Schopenhauer’s pessimism

Schopenhauer was a very intelligent man and philosopher, however, his view of life is reflective of the fall. He had a very pessimistic view of how life is lived by humans, and this idea set the tone for his beliefs and discoveries. He was a German philosopher who was greatly influenced by Kant, which not surprisingly guided his ways of thinking in some areas. He believed that humans were motivated by only their own basic desires and he believed that this idea directed all of mankind. We all have a will to survive which causes an unending cycle of needs and need satisfaction. Most human behavior, because of this idea, he considered irrational. We have pain caused by an unsatisfied need and that causes us to act to satisfy that need. Furthermore, he thought that human desire was futile, illogical, directionless, and, by extension, so was all human action in the world. To address this idea, he wrote that “man can indeed do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants.”

There are many more examples of the fall in Schopenhauer’s ways of thinking, but I want to specifically focus on this idea of the will to survive. The way he unravel’s this thought reflects the conclusion that human’s have needs and without fulfillment of those needs, there is a sense of pain that we endure. Even further, when we satisfy those needs it is only a momentary satisfaction which lasts only until another need presents itself. He continued to say that even when all the needs that we have are satisfied, there is not joy or freedom, but simply boredom. These main ideas significantly reflect some aspects the Christian idea of the fall represents. The fall is a failure of perfection. It went from a place of perfect creation, where there are no needs, no pains, and all fulfillment was in the creator, to this place described by Schopenhauer. It is evident: human’s have needs and there is a lot of pain in this world. People are seeking for fulfillment in every area they can because they want to satisfy their feelings of need, pain, and loss. These things are a direct reflection of the fall, and even though this wasn’t believed by Schopenhauer, there is power in the following idea of the resurrection which furthermore leads to restoration and a place of freedom and fulfillment. Schopenhauer seemingly believed that there was no true fulfillment and that there was only temporary satisfaction because need and pain is endless throughout life. That is the beauty of the resurrection of Jesus. This idea of the fall is real and prevalent in the lives of human’s, Schopenhauer understood that completely, but there is power in the resurrection that free’s us from the detriment produced by the fall of man and that leads to fulfillment, freedom, and true satisfaction.