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Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes - Volume 4

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
700 Seiten
Englisch
Books on Demanderschienen am11.01.20231. Auflage
"Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes Volume 4" comprises the five Books "Schopenhauer in 60 Minutes", "Nietzsche in 60 Minutes", "Wittgenstein in 60 Minutes", "Kafka in 60 Minutes", and "Arendt in 60 Minutes". Each short study sums up the key idea at the heart of each respective thinker and asks the question: "Of what use is this key idea to us today?" But above all the philosophers get to speak for themselves. Their most important statements are prominently presented, as direct quotations, in speech balloons with appropriate graphics, with exact indication of the source of each quote in the author's works. This light-hearted but nonetheless scholarly precise rendering of the ideas of each thinker makes it easy for the reader to acquaint him- or herself with the great questions of our lives. Because every philosopher who has achieved global fame has posed the "question of meaning": what is it that holds, at the most essential level, the world together? For Schopenhauer it is the "blind will" that drives on every entity in the world. For Nietzsche it is "will to power" that urges human beings to a radical individual realization of the self. Wittgenstein, for his part, sees in language and our day-to-day "language games" the central element that marks our existence and society as a whole. Kafka, by contrast, discovered a very secret and fragile dimension of our lives: the dimension of inter-human relations and this relation's dark side. Arendt, finally, provides us, with her thesis of "the banality of evil", a marvellous insight into the morality - and amorality - of entire societies. In other words, the meaning of the world and thus of our own lives remains, among philosophers, a topic of great controversy. One thing, though, is sure: each of these five thinkers struck, from his own perspective, one brilliant spark out of that complex crystal that is the truth.

Dr Walther Ziegler is academically trained in the fields of philosophy, history and political science. As a foreign correspondent, reporter and newsroom coordinator for the German TV station ProSieben he has produced films on every continent. His news reports have won several prizes and awards. He has also authored numerous books in the field of philosophy. His many years of experience as a journalist mean that he is able to present the complex ideas of the great philosophers in a way that is both engaging and very clear. Since 2007 he has also been active as a teacher and trainer of young TV journalists in Munich, holding the post of Academic Director at the Media Academy, a University of Applied Sciences that offers film and TV courses at its base directly on the site of the major European film production company Bavaria Film. After the huge success of the book series "Great thinkers in 60 Minutes", he works as a freelance writer and philosopher.mehr
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EUR49,99
E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
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Produkt

Klappentext"Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes Volume 4" comprises the five Books "Schopenhauer in 60 Minutes", "Nietzsche in 60 Minutes", "Wittgenstein in 60 Minutes", "Kafka in 60 Minutes", and "Arendt in 60 Minutes". Each short study sums up the key idea at the heart of each respective thinker and asks the question: "Of what use is this key idea to us today?" But above all the philosophers get to speak for themselves. Their most important statements are prominently presented, as direct quotations, in speech balloons with appropriate graphics, with exact indication of the source of each quote in the author's works. This light-hearted but nonetheless scholarly precise rendering of the ideas of each thinker makes it easy for the reader to acquaint him- or herself with the great questions of our lives. Because every philosopher who has achieved global fame has posed the "question of meaning": what is it that holds, at the most essential level, the world together? For Schopenhauer it is the "blind will" that drives on every entity in the world. For Nietzsche it is "will to power" that urges human beings to a radical individual realization of the self. Wittgenstein, for his part, sees in language and our day-to-day "language games" the central element that marks our existence and society as a whole. Kafka, by contrast, discovered a very secret and fragile dimension of our lives: the dimension of inter-human relations and this relation's dark side. Arendt, finally, provides us, with her thesis of "the banality of evil", a marvellous insight into the morality - and amorality - of entire societies. In other words, the meaning of the world and thus of our own lives remains, among philosophers, a topic of great controversy. One thing, though, is sure: each of these five thinkers struck, from his own perspective, one brilliant spark out of that complex crystal that is the truth.

Dr Walther Ziegler is academically trained in the fields of philosophy, history and political science. As a foreign correspondent, reporter and newsroom coordinator for the German TV station ProSieben he has produced films on every continent. His news reports have won several prizes and awards. He has also authored numerous books in the field of philosophy. His many years of experience as a journalist mean that he is able to present the complex ideas of the great philosophers in a way that is both engaging and very clear. Since 2007 he has also been active as a teacher and trainer of young TV journalists in Munich, holding the post of Academic Director at the Media Academy, a University of Applied Sciences that offers film and TV courses at its base directly on the site of the major European film production company Bavaria Film. After the huge success of the book series "Great thinkers in 60 Minutes", he works as a freelance writer and philosopher.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9783756872046
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
Erscheinungsjahr2023
Erscheinungsdatum11.01.2023
Auflage1. Auflage
Seiten700 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Artikel-Nr.10715351
Rubriken
Genre9200

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe

Schopenhauer s Great Discovery
Of all the philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) has the reputation of being by far the greatest and most brilliant pessimist. And indeed he did succeed, like no one before him or since, in recognizing, and in describing in gripping, moving language, all the shortcomings, both great and small, of our existences here on earth.

Life on our planet, Schopenhauer argued, has been, since time immemorial, falsely interpreted and portrayed in far too flattering a light. Both philosophers and scientists have assumed, entirely falsely, that Man is homo sapiens: a being guided by mind, an animal rationale. But this, Schopenhauer goes on, is a great error. Because the fact is that we human beings are not at all guided by reason in the way we live our lives. Rather, we tend to act solely under the impulsion of our deep-lying animal drives:

We seriously overestimate our own capacities, Schopenhauer insists, already by believing that we can know the world by use of our reason, let alone use reason to guide and direct it. In the first place, he says, we never know the world as it actually is; we only know the idea that we form of it:

But there is also a second reason and herein lies Schopenhauer s great discovery. Behind all the ideas of the world that we form for ourselves lies a deeper moving principle upon which we never reflect, a kind of primal force inherent in all plants, animals and human beings. This is what Schopenhauer calls the blind will or, as he also describes it, the will-to-live :

This is the reason why Schopenhauer gave to the great work that was to make him famous the title The World as Will and Representation, consciously and deliberately giving pride of place to the notion will . Because, as he himself says, the core idea of his philosophy can be summed up in a single sentence. Human beings may form for themselves a great mass of different ideas of the world; but in reality the whole world is just the expression of an irrepressible will-to-live which has manifested itself, since the beginning of time, in inanimate matter, in plants, in animals and also in human beings:

The will-to-live is, as Schopenhauer emphasizes here, a universal craving , that is to say, it is active everywhere and at all times. It is this will-to-live that prompts plants to turn toward the sun and impels animals and human beings to eat, drink and procreate. It operates in the form of the sexual impulse and all other vital impulses, manifesting itself million-fold, at every moment, in every organism on earth.

How deeply this will-to-live permeates our inmost nature can be judged by how frantically any being will resist if the attempt is made to take his life away from him. Regardless of whether the universal will-to-live is manifested, in any given case, in a wasp, a mouse or a human being, the creature permeated and animated by it will in every case struggle, with the same limitless intensity, against death:

This phenomenon, that all organisms wish at any cost to remain alive and that they exert all their power and strength to do so, is, for Schopenhauer, an initial proof of the truth of his key idea. But evolution as a whole as well, with its enormous range of different substances, plants and animals, its constant adaptation to new environmental conditions, its protracted, passionate struggle for the persistence of certain species, seems to Schopenhauer to be a sure indication of the universal operation of the so-called blind will to live:

The will, then, is the only unchangeable keynote of our being. The notion, cherished for thousands of years by both theologians and philosophers, that it is Reason, be it human or divine, that is the really determining moment behind all living things is, Schopenhauer insists, in the end a completely untenable notion:

But why does Schopenhauer speak of a blind will? Does this will-to-live not have a goal and a purpose: namely, as he himself admits, the preservation of the species?

Looked at closely, then, the will-to-live is a blind urge without motive because, in the end, it pursues no recognizable or even meaningful goal:

The will-to-live, then, is a fool , a wish that is merely delusional. It serves no higher purpose. All the eating and being-eaten in the animal kingdom, and all the activities of human societies, are really just a blind commotion. This reaches its peak in procreation through the act of sexual intercourse:

The intensity of the urge here leads inevitably to an uncontrolled increase in population, to terrible wars, and eventually to

But the will-to-live is blind above all because, generally speaking, it cannot know or reflect upon itself. This lack of self-knowledge comes to expression when it enters into the different individuals who make up the human race and manifests itself with an equal intensity at the same time in every one of these mutually contending individuals. Schopenhauer explicitly states that the will-to-live individuates itself but neither becomes, through this individuation, less intense nor really has to divide itself up. It continues to operate in each individual with the same absolute, indivisible energy. It is just herein that it shows its unreflecting foolishness . Because one and the same will-to-live that drives on the hungry wolf to hunt and kill the deer drives on, at the same time, the deer to try to escape the jaws of the wolf. This means that the will

In other words

The blind will neither notices that it is, in this way, brutally cannibalizing itself nor would it care if it did so notice. It is a force without morality, self-reflection, or self-control.

Not even the much-vaunted sovereign, majestic placidity and beauty of the lion should delude us as to the fact that he too owes his existence to this blind, brutal urge alone and stands, as it were, atop a mountain of corpses, by whose blood he has bought this existence, which will last only until he himself falls victim to this cannibalistic will. The same stubborn will, indeed, as inheres in the lion inheres also in the humble weeds that, once torn out, immediately begin to grow back again:

The will, then, is that kernel of all reality which is not susceptible of any further explanation. It is also, as Schopenhauer also describes it, metaphysical . What does this mean? The word metaphysical is formed from two Ancient Greek words meta and physis. To say that the will is metaphysical signifies that it extends back behind, or alternatively that it extends beyond, all that is merely physical. What this signifies, then, is that the will-to-live is not a drive that can be perceived by the physical senses, nor any natural phenomenon or natural law that can be measured using the tools of science. Rather, it is that force which underlies all measurements and scientific determinations and which alone makes them possible. Because in contrast to its individual manifestations, running from the amoeba through the dinosaurs right up to all the individual forms of existence today, the will-to-live is an eternal force which remains always absolutely constant and which forms the background and basis for everything:

Thus far, then, Schopenhauer s key philosophical idea is easy to grasp and follow. We must all surely agree, he argues, that we ourselves and all the organisms that we find around us wish to go on living. In other words, it must be conceded, firstly, that there is such a thing as a will-to-live and, secondly, that just such a will needs to cannibalize itself if it is to persist in its existence. In this way, the will in question inevitably causes pain and suffering:

This mutual inflicting of pain does not apply to the animal kingdom alone. Human beings too, Schopenhauer points out, have, since the beginning of time, enslaved, exploited, martyred and murdered one another. In this regard, indeed, we are considerably worse than animals, inasmuch as we use our reason to pursue such activities and oppress, for example, all other species, turning them into factory products. The basic pattern of behaviour for human beings is egoism, which makes it inevitable that we become entangled in a war of all against all :

Over and over again Schopenhauer draws for us, as no other philosopher before or since has done, a deeply sombre portrait of human existence and of the path that we are all bound to follow, from our conception by our parents in the sensually pleasurable act of sexual intercourse down to a miserable sickening and death in our old age:

Schopenhauer answers this last question with a resounding yes . Life, in the last analysis, is a mistake, a kind of accident of evolution, something deeply unpleasant that the universe has unreasonably imposed upon us. Because this blind will that is the driving force behind all that occurs on our planet serves only to cause lifelong suffering to every living being:

It would have been better, then, Schopenhauer believes, if no form of life had ever arisen on the earth at all....
mehr

Autor

Dr Walther Ziegler is academically trained in the
fields of philosophy, history and political science. As a foreign correspondent, reporter and newsroom coordinator for the German TV station ProSieben he has produced films on every continent. His news reports have won several prizes and awards. He has also authored numerous books in the field of philosophy. His many years of experience as a journalist mean that he is able to present the complex ideas of the great philosophers in a way that is both engaging and very clear. Since 2007 he has also been active as a teacher and trainer of young TV journalists in Munich, holding the post of Academic Director at the Media Academy, a University of Applied Sciences that offers film and TV courses at its base directly on the site of the major European film production company Bavaria Film. After the huge success of the book series "Great thinkers in 60 Minutes", he works as a freelance writer and philosopher.