Project Gutenberg 2025-08-01 Public domain in the USA. 223 Schopenhauer, Arthur 1788 1860 Bourdeau, J. (Jean) 1848 1928 Bourdeau, Jean Pensées, maximes et fragments $aParis :$bGermer-Baillière et Cie, $c1880. "Traduit, annoté et précédé d'une vie de Schopenhauer par J. Bourdeau." I. Les douleurs du monde et le mal de la vie -- II. L'amour, les femmes, le mariage -- III. Aphorismes sur l'homme, la vie, la société, la politique, l'art, la religion, etc. Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica)) Pensées, maximes et fragments by Arthur Schopenhauer is a collection of philosophical aphorisms and fragments written in the mid-19th century. It distills a starkly pessimistic view of existence—pain as fundamental, pleasure as merely the absence of pain—alongside critiques of love, society, politics, religion, and culture, and it points toward compassion, resignation, and ascetic renunciation as the only real relief from the will. Framed for general readers, it couples bite-sized maxims with lucid, often caustic prose that lays out Schopenhauer’s ethics and metaphysics in accessible form. The opening of the volume unfolds with a substantial biographical preface by J. Bourdeau, sketching Schopenhauer’s life from his merchant family origins and wide travels to his studies under the spell of Kant and Plato, his failed Berlin lectures during Hegel’s ascendancy, his retreat to Frankfurt, and his disciplined, eccentric bachelor routines. It highlights his temperament (acerbic, fearful, combative), his late fame, his love of animals, his polemics against professors, theologians, demagogues, and romantic illusions, and the tension between his preached asceticism and his comfortable habits. The preface also notes his style, borrowings, and the “cult” that grew around him. After this, the first section, “Douleurs du monde,” lays out his core theses: existence is structured by suffering; pleasure is negative while pain is positive; life is a ceaseless struggle swinging between torment and boredom; human consciousness magnifies misery beyond that of animals; optimism and theodicies are untenable; and the world is best seen as a penal colony. The text contrasts the tragic arc of whole lives with the comic pettiness of daily detail, attacks the “best of all possible worlds” claim, and underscores the ubiquity of death and frustration. It then turns toward resignation and renunciation, introducing compassion that breaks the illusion of separateness and gestures toward ascetic quieting of the will as the path to deliverance. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bd6t5371153q 20250218010835schopenhau 1880 FR Reading ease score: 59.3 (10th to 12th grade). Somewhat difficult to read. fr Philosophy, German -- 19th century B Text Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches Category: Philosophy & Ethics 302097 2025-09-30T08:26:31.070135 text/html 277104 2025-08-01T09:51:20 text/html 366545 2025-09-30T08:26:35.702035 application/epub+zip 367703 2025-09-30T08:26:32.066096 application/epub+zip 220025 2025-09-30T08:26:31.577990 application/epub+zip 669201 2025-09-30T08:26:38.621985 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 649401 2025-09-30T08:26:35.347098 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 278048 2025-09-30T08:26:30.673995 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 258074 2025-08-01T09:51:20 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 17951 2025-09-30T08:26:38.764933 application/rdf+xml 11786 2025-09-30T08:26:31.761048 image/jpeg 2057 2025-09-30T08:26:31.669021 image/jpeg 310390 2025-09-30T08:26:31.098974 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia de.wikipedia en.wikipedia