Schopenhauer and Prozac
John Fischer

02 April 2005

我承认:我读了很多叔本华的书,尤其是他的《悲观论》。它们很吸引人,写得非常漂亮(当然也很有煽动性)。这里有一段愉快而可爱的段落:“我们能预见到吗,有时孩子们看起来像无辜的囚犯,不是被判死刑,而是被判生,但他们都不知道他们的判决意味着什么。然而,人都渴望长寿。换句话说,这是一种生活状态;“今天天气不好,明天会更糟;如此循环,直到最糟糕的时刻。"

Hmm. Later, he says, "... you may look upon life as an unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence." Take that, Lucretius!

我想知道的是这个(当然这不是我原创的)。现在,叔本华可能会去看某种治疗师,治疗师会给他一些抗抑郁的药物和“谈话疗法”——可能是认知疗法或心理动力学疗法。这种组合可能是“有效的”——但那样的话,我们就会失去这位才华横溢的倔老头,或者至少是他那令人愉快的倔老头的作品。如果叔本华不抑郁会更好吗?世界会变得更好吗?

Comments(9)


Guest's picture

Guest

Saturday, April 2, 2005 -- 4:00 PM

Was it the case that Schopenhauer was as grumpy in

Was it the case that Schopenhauer was as grumpy in real life as he was in his writing (at least, when he was not around his mother, with whom I understand he had a fairly nasty literary competition)? Because it's possible that taking pessimism to its extreme in his philosophical musings took the edge off of it in the project of getting through the day.
如果一个人不是完全虚弱,选择退出SSRI培养似乎是可能的——几乎没有人会让一个成年人去看医生并服用百忧解。诚然,有更多的社会压力来“照顾”不符合理想范围的情绪,但脾气暴躁的人通常有必要告诉活泼的人跳起来。
此外,对世界和人类状况的现实主义观点有时会引起一种坏情绪,这似乎是完全合理的。它并不总是让生活变得有趣。但是,它可能会让你对问题进行评估,甚至可能开始对我们的生活方式做出真正的改变,而不是仅仅通过吃药来改变我们对问题的看法。

Guest's picture

Guest

Saturday, April 2, 2005 -- 4:00 PM

There is no great genius without some touch of mad

任何伟大的天才都带有疯狂的色彩。
Plato?s cave 2005
The following is poetry, not to be taken seriously:
?The normal people are really crazy, and the crazy people are sane.
This world is a psychiatric hospital. The nurses and doctors are the priests of the
Sciences, Business, and the Arts-they are the best patients-they need no pills-they are brainwashed. Every now and then someone wakes up to the fact that they are in the
Hospital. They see the systems and the absurd rituals performed in the hospitals.
First they try to wake the other people to the fact, they do this knowing that
They will be called crazy, and that the other patients can?t hear what they are
Saying no matter what they tell them. When the genius/madman speaks to his fellow patient, they just stay quiet and say nothing out of fear of having to actually speak and think. He really wants to wake up the smart quiet patients that say nothing. The best patients, the smart quiet ones, get to become nurses and even the doctors after some time. The madman, genius, finally decides that only a minute amount of people wake up.
So he finally decides to write a book, hoping that he can communicate through time
To another person who will also wake up centuries later, who can write another
Book that will eventually be able to wake up more patients, or make changes to
The system in the hospital. The mad genius could keep quiet and try to become a
Nurse or even a doctor and try to reform the system a little bit, but the time used to
Get to be a doctor or a nurse could be used more usefully writing the books.
Eventually the madman, after his death, finally gets called a genius centuries later-and his book is put on the shelf, and a minute amount of patients pick up, read, and understand it. The really smart madmen can balance their writing of truth, with their acting as a nurse/doctor. If Schopenhauer took the pills/and psychiatric brainwashing-he would have never wrote his great book, but made the gradual step back to become a silent patient. ?

Guest's picture

Guest

Sunday, April 3, 2005 -- 5:00 PM

I disagree. Schopenhauer's penetrating intellect w

I disagree. Schopenhauer's penetrating intellect would have seen through all the therapy and psychology nonsense so beloved in our day. His therapy was thinking, reading, and writing.

Guest's picture

Guest

Sunday, April 3, 2005 -- 5:00 PM

Are we allowed to say he might be getting too mixe

Are we allowed to say he might be getting too mixed up between two different views of the self? The idea that our lives must be innately meaningful seems to go hand in hand with the religious belief in the afterlife. But if we discount the afterlife as implausible (as I understand Schopenhauer does) aren't we asking a little too much that our lives be somehow innately meaningful? In more speculative, tea-drinking moments I seem to be able to accept the notion that if all I am is an element in a vast causal chain (and not, it should be added, an easy to isolate element - not something I can easily delineate and say 'such is me') that meaning rather dries up. Is this wrong? Or is that Schopenhauers problem - he feels this too but it depresses him?
To actually try to answer the question asked; surely we should be asking whether or the pharmacological answers offered to psychological problems are actually helpful. It seems to be a case of supressing the symptoms rather than treating the cause and ditto to a lesser extent with 'talk therapy'. As far as I can understand it Schopenhauer understood fully what he was depressed about and it was that understanding with depressed him. Short of trying to convince him that life essentially was 'meaningless' in the way he looked at it but that didn't really change matters much, I can't see any real solution to problem of the man himself.
Is it a real problem if life is meaningless?

curmudgeon's picture

curmudgeon

Sunday, May 13, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

Was Schopenhauer even a 'depressed' individual in

叔本华一开始就是一个“抑郁”的人吗?我一直感到困惑的是,为什么每个人似乎总是不作进一步思考就假定这一点。当你读他那“乖戾”的作品时,你不也发现自己每隔一页就和他一起笑吗?
Why is it so difficult to accept Schopenhauer's 'pessimistic view' of the world as being an objective one? Is it not true that life is ultimately meaningless, and all around we see people who are evil and selfish and egotistical? Do we not look on the news channel and hear about atrocities taking place every single day? If we reflect on the history of mankind has it not been nothing more than 'war of all against all' until recent decades?
也许你觉得他的观点很“悲观”,因为你恰好是生活在21世纪第一世界的少数人类物种之一?那世界上其他仍生活在赤贫中的国家呢?你肯定会接受这样一个事实:总有一天,你的工作将化为乌有,你的身体将垮掉,你很可能在饱受病痛折磨后死去?
Schopenhauer was simply giving an objective account of what life actually is about, and in his own words his philosophy provided him with much comfort. If anything, he was simply a melancholy man with a genuinely wicked sense of humour - hardly depressed!

curmudgeon's picture

curmudgeon

Sunday, May 13, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

Was Schopenhauer even a 'depressed' individual in

叔本华一开始就是一个“抑郁”的人吗?我一直感到困惑的是,为什么每个人似乎总是不作进一步思考就假定这一点。当你读他那“乖戾”的作品时,你不也发现自己每隔一页就和他一起笑吗?
Why is it so difficult to accept Schopenhauer's 'pessimistic view' of the world as being an objective one? Is it not true that life is ultimately meaningless, and all around we see people who are evil and selfish and egotistical? Do we not look on the news channel and hear about atrocities taking place every single day? If we reflect on the history of mankind has it not been nothing more than 'war of all against all' until recent decades?
也许你觉得他的观点很“悲观”,因为你恰好是生活在21世纪第一世界的少数人类物种之一?那世界上其他仍生活在赤贫中的国家呢?你肯定会接受这样一个事实:总有一天,你的工作将化为乌有,你的身体将垮掉,你很可能在饱受病痛折磨后死去?
Schopenhauer was simply giving an objective account of what life actually is about, and in his own words his philosophy provided him with much comfort. If anything, he was simply a melancholy man with a genuinely wicked sense of humour - hardly depressed!

Guest's picture

Guest

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

I am entirely in line with what Curmudgeon wrote a

I am entirely in line with what Curmudgeon wrote above. Schopenhauer exemplifies a clarity of thought and presentation that is rare in the history of philosophy. It is further evident that he must have had an extrememly healthy and well-balanced mind. He was neutrally concerned with the truth of the matter- what really is, and how it is. His affinity with eastern thought (Hinduism, Buddhism) influenced and cultivated this line of thinking as well. It is true that a depressed person will see no purpose in living. Schopenhauer understood that there was no point to life on a grand or universal scale, but still dedicated his entire life to the attempt of offering a well-balanced and neutral account of our existence, the suffering it entails, and the ways in which people aesthetically and morally seek to avoid it- in short, make the best out of this miserable life. It isn't about what they ought to do, but what they do. (the denial of the will, and extinction of the individual ego showcased as the highest pursuit of all great religions.)
For Schopenhauer to have sorted through all of the material that he did- which was more than any philsopher before and after him, and to arrive at a just notion of the world afterwards, showcases a depth and character of a mind that was well in control of itself. For Schopenhauer, just because life is miserable and pointless does not mean that we cannot overcome it and live well. The suffering state of the world is precisely the reason we continually seek for well-being!-or we'd be unconditionally content.

Guest's picture

Guest

Sunday, May 4, 2008 -- 5:00 PM

I think that A-Schop was as inconsistent as he tho

我认为a - schop就像他认为的傻瓜一样反复无常。如果一个人连续地读叔本华的散文集,他会发现他的观点的基调,或者你愿意的话,“观察”(每个人都有一个观点)会随着他的年龄而改变;这就是说,他的学说变了。如果不是情感驱动,叔本华是什么?抱歉,我喜欢他的作品,我不想贬低他的才智,但我认为他只是想被爱。普通的和简单的。对我来说,这意味着,即使是他也不完全相信他所写的一半。

Guest's picture

Guest

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 -- 4:00 PM

Don't all observations change with age? Try readin

Don't all observations change with age? Try reading your comment again and think about the subject some more after these years, read other works of Schopenhauer, etcetera, and examine your thoughts on it. Big chance you think different or that you're thoughts on the subject evolve when gaining more experience or knowledge.