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Bertrand Russell, in the Schopenhauer chapter of his well-known History of Western Philosophy, charges the protagonist of the present book apart from a list of other un-British vices like habitually dining well with having been "extremely quarrelsome".¹ And so much is certain that Arthur Schopenhauer was a philosopher with a remarkable propensity for being provoked to anger. For example, when a certain Adolph Cornill published a book on his philosophy which seemed to have been written with the specific aim of showing up an impressive number of contradictions inherent in it, Schopenhauer's reaction was as one might expect. In a letter to his faithful "evangelist" Frauenstädt of 11 July 1856 he castigated such an attempt as "a stupid, bad trick, such as is often used by knaves", and which was especially ludicrous "with me, the most consistent and monolithic of all philosophers".^*2 And in a letter of 31 March 1854 to the "apostle" Johann August Becker we read (this time about worthy old Frauenstädt himself!): "To seek for contradictions in my work is wholly in vain; it is all of a piece."³ Cornill's book has fallen into, probably well-deserved, oblivion; but, in spite of the master's warning, commentators have continued (unless they belong to some Schopenhauer-orthodoxy) to be puzzled, rightly or wrongly, by the same phenomenon.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-9369-4_1

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