Paradox

312 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PARADOXSchopenhauer lectured to nearly empty rooms. Hegel’sstudents overflowed large lecture halls. Disgusted, Schopenhauerleft the academic field to the peddlers of sophistry andrhetoric. As Heraclitus said, “Asses prefer garbage to gold.”Alone in his boarding room, the brooding Schopenhauercontinued to oppose Hegel. Hegel’s optimism was counteredwith Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Hegel’s acceptance of contradictionswas countered by Schopenhauer’s claim of perfectconsistency: “To seek contradictions in me is completely idle:all is from one gush.” (Letter to Johann August Becker, March31, 1854) Whereas Hegel said history is the unfolding of reason,Schopenhauer made blind will the central force of the universe.Schopenhauer’s emphasis on irrational forces may have beenprecipitated by awareness of his susceptibility to irrational fearsand compulsions. He took excessive precautions against diseaseand always slept with a loaded pistol nearby.Schopenhauer accepted Kant’s verdict about the inaccessibilityof noumena but thought man’s hunger for generalexplanations was too strong to be put aside. Man is an animalmetaphysicum, who compulsively raises questions about thefundamental nature and significance of the world. Religionattempts to meet this need but not in a fashion that can berationally justified. Philosophers try to meet this demand forrational certification. Inevitably they overstep. The humanintellect is designed to serve the will. Thus, it is “a quiteabnormal event if in some man’s intellect deserts its naturalvocation . . . in order to occupy itself purely objectively. Butit is precisely this which is the origin of art, poetry andphilosophy, which are therefore not produced by an organintended for that purpose.” (1970, 127) Whereas Hegelobjectifies paradoxes, Schopenhauer subjectivizes them. Paradoxesare symptoms of intellectual perversion. This clinical