Earl of Northumberland (Henry IV)
Shakespeare’s usurper of the throne of England and patriarch of an extended lineage whose story spans the best part of his extended cycle of history plays is set forward as an example of approaching the question of ethics and the will. The father of Prince Hal shows up in the entry titled “On Ethics” and is forwarded as a model metaphor for Schopenhauer’s philosophical assertion that the behavior of men is “essentially and as a whole, not directed by his reason and its designs.” Northumberland reveals the way that Shakespeare captures this reality that men are guided by an inherent nature situated outside events and activities with his talent for demonstrating that “every character is, while he stands and speaks, entirely in the right, though he be the Devil himself.”
Immanuel Kant
The singular towering figure in philosophy toward which Schopenhauer reaches out most often is the notably abstruse (often to the point of inscrutability or even incomprehensibility for some) legendary Immanuel Kant. Just how elevated and lofty is the stature of Kant within the worldview of Schopenhauer is demonstrated in one particularly telling observation: “Among people untrained in philosophy—which includes all who have not studied the philosophy of Kant.” Kant, for the uninitiated, is most famous for his declaration of the categorical imperative: any ethical decision which is made in one specific circumstance should be universally applied in all such circumstances without regard to individualized intent or purposes.
Demopheles and Philalethes
The entry titled “On Religion: A Dialogue” harkens back to the Socratic dialogues of ancient Greek philosophical texts in which the nature of truth and knowledge was revealed through the discourse of two characters taking opposite perspectives on an issue. The issue here is clear enough, but the opposition is a bit more complex than one might expect. It is not framed so that Demopheles and Philalethes represent traditional antagonistic views toward religious: belief versus non-belief. In this case, neither is a believer; their disagreement is over they view belief in others. In this way, the philosophical debate over religion is simply a facile one between having faith or not having faith, but a more substantively complex debate over the quality of having faith.
Bad Writers
Over the course of the section containing works described as “aphorisms” (though, in reality, most in form indistinguishable from the essays) Schopenhauer constricts the focus of his philosophical musings down to a narrower subject matter. For instance, here are titles like “On Psychology” and “On Books and Writing.” It is in that latter work that the author directs some of his most damning prose. He is especially relentless toward “bad writers” which range from journalists to those authors responsible for “the ever-rising flood of bad and unprofitable books produced by unprincipled” scribblers. Especially singled out for scorn: those writers described as “professors or literati who, because of low salaries or poor payment, write from the need of money.”
