The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; On Human Nature

Macchiavelli, who seems to have taken no interest whatever in philosophical speculations, is drawn by the keen subtlety of his very unique understanding into the following obser...

Everywhere and at all times there has been much discontent with governments, laws and public regulations; for the most part, however, because men are always ready to make instit...

Contrarily, with the good character (both being assumed to exist in a high degree) the same thought has for its accompaniment, like a fundamental bass, a constant feeling of _I,...

Such for instance is the favour that villainy finds; the neglect that merit, even the rarest and the greatest, suffers at the hands of those of the same profession; the hatred o...

The following essays are drawn from the chapters entitled _Zur Ethik_ and _Zur Rechtslehre und Politik_ which are to be found both in Schopenhauer's _Parerga_ and in his posthum...

There is, it is true, a simple objection to the second method. It may be said to assume that one and the same being can exist in different places at the same time, and yet be co...

But even as late a writer as Macchiavelli was so decidedly imbued with the earlier or mediaeval conception of the position of a prince that he treats it as a matter which is sel...

In the opposite mood human misery is present to us only as a fact of knowledge, that is to say, indirectly. We are mainly engaged in looking at the sufferings of others, and our...