Why Schopenhauer Warned Against Book Knowledge |
Arthur Schopenhauer had to fight his father to obtain a higher education.
Despite his education, it was the two years that he spent out of school that did the most for Schopenhauer.
Schopenhauer saw three hangings and a hard-labor penitentiary, and compared it to the Buddha’s awakening.
Arthur Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788, at 114 Heiliggeistgasse in the free city of Danzig (present-day Gdańsk, Poland). His father, Heinrich Floris, was one of the city’s most prominent merchants. Heinrich Floris was determined that his only son should become a merchant, and regularly upbraided him for his poor posture and even worse handwriting.
In 1793, when Arthur was five years old, Prussia annexed Danzig. The Schopenhauer family moved to the free Hanseatic city of Hamburg. At nine years old, Arthur was sent to Le Havre in France to live with the family of his father’s business associate, Grégoire de Blésimaire, who had a son, Jean Anthime, of Arthur’s age. The two years that Arthur spent in Le Havre were, he claimed, among the happiest of his life. He became fluent in French, learned to play the flute, and forged a lifelong friendship with Jean-Anthime. Later in life, Schopenhauer would play the flute every day—leading Nietzsche to wonder whether he was indeed such a pessimist.
When Arthur was in his mid-teens, the principal of his private school, Dr. Runge, who recognised his exceptional potential, attempted to........