gardiner, Magee, and Janaway are all Brits and write largely from that philosophical tradition, while Safranski, a German, is steeped in Continental philosophy and writes from that perspective. That means a perspective heavily informed, as he tells us, by Heidegger, Sartre, and Foucault, among others. It means that the prose will often be highly dramatic, with words like 'being' and 'self' appearing in caps, as 'Being' and 'Self.' If your patience for that sort of thing is limited, you may experience a rising sense of irritation by somewhere in the second half of Safranski's book. But Schopenhauer was, after all, a European metaphysician, wasn't he?
The book shows great scholarship, with many fascinating details about Schopenhauer's life and times; it also contains sections of analysis that are breathtakingly well written and insightful. Safranski is extremely good on Kant; his identification of Kantian ideas presaged in Rousseau was something I've not seen elsewhere, for one example. He sometimes uses "will to live" as a synonym for "will," which makes it sound close to the Nietzschian notion of the "will to power." But the reader should know that for Schopenhauer will also had a much broader meaning, encompassing even the most basic natural forces, like magnetism or the force involved in a stone falling toward the earth. And Schopenhauer's metaphysics had three tiers, the will and its objectification in individual objects, plus an intermediary level corresponding to Plato's Ideas. That intermediate level does not seem to be mentioned anywhere by Safranski, even though it is both a very problematic aspect of Schopenhauer's system and plays an important role in his theory of the visual arts. In Safranski's treatment of Schopenhauer's ideas about human freedom, the philosopher's doctrine of character is not adequately developed, although it is critical for his ethical theory. Finally, Schopenhauer carefully analyzed the nature of concepts, and he spent a lot of time railing against the use of concepts that are not grounded empirically in perception, thus rejecting the floating idealisms of Fichte, Schelling, and especially Hegel. Schopenhauer's theory of concepts is not adequately explicated by Safranski; the term 'concept' does not even appear in the index.
Safranski's book probably has maximum value as a supplement to Gardiner or Magee. It is not as complete or systematic as those in its presentation, but it contains a lot of additional insights and factual material that make it well worth reading. And, of course, none of these are substitutes for reading Schopenhauer himself, as he was a superb writer who constantly strives to be clearly understood.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Translations, July 2, 2002
By A Customer
arlodriver is rightly concerned with the wooden style displayed in this book and the volume on Heidegger. The fault, however, is not Safranski's but rather that of his translator, Ewald Osers, as Shelley Frisch's fine rendering of Safranski's biography of Nietzsche conclusively proves.
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20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This will have to do, April 1, 2001
I'm torn in reviewing this item, only because the subject is so damn interesting that any modern scholarship is appreciated. However, for me, Safranski is one of those writers who either suffers from poor translation or simply a wooden style. Very few authors can get in my way of enjoying a philosophical biography the way Safranski can (I felt this with his treatment of Heidegger as well). He would benefit from a more transparent prose to go with his fascinating subjects. However, this is a book that attempts to chronicle the life of that wildman of thought, Schopenhauer, and even a rough attempt is indispensable. The facts are here, copious, and surrounded by pertinent details of Arthur's time, and for that reason alone it's probably a must have for fans of this philosopher. For a more biased but better written account of his ideas, I'd probably recommend Magee's "The Philosophy of Schopenhauer".
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