The Schopenhauer Cure(36)
After a brief silence Stuart commented, “Shouldn’t we go back to where we were a few minutes ago when Julius said that what would be best for him would be for us to get to work in the group?”
“I agree,” said Bonnie, “but where to start? How about a follow-up on you and your wife, Stuart? Last we heard she e-mailed you that she was thinking of leaving the marriage.”
“It’s settled down and we’re back to status quo. She’s keeping her distance, but at least things are no worse. Let’s see what else is pending in the group.” Stuart looked around the room. “I can think of two items. Gill, how about you and Rose—what’s been happening there? And, Bonnie, you said earlier today you had something to work on, but it felt too trivial.”
“I want to pass today,” said Gill, looking downward. “I took too much time last week. But the bottom line is defeat and capitulation. I’m ashamed to be back home in the same situation. All that good advice from Philip, from all of you, was wasted on me. How about you, Bonnie?”
“My stuff feels like small potatoes today.”
“Remember my version of Boyle’s law,” said Julius. “A small amount of anxiety will expand to fill our whole anxiety cavity. Your anxiety feels just as awful as anxiety in others that comes from more obviously calamitous sources.” He looked at his watch. “We’re just about out of time, but do you want to open it up? Get it on the agenda?”
“To stop me from chickening out next week, you mean?” asked Bonnie. “Well, that’s not a bad idea. What I was going to bring up has to do with my being homely and fat and clumsy and Rebecca—and also Pam—being beautiful and…and stylish. But, Rebecca, you, especially, open up a lot of painful old feelings for me—feelings I’ve always had about being klutzy, homely, unchosen.” Bonnie stopped and looked at Julius. “There, it’s out.”
“And on the agenda for next week,” said Julius, rising to signal the end of the meeting.
14
1807—How Arthur Schopenhauer Almost Became a Merchant
* * *
A person of high, rare mental gifts who is forced into a job which is merely useful is like a valuable vase decorated with the most beautiful painting and then used as a kitchen pot.
* * *
The Schopenhauer family’s grand tour ended in 1804, and the sixteen-year-old Arthur, with a heavy heart, honored his pledge to his father by commencing his seven-year apprenticeship with Senator Jenisch, an eminent Hamburg merchant. Slipping into a double life, Arthur fulfilled all the quotidian tasks of his apprenticeship but surreptitiously spent every spare moment studying the great ideas of intellectual history. He had so internalized his father, however, that these stolen moments filled him with remorse.
Then, nine months later came the staggering event that marked Arthur’s life forever. Though Heinrich Schopenhauer was only sixty-five, his health had rapidly deteriorated: he appeared jaundiced, fatigued, depressed, and confused, often not recognizing old acquaintances. On the twentieth of April, 1805, he managed, despite his infirmity, to travel to his Hamburg warehouse, slowly climb to the upper loft of the granary, and hurl himself out of the window into the Hamburg Canal. A few hours later his body was found floating in the icy water.
Every suicide leaves a wake of shock, guilt, and anger in the survivors, and Arthur experienced all these sentiments. Imagine the complexity of feelings Arthur must have experienced. His love for his father resulted in intense grief and loss. His resentment of his father—later he often spoke of his suffering from his father’s excessive hardness—evoked remorse. And the wonderful possibility of liberation must have evoked much guilt: Arthur realized that his father would have forever blocked the path to his becoming a philosopher. In this regard one thinks of two other great free-thinking moral philosophers, Nietzsche and Sartre, who lost their fathers early in life. Could Nietzsche have become the Antichrist if his father, a Lutheran minister, had not died when Nietzsche was a child? And in his autobiography Sartre expresses his relief that he was not burdened with the search for his father’s approbation. Others, Kierkegaard and Kafka, for example, were not so fortunate: all their lives they were oppressed by the weight of their fathers’ judgment.
Though Arthur Schopenhauer’s work contains an enormous range of ideas, topics, historical and scientific curiosities, notions, and sentiments, there are to be found only a couple of personal tender passages, and each pertains to Heinrich Schopenhauer. In one passage Arthur expresses pride in his father’s honest admission that he was in business to make money and compares his father’s forth-rightness to the duplicity of many of his fellow philosophers (particularly Hegel and Fichte), who grasp for wealth, power, and fame all the while pretending they are working for humanity.
At the age of sixty he planned to dedicate his complete works to the memory of his father. He worked and reworked the wording of his dedication, which ultimately was never published. One version began: “Noble, excellent spirit to whom I owe everything that I am and that I achieve…any one finding in my work any kind of joy, consolation, instruction, let him hear your name and know that, if Heinrich Schopenhauer had not been the man he was, Arthur Schopenhauer would have perished a hundred times.”
The strength of Arthur’s filial devotion remains puzzling, given Heinrich’s lack of any overt affection toward his son. His letters to Arthur are laced with criticism. For example: “Dancing and riding do not make for a livelihood for a merchant whose letters have to be read and must therefore be well written. Now and then I find that the capital letters in your hand are still veritable monstrosities.” Or: “Do not acquire a round back, which looks ghastly…. if in the dining room one catches sight of someone stooping, one takes him for a disguised tailor or cobbler.” In his very last letter Heinrich instructed his son: “With reference to walking and sitting upright, I advise you request everyone you are with to give you a blow whenever you are caught oblivious of this great matter. This is what children of Princes have done, not minding the pain for a short time, rather than appear as oafs all their lives.”