Schopenhauer the Accidental Humanist
I went for a run and listened to Epictetus railing against Epicurus. The whole time he kept hammering the same accusation like a drumbeat in my earbuds: “That man teaches you to withdraw from life!”
To Epictetus, Epicurus was not just wrong about pleasure; he was wrong about what it means to be human. Epicurus told people to retreat. Find a quiet garden. Keep desires small. Avoid politics, ambition, marriage, children, anything that might disturb your stillness. “Live hidden,” he said.
Epictetus saw that as desertion. Life for him is the arena of the crowded, messy here and now. The gods throw you into it whether you want to play or not: slavery, illness, tyranny, bereavement, public office, war. So every time Epicurus whispered “reduce your exposure to pain,” Epictetus heard “abandon your post.”
And the old Stoic had a simple way of cutting through a philosopher’s pose: if someone tells you to avoid people but spends his life writing for them, then he does not actually avoid people. His actions expose him.
Somewhere between two street corners and a black cat this thought turned and pointed itself at Schopenhauer.
He is usually presented as a grand misanthrope, the man who saw humanity as petty, selfish, deluded, and irredeemable. Desire traps us. Suffering structures life. People are noise in the machinery of the world.
He even writes in Parerga and Paralipomena that almost all our sorrows come from having to do with other people. A line like that makes him sound like someone who would gladly bolt the door forever.
Yet when the Epictetean argument touches him, the image cracks.
I sometimes feel a pull to go against the accepted idea, to push against what everyone repeats. So here is my simple thought as social worker:
If Schopenhauer had truly hated people, he would not have written for them.
He obviously did not need the money; his father left him enough to live without effort. If he wanted to rail against humanity, he could have kept everything locked away in private notebooks. A real misanthrope would have done exactly that. Except for acts meant to harm, to turn one’s back on the world is the purest form of contempt.
But he chose to write.
He chose to explain.
He chose to warn.
He shaped sentences for people he would never meet. He told readers where desire misleads them. He tried to show them how to suffer a little less.
Writing is always a social act, even the lines you see in front of you. It is a hand reaching across distance and time. It is a belief that someone out there deserves clarity. A writer may complain about humanity, but the moment he writes he admits that someone is worth speaking to.
This alone gives Schopenhauer away.
Schopenhauer may have spoken in the register of disappointment, but disappointment is reserved for those you still care about. It belongs to fathers, teachers, friends. It does not belong to true misanthropes. Hate without hope does not warn. It watches others fall.
His books reveal him.
They show that he liked people more than he ever admitted.
He lectured the species because he still believed it could listen.