Study On The Concept Of "Suffering" In Schopenhauer's Philosophy

Schopenhauer's philosophy came out at the time when the German idealism was in its heyday.Seemingly inappropriate,in fact,the emergence of Schopenhauer's philosophy,is a result of the development of Western philosophy and the trend of the times.Schopenhauer,basing on his metaphysics of will,put forward his pessimism and theory about suffering,aiming at instructing people to face the suffering nature of the world.And why he did so is not only out of the sincere pursuit for the meaning of life,but also with the wish to respond to the Eastern and Western philosophers on the same subject.Schopenhauer,by emphasizing the suffering,wanted to make people firstly face the real suffering,and then seek ways to escape from suffering.In Schopenhauer's view,there are three ways to escape from the suffering:firstly,in the aesthetic consciousness,by contemplating the Platonic ideas,people temporarily escape from the enslavement of the will.The Platonic ideas,for Schopenhauer,mean not only a temporary escape from the suffering,but also as a necessary part of his complete and scientific interpretation of the world.There are some debates about the content of aesthetic consciousness,especially about how could people come into such aesthetic consciousness and the contradiction between his theory of tragedy and his opinion about the value of art;secondly,in moral life,by moral behavior,people try to reduce the suffering of others.Schopenhauer reinterpreted human behavior,defining human behavior as the response of man's character to motives.According to the purposes There are four motives,namely,egoism,altruism,malice and unknown.Only acts out of altruistic motives bear moral meaning.On this basis,he put forward his theory of compassion.Although there are some theoretical contradictions in his theory of compassion,it is undeniable that this theory criticized western notions such as the uniqueness of individuality;finally,in the asceticism,because of one's understanding of the nature of the world doomed to be suffering,people then turn to the denial of will,in order to obtain the ultimate freedom.On asceticism,Schopenhauer set up two different versions,and ultimately a moderate,gradual version took the place of the extreme asceticism.In Schopenhauer's theory of denial of the will,also as his theory about permanent freedom from suffering,there are a lot of controversies,the key here is to understand,when Schopenhauer takes freedom as nothingness,the nothingness is relative nothingness,not absolute or pure nothingness.About Schopenhauer's theory of denial of will,we can see the strong influence of Indian thought,so people should know some content of the Indian thought,in order to understand the freedom Schopenhauer described.Schopenhauer is a creative philosopher and pioneer in attempting to absorb the Indian thought into his own thinking.Although his theory about suffering is some kind of pessimism,by thinking about facts,criticizing the traditions of eastern philosophy and western philosophy,and combing eastern and western thoughts,he expressed his reflection on the meaning of life,the relationship between philosophy and religion,and the development of Western civilization.All of these has unique significance.