Soren Kierkegaard

mained unmarried, though not alone, for his life was lived in the company
of a long series of poodles, all named Atman, the Indian name for the “self.”
Schopenhauer also resembled Kierkegaard in his difficult relations with the
university, but unlike Kierkegaard he was not satisfied merely with using
his writings to combat the academic philosophy of the professors. When he
was appointed to the University of Berlin, where Hegel was spreading his
erroneous doctrines to great acclaim, Schopenhauer scheduled his lectures
at precisely the same hour as Hegel’s, semester after semester, though with
little success. His view of the world was not required reading for the exami-
nations and therefore did not attract student interest. Schopenhauer instead
tested histalents asa translator ofKant into Englishand Humeinto German,
and he also offered to revise a French translation of Goethe and to publish
an Italian edition of Bruno, accompanied by a Latin translation; but here
again, there was not much interest. This did not make much of an impres-
sion on Schopenhauer’s self-esteem, however, which was always enormous
andwhichhadtheKierkegaardianpeculiarityofseemingmerelytoincrease,
the more opposition it encountered from the external world. Schopen-
hauer’s works sold very badly, mostly ending up as scrap paper, as was the
case withThe World as Will and as Representation, which did not appear in
a second edition until two years before the author’s death. But Schopen-
hauer never doubted for a second that his work was of decisive significance
for philosophy. He wrote with a pronounced sense for the artistry with
which he presented his argument; indeed, he flatly insisted that unlike all
previous philosophy, with the single exception of Plato, his philosophy was
quite simplyart. And in Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard in fact discovered what
hehadlovedinLessing:style.TherewasarhythminSchopenhauer’srheto-
ric because, like Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer was musical; he loved Mozart,
whose operas he often played for himself on the flute, a talent Kierkegaard
would probably have envied him.
There were thus quite a few similarities between A. S. and S. A., though
sometimesthiscouldbecometoomuchofagoodthing.Forexample,when
Kierkegaard learned that Schopenhauer had called journalists “those who rent
out opinions,” he was delighted, finding the expression “really valuable”; but
then he immediately added a note in the margin: “In one respect I find
having begun to read Schopenhauer almost unpleasant. I have such an inde-
scribably scrupulous anxiety about making use of someone else’s turns of
phrase and so forth without acknowledgement. But sometimes his expres-
sions are so akin to my own that in my exaggerated anxiety I perhaps end
up attributing to him things that are actually my own.” One such pleasant
unpleasantness was occasioned by the wordwindbagof which “Schopen-
hauer makes excellent use,” especially when he has to speak of “the Hegel-