Hello everybody,

A couple of months ago I read the 1st volume of Schopenhauer's main
work. I liked it a lot. One thing I never fully grasped is his idea
that happiness is "negative" and suffering is "positive". He couldn't
have meant happiness is bad and suffering is good. My only guess is
that he meant that suffering is additive and happiness is subtractive.
Meaning we start from suffering from day 1 and any happiness is a
subtraction from it. And because of this we get used to happiness

"surge" gmail.com> wrote in message
news:99114b44-06b8-484d-968a-05bfccff6594@v57g2000hse.googlegroups.com...

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:05:38 -0700, surge wrote:

"Aesthetic contemplation for Schopenhauer translates into an immediate
objectification of the will. He employs a Platonic allegory to
demonstrate that all existence is ultimately futile since it can be
fundamentally characterized by a want of satisfaction that can never be
attained. This want is otherwise known as happiness"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schopenhauer

So, happiness is futile, so sadness and suffering...

"Through art, Schopenhauer thought, the thinking subject could be jarred
out of their limited, individual perspective to feel a sense of the
universal directly—the "universal" in question, of course, was the will.
The contest of personal desire with a world that was, by nature, inimical
to its satisfaction is inevitably tragical; therefore, the highest place
in art was given to tragedy."

How EMO!

surge schreef:

A value that S. had was art. Art and art alone was able to give
enlightment from the Will.

I understood that as that only creative expression was a kind of Will S.
could be possitive about.

Thanks, everybody for your replies.

I've been so preoccupied with this question that in my eagerness to
find out, I finally stumbled on a place in his "Aphorisms" where he
refers to the exact place in volume 1 of The World As Will and
Representation where it is described -- section 58. Basically, my
initial explanation was correct: before any desire is satisfied there
is always a need first. Thus, satisfying a desire subtracts from the
initial need. In fact, according to S., the only way we can enjoy
something is by remembering what it was like without it. And so
happiness subtracts from something that is always present -- need --
which is thus "positive".

ZerkonX, the point that happiness is not in the goal but in the
process (the chase is better than the catch) is well-known but hard to
implement. Few of us can live that way (unless someone IS
enlightened). The regular Joe can't live in the moment. He can enjoy
those moments only as a memory, rarely in the present. But this
argument is endless.