1001Philosophers

Arthur Schopenhauer vs Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Schopenhauer was Hegel's bitter rival in the German philosophical world of the early nineteenth century. The two had brief overlapping careers at Berlin, and Schopenhauer's polemics against the Hegelian sophistry became a constant feature of his published work.

At a glance

Arthur SchopenhauerGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Dates1788 – 18601770 – 1831
NationalityGermanGerman
EraModernModern
Movements Continental Philosophy German Idealism, Continental Philosophy
Profile Arthur Schopenhauer → Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel →

Where they agree

Both worked within the post-Kantian tradition, both took aesthetic experience as central to philosophical reflection, and both held that the appearance of the world conceals a deeper underlying reality.

Where they disagree

Hegel held that what underlies appearance is reason — the rational logic of Spirit working itself out through history. Schopenhauer held that what underlies appearance is blind, irrational will, and that history is no progress toward freedom but the same striving over and over. Hegel's philosophy is fundamentally optimistic and historical; Schopenhauer's is fundamentally pessimistic and ahistorical. The contrast set the stage for Nietzsche's later turning of the philosophical century against the Hegelian inheritance.

Representative quotes

Arthur Schopenhauer

  • “Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”

    Das Talent gleicht dem Schützen, der ein Ziel trifft, welches die Uebrigen nicht erreichen können; das Genie dem, der eines trifft, bis zu welchem sie nicht ein Mal zu sehn vermögen... | Vol. II, Ch. III, para. 31 (On Genius), 1844 | As cited in The Little Book of Bathroom Philosophy: Daily Wisdom from the Greatest Thinkers‎ (2004) by Gregory Bergman, p. 137

  • “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”

    Psychological Observations

  • “We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”

    As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  • “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”

    Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counter

  • “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”

    What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

  • “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”

    Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. | Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.

Continue reading