(full review: http://wwhyte.livejournal.com/111384.html)

This is a compilation of Schopenhauer's philosophical writings, selected by an uncredited editor and unfortunately published without any notes. Schopenhauer believes life is essentially one long round of suffering, ultimately disappointing; that ideas Platonically represent Things; that "human desires [that bring about suffering] … must be originally and in their essence sinful and reprehensible"; that women are "… [kind of rubbish]"; and that thinking for yourself, rather than just reading, is very important.

Of these assertions, I disagree with varying degrees of passion to all but the last one. The central quote supporting the first assertion, attractively presented on the cover, is:

A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.

But this is just wrong. The animal being eaten is more miserable than the animal eating is happy; but there are many animals that are neither eating others nor being eaten. If there are a lot of them, they don't have to be very happy each to result in an overall balance of pain and enjoyment. The statement is simply wrong. One could excuse Schopenhauer by saying the statement is meant to be a rhetorical flourish, not a proof. But the problem is that all the book is like this; and either all the book has to be excused in this way, which leaves no actual argument in the sense of a statement supported by evidence, or at some point it has to be held to some standards of rigor which I don't think it lives up to.

I can see how it might have inspired later literature, up to and including the existentialists. It's stylishly written and with great energy. But essentially it's a series of justifications for Schopenhauer's existing prejudices, not an examination of them.

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