The Schopenhauer Cure(88)
Why was it that Arthur Schopenhauer never had a job? The story of Arthur’s kamikaze strategy for obtaining a position at the university is another one of those quirky anecdotes included in every biographical account of Schopenhauer’s life. In 1820, at the age of thirty-two, he was offered his first teaching job, a temporary, very low-salaried position (Privatdozent) to teach philosophy at the University of Berlin. What did he do but immediately and deliberately schedule his lecture course (titled “The Essence of the World”) at the exact same hour as the course offered by Georg Wilhelm Hegel, the departmental chairman and the most renowned philosopher of the day?
Two hundred eager students crammed into Hegel’s course, whereas only five came to hear Schopenhauer describe himself as an avenger who had come to liberate post-Kantian philosophy from the empty paradoxes and the corrupting and obscure language of contemporary philosophy. It was no secret that Schopenhauer’s target was Hegel and Hegel’s predecessor, Fichte (remember, the philosopher who had begun life as a gooseherd and walked across all of Europe in order to meet Kant). Obviously, none of this endeared the young Schopenhauer to Hegel or to the other faculty members, and when no students at all materialized for Schopenhauer’s course the following semester his brief and reckless academic career was over: he never again gave a public lecture.
In his thirty years at Frankfurt until his death in 1860, Schopenhauer adhered to a regular daily schedule, almost as precise as Kant’s daily routine. His day began with three hours of writing followed by a hour, sometimes two, of playing the flute. He swam daily in the cold Main River, rarely missing a day even in the midst of winter. He always lunched at the same club, the Englisher Hof, dressed in tails and white tie, a costume that was high fashion in his youth but conspicuously out of style in mid-nineteenth century Frankfurt. It was to his luncheon club that any curious person wanting to meet the odd and querulous philosopher would go.
Anecdotes about Schopenhauer at the Englisher Hof abound: his enormous appetite, often consuming food for two (when someone remarked upon this, he replied that he also thought for two), his paying for two lunches to ensure no one sat next to him, his gruff but penetrating conversation, his frequent outbursts of temper, his blacklist of individuals to whom he refused to speak, his tendency to discuss inappropriate shocking topics—for example, praising the new scientific discovery that allowed him to avoid venereal infection by dipping his penis after intercourse into a dilute solution of bleaching powder.
Though he enjoyed serious conversation, he rarely found dining companions he deemed worthy of his time. For some time, he regularly placed a gold piece on the table when he sat down and removed it when he left. One of the military officers that usually lunched at the same table once asked him about the purpose of this exercise. Schopenhauer replied that he would donate the gold piece for the poor the day that he heard officers have a serious conversation that did not entirely revolve around their horses, dogs, or women. During his meal he would address his poodle, Atman, as “You, Sir,” and if Atman misbehaved he redressed him by calling him “You Human!”
Many anecdotes of his sharp wit are told. Once a diner asked him a question to which he simply responded, “I don’t know.” The young man commented, “Well, well, I thought you, a great sage, knew everything!” Schopenhauer replied, “No, knowledge is limited, only stupidity is unlimited!” A query to Schopenhauer from or about women or marriage elicited without fail an acerbic response. He was once forced to endure the company of a very talkative woman, who described in detail the misery of her marriage. He listened patiently, but when she asked if he understood her, he replied, “No, but I do understand your husband.”
In another reported exchange he was asked if he would marry.
“I have no intention to get married because it would only cause me worries.”
“And why would that would be the case?”
“I would be jealous, because my wife would cheat on me.”
“Why are you so sure of that?”
“Because I would deserve it.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I would have married.”
He also had sharp words to say about physicians, once remarking that doctors have two different handwritings: a barely legible one for prescriptions and a clear and proper one for their bills.
A writer who visited the fifty-eight-year-old Schopenhauer at lunch in 1846 described him thus:
Well built…invariably well dressed but an outmoded cut…medium height with short silvery hair…amused and exceedingly intelligent blue-flecked eyes…displayed an introverted and, when he spoke, almost baroque nature, whereby he daily supplied considerable material to the cheap satire of…the table company. Thus, this often comically disgruntled, but in fact harmless and good-naturedly gruff, table companion became the butt of the jokes of insignificant men who would regularly—though admittedly not ill-meaningly—make fun of him.
After lunch Schopenhauer habitually took a long walk, often carrying on an audible monologue or a conversation with his dog which elicited jeers from children. He spent evenings reading alone in his rooms, never receiving visitors. There is no evidence of romantic relationships during his years in Frankfurt, and in 1831, at the age of forty-three, he wrote in “About Me,” “The risk of living without work on a small income can be undertaken only in celibacy.”