..................They say that Schopenhauer is pessimistic. That is not
..................saying very much. [His] is a grandiose and tragic vision
..................which, unfortunately, coincides perfectly with reality.
................................Witold Gombrowicz, A Guide to Philosophy in
................................Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes
1. Arthur Schopenhauer was a competitive man
who felt nothing but scorn for Hegel.
So he scheduled his philosophy lectures
on the same day and at the same time
and therefore Hegel had a packed auditorium
while only a handful of us—a Polish writer,
an ex-girlfriend, a few wayward apostles,
and I—heard Schopenhauer's lectures
on Descartes, doubt, and the will to live.
2. Life's a b.itch and then you die. Everything proceeds from proposition.
3. Many philosophers, professional sad sacks,
make merry with women and whiskey at night.
Not Schopenhauer. He was logical. Eating
a delicacy like pressed goose livers with
a good Sauterne proved only that nothing
exists except the temporary satisfaction
of a hunger that will return and a thirst
without which no liquid tastes good.
Pleasure is merely the absence of pain,
not a thing in itself, and the same may be said
of peace in relation to war. And yet—
4. Look at all the things we need to endure—
death and pain, struggle and fear—
in order for the species to survive,
and so great is our determination to live
that endure these hardships we do, putting
a good face on things, hurricanes
and suicide bombers, the death of adulthood
and the abandonment of the beautiful
English language. And yet—
5. One of the apostles asked about suicides.
What about them, Schopenhauer replied.
"Don't they invalidate your theory
of the will to live?" "Not at all,"
he smiled for once. "In suicide they prove
the will to live is greater than they are."
6. There were two proofs:
(a) God must exist
if we can conceive of god
(b ) God must but cannot exist
if we can conceive of that
than which nothing greater
can be or be conceived.
Therefore,
God has to exist
as a logical possibility
impossible to disprove
or credit.
That's what he said.
I wrote it down.
You may think he was
a world-class pessimist
but then you didn't know him
as I did in Berlin
a hundred years before Hitler.
------
A Little History
Some people find out they are Jews.
They can't believe it.
They had always hated Jews.
As children they had roamed in gangs on winter nights in the old
....neighborhood, looking for Jews.
They were not Jewish, they were Irish.
They brandished broken bottles, tough guys with blood on their
....lips, looking for Jews.
They intercepted Jewish boys walking alone and beat them up.
Sometimes they were content to chase a Jew and he could elude
....them by running away. They were happy just to see him run
away. The coward! All Jews were yellow.
They spelled Jew with a small j jew.
And now they find out they are Jews themselves.
It happened at the time of the Spanish Inquisition.
To escape persecution, they pretended to convert to Christianity.
They came to this country and settled in the Southwest.
At some point oral tradition failed the family, and their
....secret faith died.
No one would ever have known if not for the bones that turned up
....on the dig.
A disaster. How could it have happened to them?
They are in a state of panic--at first.
Then they realize that it is the answer to their prayers.
They hasten to the synagogue or build new ones.
They are Jews at last!
They are free to marry other Jews, and divorce them, and intermarry
....with Gentiles, God forbid.
They are model citizens, clever and thrifty.
They debate the issues.
They fire off earnest letters to the editor.
They vote.
They are resented for being clever and thrifty.
They buy houses in the suburbs and agree not to talk so loud.
They look like everyone else, drive the same cars as everyone else,
....yet in their hearts they know they're different.
In every minyan there are always two or three, hated by
....the others, who give life to one ugly stereotype or another:
The grasping Jew with the hooked nose or the Ivy League Bolshevik
....who thinks he is the agent of world history.
But most of them are neither ostentatiously pious nor
....excessively avaricious.
How I envy them! They believe.
How I envy them their annual family reunion on Passover,
....anniversary of the Exodus, when all the uncles and aunts and
....cousins get together.
They wonder about the heritage of Judaism they are passing along
....to their children.
Have they done as much as they could to keep the old embers
....burning?
Others lead more dramatic lives.
A few go to Israel.
One of them calls Israel "the ultimate concentration camp."
He tells Jewish jokes.
On the plane he gets tipsy, tries to seduce the stewardess.
People in the Midwest keep telling him reminds them of Woody
....Allen.
He wonders what that means. I'm funny? A sort of nervous
....intellectual type from New York? A Jew?
Around this time somebody accuses him of not being Jewish enough.
It is said by resentful colleagues that his parents changed their
....name from something that sounded more Jewish.
Everything he publishes is scrutinized with reference to "the
....Jewish question."
It is no longer clear what is meant by that phrase.
He has already forgotten all the Yiddish he used to know, and
....the people of that era are dying out one after another.
The number of witnesses keeps diminishing.
Soon there will be no one left to remind the others and their
....children.
That is why he came to this dry place where the bones have come
....to life.
To live in a state of perpetual war puts a tremendous burden on the
....population. As a visitor he felt he had to share that burden.
With his gift for codes and ciphers, he joined the counter-
....terrorism unit of army intelligence.
Contrary to what the spook novels say, he found it possible to
....avoid betraying either his country or his lover.
This was the life: strange bedrooms, the perfume of other men's
....wives.
As a spy he has a unique mission: to get his name on the front
....page of the nation's newspaper of record. Only by doing that
....would he get the message through to his immediate superior.
If he goes to jail, he will do so proudly; if they're going to
....hang him anyway, he'll do something worth hanging for.
In time he may get used to being the center of attention, but
....this was incredible:
To talk his way into being the chief suspect in the most
....flamboyant murder case in years!
And he was innocent!
He could prove it!
And what a book he would write when they free him from this prison:
A novel, obliquely autobiographical, set in Vienna in the twilight
....of the Hapsburg Empire, in the year that his mother was born.
--David Lehman