question of love between Heinrich and Johanna Schopenhauer. Never. Later, in her memoirs, she wrote, "I no more pretended ardent love than he demanded it." Nor was there abundant love for others in their household--not for the young Arthur Schopenhauer, nor for his younger sister, Adele, born nine years later.
Love between parents begets love for the children. Occasionally, one hears tales of parents whose great love for each other consumes all the love available in the household, leaving only love-cinders for the children. But this zero-sum economic model of love makes little sense. The opposite seems true: the more one loves, the more that one responds to children, to everyone, in a loving manner.
Arthur's love-bereft childhood had serious implications for his future. Children deprived of a maternal love bond fail to develop the basic trust necessary to love themselves, to believe that others will love them, or to love being alive. In adulthood they become estranged, withdraw into themselves, and often live in an adversarial relationship with others. Such was the psychological landscape that would ultimately inform Arthur's worldview.
7
_________________________
If we look at life in its small
details, how ridiculous it all
seems. It is like a drop of
water seen through a micro—
scope, a single drop teeming
with protozoa. How we laugh as
they bustle about so eagerly
and struggle with one another.
Whether here, or in the little
span
of
human
life,
this
terrible activity produces a
comic effect.
_________________________
At five minutes to seven Julius knocked out the ashes from his meerschaum pipe and entered the auditorium in Toyon Hall. He took a seat in the fourth row on the side aisle and looked about the amphitheater: Twenty rows rose sharply from the entry level where the lecture podium stood. Most of the two hundred seats were vacant; roughly thirty were broken and wrapped with yellow plastic ribbon. Two homeless men and their collections of newspapers sprawled across seats in the last row. Approximately thirty seats were occupied by unkempt students randomly sprinkled throughout the auditorium with the exception of the first three rows which remained vacant.
Just like a therapy group, Julius thought, no one wants to sit near to the leader.
Even in his group meeting earlier that day the seats on either side of him had been left vacant for the late members, and he had joked that a seat next to him seemed to be the penalty for tardiness. Julius thought of the group therapy folklore about seating; that the most dependent person sits to the leader's right, whereas the most paranoid members sit directly opposite; but, in his experience, the reluctance to sit next to the leader was the only rule that could be counted on with regularity.
The shabbiness and dilapidation of Toyon Hall was typical of the entire campus of California Coastal College, which had begun life as an evening business school, then expanded and flowered briefly as an undergraduate college, and was now obviously in a phase of entropy. On his walk to the lecture through the unsavory tenderloin, Julius had found it difficult to distinguish unkempt students from homeless denizens of the neighborhood. What teacher could avoid demoralization in this setting? Julius began to understand why Philip wanted to switch careers by moving into clinical work.
He checked his watch. Seven o'clock exactly and right on cue Philip entered the auditorium, dressed in the professorial uniform of checkered khaki pants, shirt, and a tan corduroy jacket with sewed-on elbow patches. Extracting his lecture notes from a properly scuffed briefcase and, without so much as a glance at his audience, he began: This is the survey of Western philosophy--lecture eighteen--Arthur Schopenhauer.
Tonight I shall proceed differently and stalk my prey more indirectly. If I appear desultory, I ask your forbearance--I promise I shall soon enough return to the matter at
Love between parents begets love for the children. Occasionally, one hears tales of parents whose great love for each other consumes all the love available in the household, leaving only love-cinders for the children. But this zero-sum economic model of love makes little sense. The opposite seems true: the more one loves, the more that one responds to children, to everyone, in a loving manner.
Arthur's love-bereft childhood had serious implications for his future. Children deprived of a maternal love bond fail to develop the basic trust necessary to love themselves, to believe that others will love them, or to love being alive. In adulthood they become estranged, withdraw into themselves, and often live in an adversarial relationship with others. Such was the psychological landscape that would ultimately inform Arthur's worldview.
7
_________________________
If we look at life in its small
details, how ridiculous it all
seems. It is like a drop of
water seen through a micro—
scope, a single drop teeming
with protozoa. How we laugh as
they bustle about so eagerly
and struggle with one another.
Whether here, or in the little
span
of
human
life,
this
terrible activity produces a
comic effect.
_________________________
At five minutes to seven Julius knocked out the ashes from his meerschaum pipe and entered the auditorium in Toyon Hall. He took a seat in the fourth row on the side aisle and looked about the amphitheater: Twenty rows rose sharply from the entry level where the lecture podium stood. Most of the two hundred seats were vacant; roughly thirty were broken and wrapped with yellow plastic ribbon. Two homeless men and their collections of newspapers sprawled across seats in the last row. Approximately thirty seats were occupied by unkempt students randomly sprinkled throughout the auditorium with the exception of the first three rows which remained vacant.
Just like a therapy group, Julius thought, no one wants to sit near to the leader.
Even in his group meeting earlier that day the seats on either side of him had been left vacant for the late members, and he had joked that a seat next to him seemed to be the penalty for tardiness. Julius thought of the group therapy folklore about seating; that the most dependent person sits to the leader's right, whereas the most paranoid members sit directly opposite; but, in his experience, the reluctance to sit next to the leader was the only rule that could be counted on with regularity.
The shabbiness and dilapidation of Toyon Hall was typical of the entire campus of California Coastal College, which had begun life as an evening business school, then expanded and flowered briefly as an undergraduate college, and was now obviously in a phase of entropy. On his walk to the lecture through the unsavory tenderloin, Julius had found it difficult to distinguish unkempt students from homeless denizens of the neighborhood. What teacher could avoid demoralization in this setting? Julius began to understand why Philip wanted to switch careers by moving into clinical work.
He checked his watch. Seven o'clock exactly and right on cue Philip entered the auditorium, dressed in the professorial uniform of checkered khaki pants, shirt, and a tan corduroy jacket with sewed-on elbow patches. Extracting his lecture notes from a properly scuffed briefcase and, without so much as a glance at his audience, he began: This is the survey of Western philosophy--lecture eighteen--Arthur Schopenhauer.
Tonight I shall proceed differently and stalk my prey more indirectly. If I appear desultory, I ask your forbearance--I promise I shall soon enough return to the matter at
Similar Books
