Arthur Schopenhauer Timeline

Schopenhauer met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Weimar in November 1813. Goethe took an interest in the young philosopher's theory of color, which led to their correspondence and later collaboration on ideas about vision and optics.

Image source: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Between 1814 and 1816, Schopenhauer worked closely with Goethe on chromatic questions and independently developed his own physiological theory of colour, published as 'On Vision and Colors' (1816), which anticipated aspects of later psychophysics.

Image source: Theory of Colours

Around 1814 Schopenhauer encountered translations of Hindu texts, including the Upanishads translated by Friedrich Majer. He later called the Upanishads the consolation of his life and integrated concepts like renunciation of the will into his metaphysics, alongside Buddhist ideas.

Image source: Arthur Schopenhauer

After finishing his main work, Schopenhauer toured Italy for nearly a year, visiting Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples. He delighted in Italian art and landscapes, though the trip ended abruptly when news of financial troubles forced his return to Germany.

In 1819 the Danzig banking house where his family's capital was deposited collapsed amid a speculative crisis. Schopenhauer lost roughly half his fortune, prompting a temporary return to academic life to secure an income.

Schopenhauer qualified as a lecturer at the University of Berlin in 1820 and audaciously scheduled his lectures at the same hour as Hegel's popular courses. Almost no students attended, deepening his contempt for university philosophy and Hegel in particular.

Image source: Humboldt University of Berlin

In August 1821 Schopenhauer struck a seamstress, Caroline Luise Marguet, after she allegedly refused to leave his Berlin apartment. Legal proceedings dragged on until May 1825, when he was fined and ordered to pay her an annuity until her death; he noted her passing years later with grim satisfaction.

Fleeing the cholera outbreak that swept Berlin in 1831 and killed Hegel, Schopenhauer moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he would live quietly for the rest of his life, accompanied mainly by his poodles.

Image source: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

From 1831 onward Frankfurt became Schopenhauer's permanent home. He lived a disciplined, solitary existence, following strict routines of reading, writing, flute playing, and daily walks, often talking to himself in English or French.

Image source: Frankfurt

His companion essay 'On the Basis of Morality' failed to win the Danish academy's competition despite being the only submission; the judges dismissed it dismissively, provoking Schopenhauer's lasting indignation. Both essays were later collected as 'The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics' (1841).

Following the success of the Parerga, admirers such as Julius Frauenstädt championed his philosophy. Articles appeared in British journals, students visited him in Frankfurt, and Richard Wagner sent him a copy of the Ring libretto, marking the belated triumph of his thought.

In 1854 Wagner discovered 'The World as Will and Representation' and found in it the philosophical basis for music's supremacy among the arts. Schopenhauerian themes of renunciation and redemption profoundly shaped Tristan und Isolde and Wagner's later theoretical writings.

Image source: Richard Wagner

Schopenhauer died peacefully of heart failure on September 21, 1860, in Frankfurt at age seventy-two, seated alone on his sofa. He was buried in the city's Hauptfriedhof, where his gravestone bears only his name and dates.

Posthumously, Schopenhauer's philosophy exerted vast influence: Friedrich Nietzsche built upon and against his will-metaphysics, Freud acknowledged parallels between the unconscious drives and the will, and writers from Tolstoy to Borges drew inspiration. His pessimism and philosophy of art remain central touchstones in Western intellectual history.