{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

Schopenhauer in the Air

Not long after Sadakichi Hartmann had published a volume of seven short stories under the title Schopenhauer in the Air (1899),
(1) yet another German philosopher rose to fame in the United States, and in 1907 James Huneker, considering himself "the first Nietzschian [sic] to write of him in this country," could claim "Nietzsche is in the air."

(2) But by the time the United States entered World War I, the strong impact of German thought on American intellectual life abruptly came to an end. While the field of nineteenth-century intellectual history abounds in studies documenting the vitality of German-American philosophical exchanges, the American reception of Arthur Schopenhaner has not received much attention.

(3) Given his common designation as a pessimist, who with apodictic certainty had declared our world the worst of all possible, Schopenhauer's neglect among historians of a nation known for its unshakable optimism cannot come as a surprise. In fact, one might question whether Schopenhauer had ever been 'in the air' in the United States. Compared to the stir the German philosopher caused in Europe and the sheer number of devoted followers he generated on the continent, his American reception is undoubtedly smaller in scope and different in manner. However, this does not make it any less significant. As Thomas Tweed maintained in his study on the American Encounter with Buddhism: "Sometimes it is necessary to turn one's gaze away from an object [the dominant culture of nineteenth-century America] in order to see it clearly, to examine the exotic in order to understand the familiar" (Tweed xxii).

The following essay draws on my book-length study on the American reception of Schopenhauer, "The Highpriest of Pessimism" (2008). After first presenting Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Henry Hedge as typical examples of the early American reception of Schopenhauer, I then take a brief look at the American reaction to pessimism at the end of the nineteenth century, and finally I compare William James' response to that of Emerson. As I will suggest, both intellectuals grappled with a philosophy known for its undaunted outlook onto the dark sides of life.


The New Buddhist

When Emerson encountered Schopenhauer on 13 May 1864 on the front page of the New York Commercial Advertiser in an unsigned article on "Buddhism in Europe. Schopenhauer," the German thinker was introduced as a "new Buddhist."