Infinite Resignation

Consciousness is nothing more, he writes, than “a flash of lightning between two eternities of darkness.”

An entry from Schopenhauer’s last notebook: “The reason for growing old and dying is not physical but metaphysical.”

His essay on what he called the “metaphysics of the sexes” reduces all sexual and erotic activity, inclusive of the entire culture of romantic love, to nothing more than tactical ploys for an impersonal and blind Will-to-Life, whose only aim is simply more life, at any cost, by whatever means, and for no reason.

Pessimism is not the most consoling of philosophies – unless, perhaps, one is already a pessimist.

Julius Bahnsen would publish The Contradiction in the Knowledge and Being of the World (1880), attempting what one could only call a blasphemous synthesis of Schopenhauer and Hegel.

…nothing is bound to hold fast in a transitory life; no unending pain, no eternal joy, no enduring sensation, no lasting enthusiasm, no higher decision that could hold good for life. Everything is annulled by the passage of time. The minutes, the countless atoms of small details into which every action decays, are the worms that consume everything great and bold. The monster, ordinary life, pushes down everything that strives upwards. There is nothing serious in life, because the dust is not worth the trouble.

“One prolongs life only to discover it offers no new pleasures.”

“The sweetest life is to not think about anything, for the absence of thought is truly a painless evil.”

Around the grave of Philipp Batz one finds flowers, mementos, poems, notebooks, photographs, drawings, even effigies. A group of “Sinkers” (Senker) has emerged around Mainländer’s philosophy – a Sinker School, defined in one manifesto as “philosophers who carry around coffins within themselves.”

“Human beings live in three places – in the past, in the present and in the future – and are capable of being unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.”