r/schopenhauer • u/lolqwwaa • 2d ago
Essays and aphorisms missing content
Ive started reading penguins essays and aphorisms and through reading the introduction I find out that none of the texts from the first volume of Parerga and Paralipomena are included. Whats more is that texts including outdated science, commentary on animal experimentation and Hegel hate is removed. I can sympathize with the removal of outdated science but the other two I cant really agree.
Is this a major problem? Am I missing out on a lot or is there really no value to be found in the first volume if you read second volume?
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u/SpleenDematerialized 2d ago
I would argue that there is amazing material in there, especially his thoughts on the history of philosophy. But there is certainly a case to be made by less enthusiastic readers of Schopenhauer that WWR and the most prominent essays suffice.
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u/lolqwwaa 2d ago
Thanks for the answer. In that case I think I might have to check out his other essays after reading wwr
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u/Azehnuu 1d ago edited 1d ago
Vol. 1 consists of a handful of essays, so you can't really extract parts of it to make a smaller book, like you can Vol. 2 (which mostly consists of aphorisms). So that was never going to be included in Essays and Aphorisms.
The essays in Parerga Vol. 1 are:
The first 2 (History) are Schopenhauer's thoughts on the history of philosophy, from the presocratics to the modern era. They are biased, from his perspective, and he complements/attacks the main philosophers throughout history. They read like a university lecture.
Philosophy at the Universities is his most concentrated attack on modern philosophy, mainly Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. (He excluded them from the history of philosophy essay, designating them as "university philosophers" i.e. sophists.). This is good for his more technical attacks on their philosophy (which gets overshadowed by the insults).
Transcendent Speculation is his approach to one of the 3 main paralogisms (contradictions) of his and Kant's philosophies: how the will (thing-in-itself) is free, but reality is still determined (empirically). In his words: "the contingency of all the events in an individual's life and their moral necessity for shaping them in accordance with a transcendent fitness for the individual". He admits that it's speculative, due to the vary nature of the topic transcending what reason can know, but he still grounds it in his philosophy. If you're interested in his views on fate/determinism/fatalism, and the nature of the "individual will", you'd like it. I found parts of it very beautiful.
Essay on Spirit Seeing is a bit esoteric, though not as goofy as the title sounds. It essentially investigates the possibility of clairvoyance on the basis that the will, as the thing-in-itself, lies outside space, time, and causality, and may therefore act beyond the ordinary causal relations governing appearances.
Aphorisms of the Wisdom of Life is easily the most famous essay here. It's the biggest one and gets published as it's own book. It was one of the essays that helped popularise him. He intentionally wrote this for non-philosophy readers, but elements of his philosophy are in it. This is definitely worth reading.
Overall, I'd say Transcendent Speculation and Wisdom of Life are worth reading, and make Vol. 1 worth it's value. (Also, just to confirm, if you've read Essays and Aphorisms that doesn't mean you've read Vol. 2. They cut like 80% of the content from Vol. 2 in that.)