Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Reality without Reference' and 'The World as Will and Idea'

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2 ideas

22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / a. Nature of happiness
Happiness is the swift movement from desire to satisfaction, and then again on to desire [Schopenhauer]
     Full Idea: We are fortunate if we keep up the game whereby desire passes into satisfaction, and satisfaction into new desire - if the pace of this is swift, it is called happiness, and if it is slow, sorrow.
     From: Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Idea [1819], II 029)
     A reaction: This seems to be the dream of the addict, as Socrates points out with his example of the leaky jar in 'Gorgias'. Should we want more desires?
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / d. Routes to happiness
We can never attain happiness while our will is pursuing desires [Schopenhauer]
     Full Idea: So long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with its constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we never attain lasting happiness or peace.
     From: Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Idea [1819], I 196), quoted by Christopher Janaway - Schopenhauer 6 'Aesthetic'
     A reaction: I hate this idea. It obviously leads to his Buddhism, and the eastern idea that life is generally a bad idea and to be avoided. I think Nietzsche rebelled strongly against this attitude of Schopenhauer's.