Schopenhauer and the Aesthetic Standpoint: Philosophy as a Practice of the Sublime

Description

With its pessimistic vision and bleak message of world-denial, it has often been difficult to know how to engage with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Schopenhauer's arguments have seemed flawed and his doctrines marred by inconsistencies; his very pessimism almost too flamboyant to be believable. Yet a way of redrawing this engagement stands open, Sophia Vasalou argues, if we attend more closely to the visionary power of Schopenhauer's work. The aim of this book is to place the aesthetic character of Schopenhauer's standpoint at the heart of the way we read his philosophy and the way we answer the question: why read Schopenhauer - and how? Approaching his philosophy as an enactment of the sublime with a longer history in the ancient philosophical tradition, Vasalou provides a fresh way of assessing Schopenhauer's relevance in critical terms. This book will be valuable for students and scholars with an interest in post-Kantian philosophy and ancient ethics.

Sophia Vasalou is visiting research fellow at King's College London. She is author of Moral Agents and their Deserts (2008) and editor of Practices of Wonder (2012).

'This book presents a carefully argued case for the centrality of the aesthetic to all aspects of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Vasalou's forceful and vivid style complements her daring effort to reveal a new unity in Schopenhauer's thought, as well as bringing him into fruitful conversation with contemporary ethical theory.' Dale E. Snow, Loyola University, Maryland 'Arthur Schopenhauer considered the drive to philosophize as an expression of a form of wonder provoked by the ubiquity of suffering and death. In Schopenhauer and the Aesthetic Standpoint, Sophia Vasalou looks carefully at Schopenhauer's philosophic practice and the visionary qualities of his works, arguing that his practice is best understood as an aesthetic one, closely aligned with the experience of the sublime. She artfully engages Schopenhauer's philosophic writings and the Anglophone literature relevant to her topics, and brings a fresh and welcome voice to Schopenhauer studies in a philosophically evocative way.' David Cartwright, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater