Eduard von Hartmann Quotes on Knowledge

Quotes

• “trans. William Chatterton Coupland, Routledge (2010), pp. 613-614 ISBN 978-0-415-61386-6”

  If we glance at the judgments of the greatest minds of all ages, we find those, who have at all found occasion to express their opinion on the subject, pronouncing the condemnation of life in very decided terms. Plato says in the “ Apology ”: “Now, if death is without all sensation, a dreamless sleep, as it were, it would be indeed a wonderful gain. For I think if any one selected a night in which

• “trans. William Chatterton Coupland, Routledge (2010), pp. 614-615 ISBN 978-0-415-61386-6”

  Kant says (Werke, vii. p. 381): “One must indeed make an ill reckoning of the worth of the journey (of life) if one can still wish that it should last longer than it actually does, for that would only be a prolongation of a perpetual contest with sheer hardships.” Page 393, he calls life “a trial-time, wherein most succumb, and in which even the best does not rejoice in his life.” Fichte declares

• “trans. William Chatterton Coupland, Routledge (2010), p. 615 ISBN 978-0-415-61386-6”

  Schelling says (Werke, i. 7, p. 399): “Hence the veil of sadness that is spread over all Nature, the deep indestructible melancholy of all life.” He has, moreover (Werke, i. 10, pp. 266–268), a very beautiful passage which should be read in its entirety; here I can only quote a few fragments: “Certainly it is a painful way the Being which lives in Nature traverses in his passage through it; to tha

• “trans. William Chatterton Coupland, Routledge (2010), p. 615 ISBN 978-0-415-61386-6”

  But what do such subjective expressions of opinion without annexed reasons prove? Must we not rather mistrust them because they proceed from eminent intelligences, affected by that melancholy sadness which is the inheritance of almost all genius, because they do not feel at home in the world of their inferiors? (Comp. Aristotle , Prob. 30, 1.) Certainly the worth of the world must be measured by i

• “trans. William Chatterton Coupland, Routledge (2010), pp. 615-616 ISBN 978-0-415-61386-6”

  Imagine some one who is no genius, but a man with the best general culture of his time, endowed with all the other good things of an enviable lot, in the most vigorous years of manhood, who is fully conscious of the advantage which he enjoys over the lower orders in the uncivilised nations and over his fellows of ruder ages, and who by no means envies those above him, who are tormented by all sort

• “trans. William Chatterton Coupland, Routledge (2010), p. 619 ISBN 978-0-415-61386-6”

  Let one consider, further, that the foolish vanity of man goes so far as to prefer to seem rather than to be not merely well but also happy, so that every one carefully hides where the shoe pinches, and tries to make a show of opulence, contentment, and happiness which he does not at all possess.

• “trans. William Chatterton Coupland, Routledge (2010), p. 619 ISBN 978-0-415-61386-6”

  Lastly, when we consider, as is a priori to be expected, that the same unconscious will which has created beings with these instincts and passions will also through these instincts and passions influence conscious thinking in the direction of the same life-impulse, we should rather only wonder how the instinctive love of life should come to be able in consciousness to condemn this same life; for t

• “trans. William Chatterton Coupland, Routledge (2010), p. 619 ISBN 978-0-415-61386-6”

  In this sense Jean Paul well says: “We do not love life because it is beautiful, but because we must love it; and hence it happens that we often draw the inverted conclusion: since we love life, it must be beautiful.” What is here called love to life is nothing else but the instinctive impulse of self-preservation, the conditio sine qua non of individuation, the negative expression of which is the