Suffering is caused by being born. It's that simple. No more. — schopenhauer1

Suffering is not simply caused by being born but by the demand that your life should be other than it is.

Suffering is not simply caused by being born but by the demand that your life should be other than it is. — Janus

It’s caused when you are conscious, and amplified and a difference even in kind of suffering through self-awareness of existence.. In that regard, Schopenhauer’s Will is apt. Desire, needs, goals, lack in general. But whatever gotcha contrary opinion you want to answer here, I advise to read the dialectic of this thread as I think it’s helpful to see the development.

It’s caused when you are conscious, and amplified and a difference even in kind of suffering through self-awareness of existence. — schopenhauer1

Suffering is not caused merely by being conscious or being self-aware. You could be conscious and self-aware and not suffer, if by suffering you mean a general condition and not chronic pain or the suffering caused by illness.

It is laughable that you consider any counterargument but not your own taken to be self-evident assertions to be a "gotcha".

I'm only interested in reading (more than once) good arguments and not in being advised to go read this or that. If you have a decent argument you can set it out in your own words.

Suffering is not caused merely by being conscious or being self-aware. You could be conscious and self-aware and not suffer, if by suffering you mean a general condition and not chronic pain or the suffering caused by illness.

It is laughable that you consider any counterargument but not your own taken to be self-evident assertions to be a "gotcha".

I'm only interested in reading (more than once) good arguments and not in being advised to go read this or that. If you have a decent argument you can set it out in your own words. — Janus

Nah, I mean the concept of suffering is entailed in being self-aware of existence. If you are not self-aware (of existence), you probably don't understand about suffering as a concept, even though you may suffer.

Nah, I mean the concept of suffering is entailed in being self-aware of existence. If you are not self-aware (of existence), you probably don't understand about suffering as a concept, even though you may suffer. — schopenhauer1

Suffering is not inevitable merely on account of being aware or self-aware. Awareness may be a necessary, bit not a sufficient, condition for suffering.

What does existential self-awareness actually consist of? Does a recognition of mortality accompany it? When I first came to this realisation as a child my primary reaction was, why did I have to be born? In reversing the usual cliché about such matters, I often thought to myself that it might be bad luck to be born - to have to go through the laborious process of learning, growing, belonging (to a culture you dislike), experiencing loss, decline and ultimately death. It's not easy to identify an inherent benefit attached to any of this. But there's a lot of noise called philosophy and religion which seeks to help us to manage our situation. — Tom Storm

This kind of stuff. There are a lot of structural elements to knowing about existence, many of them negative.

Pain is the negative aspect of existence. Pleasure is the positive. It would be absurd to claim that existence is completely free from suffering.

It would be absurd to claim that existence is completely free from suffering. — Janus

Indeed, and this is an important insight, yet it’s often put aside.

Indeed, and this is an important insight, yet it’s often put aside. — schopenhauer1

Right and it would be equally absurd to claim that existence is completely free from pleasure.

Right and it would be equally absurd to claim that existence is completely free from pleasure. — Janus

Suffering as Schopenhauer defined it, is structural and contingent, pleasure is only contingent. As a more straightforward point, suffering is all that matters in axiological estimations.

Suffering as Schopenhauer defined it, is structural and contingent, pleasure is only contingent. As a more straightforward point, suffering is all that matters in axiological estimations. — schopenhauer1

I'm not sure what you mean. I would say that absence of pleasure brings suffering and that absence of pain brings pleasure. Life is inherently pleasurable when I am not experiencing some kind of pain and inherently painful when I am not experiencing some kind of pleasure.

Whether experiences are painful or pleasurable can have much to do with the attitude we hold towards those experiences.

But here you are saying that boredom is something 'negative'? Schopenhauer said the opposite. I am confused as to what you mean?

Are you saying that our instinctual drives - as conscious existential beings - drive us away from boredom? You are talking about 'boredom' as a lack of 'satiation,' is this in your view taken from Schopenhauer's view or your own?

I understand that Schopenhauer has a somewhat contrary approach to boredom, saying that we should condition ourselves to it, yet also saying things like:

As soon as we are not engaged in one of these two ways, but thrown back on existence itself, we are convinced of the emptiness and worthlessness of it; and this it is we call boredom. That innate and ineradicable craving for what is out of the common proves how glad we are to have the natural and tedious course of things interrupted. Even the pomp and splendour of the rich in their stately castles is at bottom nothing but a futile attempt to escape the very essence of existence, misery. [...] That boredom is immediately followed by fresh needs is a fact which is also true of the cleverer order of animals, because life has no true and genuine value in itself, but is kept in motion merely through the medium of needs and illusion. As soon as there are no needs and illusion we become conscious of the absolute barrenness and emptiness of existence. [...] No man has ever felt perfectly happy in the present; if he had it would have intoxicated him.

It is amusing to see he assumes this last point. Clearly he has not felt this or he would be 'intoxicated'. Maybe he was not 'intoxicated' by boredom enough? Maybe he did not heed his own advice for long enough?

I'm not sure what you mean. I would say that absence of pleasure brings suffering and that absence of pain brings pleasure. — Janus

I don't think it works like that. First off, we know we die and that there is a demise. Then there is the fact that we are lacking and strive for satiation. These are just built into the framework. They are not situational, though situational harms add to it.

Life is inherently pleasurable when I am not experiencing some kind of pain and inherently painful when I am not experiencing some kind of pleasure. — Janus

This contradicts what I believe to be true from Schopenhauer's observation:

I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt. Leibnitz is particularly concerned to defend this absurdity; and he seeks to strengthen his position by using a palpable and paltry sophism.1 It is the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain brought to an end.

The chief source of all this passion is that thought for what is absent and future, which, with man, exercises such a powerful influence upon all he does. It is this that is the real origin of his cares, his hopes, his fears—emotions which affect him much more deeply than could ever be the case with those present joys and sufferings to which the brute is confined. In his powers of reflection, memory and foresight, man possesses, as it were, a machine for condensing and storing up his pleasures and his sorrows. But the brute has nothing of the kind; whenever it is in pain, it is as though it were suffering for the first time, even though the same thing should have previously happened to it times out of number. It has no power of summing up its feelings. Hence its careless and placid temper: how much it is to be envied! But in man reflection comes in, with all the emotions to which it gives rise; and taking up the same elements of pleasure and pain which are common to him and the brute, it develops his susceptibility to happiness and misery to such a degree that, at one moment the man is brought in an instant to a state of delight that may even prove fatal, at another to the depths of despair and suicide.

If we carry our analysis a step farther, we shall find that, in order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things than he considers necessary to his existence.

And above and beyond all this, there is a separate and peculiar source of pleasure, and consequently of pain, which man has established for himself, also as the result of using his powers of reflection; and this occupies him out of all proportion to its value, nay, almost more than all his other interests put together—I mean ambition and the feeling of honor and shame; in plain words, what he thinks about the opinion other people have of him. Taking a thousand forms, often very strange ones, this becomes the goal of almost all the efforts he makes that are not rooted in physical pleasure or pain. It is true that besides the sources of pleasure which he has in common with the brute, man has the pleasures of the mind as well. These admit of many gradations, from the most innocent trifling or the merest talk up to the highest intellectual achievements; but there is the accompanying boredom to be set against them on the side of suffering. Boredom is a form of suffering unknown to brutes, at any rate in their natural state; it is only the very cleverest of them who show faint traces of it when they are domesticated; whereas in the case of man it has become a downright scourge. The crowd of miserable wretches whose one aim in life is to fill their purses but never to put anything into their heads, offers a singular instance of this torment of boredom. Their wealth becomes a punishment by delivering them up to misery of having nothing to do; for, to escape it, they will rush about in all directions, traveling here, there and everywhere. No sooner do they arrive in a place than they are anxious to know what amusements it affords; just as though they were beggars asking where they could receive a dole! Of a truth, need and boredom are the two poles of human life. Finally, I may mention that as regards the sexual relation, a man is committed to a peculiar arrangement which drives him obstinately to choose one person. This feeling grows, now and then, into a more or less passionate love,2 which is the source of little pleasure and much suffering.


2 (return)
[ I have treated this subject at length in a special chapter of the second volume of my chief work.]

It is, however, a wonderful thing that the mere addition of thought should serve to raise such a vast and lofty structure of human happiness and misery; resting, too, on the same narrow basis of joy and sorrow as man holds in common with the brute, and exposing him to such violent emotions, to so many storms of passion, so much convulsion of feeling, that what he has suffered stands written and may be read in the lines on his face. And yet, when all is told, he has been struggling ultimately for the very same things as the brute has attained, and with an incomparably smaller expenditure of passion and pain.

But all this contributes to increase the measures of suffering in human life out of all proportion to its pleasures; and the pains of life are made much worse for man by the fact that death is something very real to him. The brute flies from death instinctively without really knowing what it is, and therefore without ever contemplating it in the way natural to a man, who has this prospect always before his eyes. So that even if only a few brutes die a natural death, and most of them live only just long enough to transmit their species, and then, if not earlier, become the prey of some other animal,—whilst man, on the other hand, manages to make so-called natural death the rule, to which, however, there are a good many exceptions,—the advantage is on the side of the brute, for the reason stated above. But the fact is that man attains the natural term of years just as seldom as the brute; because the unnatural way in which he lives, and the strain of work and emotion, lead to a degeneration of the race; and so his goal is not often reached.

The brute is much more content with mere existence than man; the plant is wholly so; and man finds satisfaction in it just in proportion as he is dull and obtuse. Accordingly, the life of the brute carries less of sorrow with it, but also less of joy, when compared with the life of man; and while this may be traced, on the one side, to freedom from the torment of care and anxiety, it is also due to the fact that hope, in any real sense, is unknown to the brute. It is thus deprived of any share in that which gives us the most and best of our joys and pleasures, the mental anticipation of a happy future, and the inspiriting play of phantasy, both of which we owe to our power of imagination. If the brute is free from care, it is also, in this sense, without hope; in either case, because its consciousness is limited to the present moment, to what it can actually see before it. The brute is an embodiment of present impulses, and hence what elements of fear and hope exist in its nature—and they do not go very far—arise only in relation to objects that lie before it and within reach of those impulses: whereas a man's range of vision embraces the whole of his life, and extends far into the past and future.

Following upon this, there is one respect in which brutes show real wisdom when compared with us—I mean, their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment. The tranquillity of mind which this seems to give them often puts us to shame for the many times we allow our thoughts and our cares to make us restless and discontented. And, in fact, those pleasures of hope and anticipation which I have been mentioning are not to be had for nothing. The delight which a man has in hoping for and looking forward to some special satisfaction is a part of the real pleasure attaching to it enjoyed in advance. This is afterwards deducted; for the more we look forward to anything, the less satisfaction we find in it when it comes. But the brute's enjoyment is not anticipated, and therefore, suffers no deduction; so that the actual pleasure of the moment comes to it whole and unimpaired. In the same way, too, evil presses upon the brute only with its own intrinsic weight; whereas with us the fear of its coming often makes its burden ten times more grievous.
— Schopenhauer - On the Sufferings of the World

But here you are saying that boredom is something 'negative'? Schopenhauer said the opposite. I am confused as to what you mean? — I like sushi

Huh? Boredom is a feeling important to Schopenhauer as to him, it is the emotional state of existence laying itself bare to a highly self-aware mind. Hence the quote about boredom being proof of life's "emptiness". Indeed, striving and lacking, is what is "positive" in the sense that it is what is primary and constant. Pleasure is "negative" in that it is temporary, and only works to temporarily fill the underlying "lack" (Wills principle of striving).

Note, we must also be careful as Schopenhauer can vaccinates using "negative" in the "bad" sense, and then "negative" in that which removes the initial condition (or a negation of the initial condition rather).

Why does he promote 'boredom' as a means to fortify against 'boredom'? So as to better handle the inevitability of 'boredom'?

Why does he promote 'boredom' as a means to fortify against 'boredom'? So as to better handle the inevitability of 'boredom'? — I like sushi

I'm not sure where you are getting that he "promotes" boredom, as the quote you have above clearly states that it represents a part of the suffering. The quote I'm referring to is here:

As soon as we are not engaged in one of these two ways, but thrown back on existence itself, we are convinced of the emptiness and worthlessness of it; and this it is we call boredom. That innate and ineradicable craving for what is out of the common proves how glad we are to have the natural and tedious course of things interrupted. Even the pomp and splendour of the rich in their stately castles is at bottom nothing but a futile attempt to escape the very essence of existence, misery. [...] That boredom is immediately followed by fresh needs is a fact which is also true of the cleverer order of animals, because life has no true and genuine value in itself, but is kept in motion merely through the medium of needs and illusion. As soon as there are no needs and illusion we become conscious of the absolute barrenness and emptiness of existence. [...] No man has ever felt perfectly happy in the present; if he had it would have intoxicated him.

He is saying here that boredom is very much showing that after all the goals and strivings, we go back to the initial empty state that was there all along as a sort of background noise.

Because he also makes this remark:

When men of the better class form a society for promoting some noble or ideal aim, the result almost always is that the innumerable mob of humanity comes crowding in too, as it always does everywhere, like vermin—their object being to try and get rid of boredom, or some other defect of their nature; and anything that will effect that, they seize upon at once, without the slightest discrimination. Some of them will slip into that society, or push themselves in, and then either soon destroy it altogether, or alter it so much that in the end it comes to have a purpose the exact opposite of that which it had at first.

This alongside strengthening oneself against 'boredom'. The 'vermin' are trying to avoid 'boredom'.

This alongside strengthening oneself against 'boredom'. The 'vermin' are trying to avoid 'boredom'. — I like sushi

I'd have to look at the context again, but the quote as is looks like it is saying that the "mob of humanity" try to get rid of boredom. Part of their ignorance is this attempt since boredom is not removable, or at least in the ways that they think.

Trust me. He goes on to say that we should strengthen ourselves against boredom rather than end up as lone trumpeters only able to play one note, forever seeking comfort in the company of others to make music. Whereas if we stick to boredom we learn to make music alone and become an orchestra.

Trust me. He goes on to say that we should strengthen ourselves against boredom rather than end up as lone trumpeters only able to play one note, forever seeking comfort in the company of others to make music. Whereas if we stick to boredom we learn to make music alone and become an orchestra. — I like sushi

Ok, so this speaks to what I'm saying when I said, "at least in ways they think". It relates to my other thread about finding comfort in ones solitude. One must learn to work through boredom, as the strivings against boredom aren't going to get rid of the underlying striving Will at work.

I don't think it works like that. First off, we know we die and that there is a demise. Then there is the fact that we are lacking and strive for satiation. These are just built into the framework. They are not situational, though situational harms add to it. — schopenhauer1

Sure we know we die. That fact may cause some to suffer and not others. As I said earlier its a matter of attitude and disposition. I don't know what you mean when you say "we are lacking". Lacking what? For example say I am hungry. If I have food then no problem. If I don't have food then I will possibly suffer as per what I said previously—that suffering comes from wanting the circumstances of my life to be different than they are. Even then I may only suffer if I have no means of changing those circumstances to a
more congenial situation or changing my attitude such that I no longer wish my life to be different than it is.

This contradicts what I believe to be true from Schopenhauer's observation: — schopenhauer1

Please lay out the point you want to make. I am not inclined to read that passage and have to try to figure out what the counterpoint to what I said is.

Please lay out the point you want to make. I am not inclined to read that passage and have to try to figure out what the counterpoint to what I said is. — Janus

All of what you said is pretty much the opposite of Schopenhauer's claim. Figure it out.

All of what you said is pretty much the opposite of Schopenhauer's claim. — schopenhauer1

So Schopenhauer claims there is no diversity in the ways people respond to their conditions? In that case he would obviously be mistaken.

So Schopenhauer claims there is no diversity in the ways people respond to their conditions? In that case he would obviously be mistaken. — Janus

:roll: