The Virtual Rambler

Number thirty two: 25^th January 2013

Intellectual Gloom

Samuel Johnson opened his Life of Richard Savage⁽¹⁾ thus : “It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed little to the proportion of happiness ... but it seems rational to hope that intellectual greatness should produce better effects , that they who are most able to teach others the way to happiness should follow it themselves. This expectation , however plausible , has frequently been disappointed.” Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was the first major Western philosopher to appreciate , and write about Hindu and Buddhist systems of thought. He was acknowledged by Freud as a psychologist of the will. His pessimistic view of life had an influence on the works of Thomas Hardy , Ludwig Wittgenstein and Samuel Beckett. Each of their writings can be seen as superseding former bleak views of the world we live in with an even bleaker one. Schopenhauer’s gloomy diagnoses of the human condition rivalled those austere biblical classics of pessimism , the books of Job and Ecclesiastes . “Accustom yourself to regarding this world as a sort of penal colony” , he advises us , “where the appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be fellow inmate.”

Most of us have encountered fanatical devotees of routine at one time or another and Arthur was an exemplar of the type. For the last twenty-seven years of this combative bachelor’s life in Frankfurt , he imposed a daily routine upon himself as unvarying as that of any prisoner’s. In his rented ‘rooms’ he rose every morning at seven and had a bath but no breakfast , sitting down at his desk with a cup of strong coffee and writing until noon , when he ceased work for the day. After playing the flute for half an hour he went out for lunch at the Englischer Hof , before returning home and reading until four. He then took a daily walk for exactly two hours , whatever the weather. This owed less to health fervour than to his intransigent cast of mind : he would go out for that period of time and nothing could stop him. At six o’clock he visited the reading-room of the library and read The London Times. In the evening he attended a play or a concert , after which he ate supper at the Englischer Hof once more , getting back home for bed at ten. To certain men (almost always men) , iron habits hold a compelling appeal. Once they have adopted an attitude of mind or a physical routine , there is no urge to abandon or modify it under any circumstance. Schopenhauer himself wrote that “When will crowds out knowledge , we call the result obstinacy.” The melancholy cast of mind we all encounter as peevish adolescents was one he kept up for the rest of his life , buttressing it with learned references to the classical literatures of both East and West.

And yet .... his down-beat observations provide an invigorating antidote to the manic ‘positivity’ demanded by the Happiness Industry of our day. All ‘blue-sky-thinking’ can be clouded by quotations from his magnum opus The World As Will and Idea. “Each individual misfortune always seems an exception , to be sure , yet misfortune in general is the rule." That things may not be ‘all for the best’ is a commonplace feeling in our angst-ridden culture , what with threats from all sides , from radical climate change , environmental degradation and population pressures. Schopenhauer dismissed the conscious self as maya , a dreamlike construction. Like all other creatures we were just embodiments of the universal striving he called Will , hard-pressed servants of our bodily needs – driven by fear , hunger and sex. Disbelieving the reality of the self , he devoted his whole life to himself. The twentieth century saw enough of the dark shadows behind the onward march of Technology to erode a once-universal faith in Enlightenment science. That has followed faith in an omnipotent Creator into retreat. Following hard on Arthur’s heels came whole squads of intellectuals who elected to sing songs of despair while comfortably seated at their well-appointed tables. It became fashionable , particularly in nineteenth century Paris , to parade your neuroses , sense of unease and anxiety should you aspire to take up the pen. As a new century got underway , sickliness seemed to confer greater authority on writers such as Nietzsche and Kafka , as boredom became the hallmark of quality in those who were opposed to all the principles of physical and spiritual hygiene.


Wig

⁽¹⁾ Richard Savage (1697-1743) was a minor poet who became Johnson’s intimate companion in the 1730s , when the future lexicographer was a newcomer to London. Savage was notorious for his disreputable way of life (he’d been convicted for murder after a tavern brawl but was subsequently pardoned) and it was Johnson’s posthumous account of his life that rescued his name for posterity.

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan & Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20^th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26^th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25^th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17^th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20^th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21^st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14^th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18^th December 2012