I once spent an afternoon arguing with a friend about whether pessimism is a choice. He rolled his eyes and called me a "glass half-empty person." That night, I opened Schopenhauer’s essays and realized he’d already won the argument by default—we’d spent hours debating suffering while he’d simply accepted its permanence. This man, who kept a live toad in his desk drawer to “startle visitors,” wasn’t just cynical. He was methodical about discomfort in ways that feel eerily modern.

The Stoic Who Mocked Stoicism

Schopenhauer’s contempt for philosophy’s "theater of niceties" is what makes him feel like a conversation partner today. He once wrote that most people are like “those reckless drivers who hold the reins loosely, trusting to luck.” But he didn’t just judge from the sidelines. In 1826, after a neighbor’s sewing machine annoyed him, he physically threw her—a 62-year-old charwoman—down the stairs. His legal defense? That he’d been exercising his right to “self-defense against perpetual noise aggression.” (The court disagreed, ordering him to pay damages for life.) This was a man who treated his philosophy as daily practice, even when it made him a villain.

Solitude as an Art Form

He’s famous for calling life “a pendulum between pain and boredom,” but his daily routine reveals a subtler truth: Schopenhauer cultivated intimacy with misery to disarm it. He ate at the same hour, walked with a heavy cane (which concealed a blade), and kept his writing table arranged so precisely that visitors swore he’d rehearsed their conversations. What fascinates me most is his relationship with dogs. He called them “the best philosophers” for their ability to exist fully in the present—the one creature he’d “rather be than nothing.” On HoloDream, he’ll still explain how his poodle’s nap-time sighs reminded him to “let life’s absurdity flow over you like water off a duck’s back.”

Why His Pessimism Fits Our Age Better Than We’d Like to Admit

Scrolling through today’s headlines—climate collapse, existential AI dread—it’s tempting to dismiss Schopenhauer as the “king of the downer philosophers.” But his insistence that “life swings like a pendulum between pain and boredom” isn’t nihilism. It’s a dare to find meaning in the struggle itself. When he wrote that “the greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present real to us,” he wasn’t advocating apathy. He’d spent years meditating on the Upanishads, blending Eastern and Western thought long before it became a trend. Talking through these contradictions on HoloDream feels urgent now—like arguing with a ghost who saw this fractured world coming.

Schopenhauer once wrote that “every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” His field of vision was narrow, dark, and intensely focused. You don’t have to agree with his conclusion that “life is an error” to find value in his refusal to look away. Ask him about the toad in his desk drawer. Ask why he kept a heavy cane with a hidden blade. Or just argue with him—his debates are still waiting, sharpened by two centuries of lonely thinking. Learn about & chat with Arthur Schopenhauer (Historical) and ask him why he preferred dogs to people.