Thursday, August 16, 2007

Jack’s Winning Words 8/16/07
“A man’s face, as a rule, says more interesting things than his mouth.”
(Schopenhauer) Arthur’s philosophy has been described as a mirror, reflecting the greatness of the universe and its riddle, too. Women might not like some other things he said. But, forget about his mouth. Study the face of someone, today. ;-) Jack


FROM P.O. IN MICHIGAN: OK --- you've piqued my curiosity. Now I have to check out Schopenhauer and see what he had to say about women

RESPONSE TO P.O.: While in Berlin, Schopenhauer was named as a defendant in an action at law initiated by a woman named Caroline Marquet.[1] She asked for damages, alleging that Schopenhauer had pushed her. Knowing that he was a man of some means and that he disliked noise, she deliberately annoyed him by raising her voice while standing right outside his door. Marquet alleged that the philosopher had assaulted and battered her after she refused to leave his doorway. Her companion testified that she saw Marquet prostrate outside of his apartment. Because Marquet won the lawsuit, he made payments to her for the next twenty years.[2] When she died, he wrote, "Obit anus, abit onus" (The old woman dies, the burden is lifted).

Schopenhauer is famous for his essay "On Women" (Über die Weiber), in which he expressed his opposition to what he called "Teutonico-Christian stupidity" on female affairs. He claimed that "woman is by nature meant to obey", and opposed Schiller's poem in honor of women, Würde der Frauen. The essay does give two compliments however: that "women are decidedly more sober in their judgment than [men] are" and are more sympathetic to the suffering of others. However, the latter was discounted as weakness rather than humanitarian virtue.

FROM REV J.S. IN MICHIGAN: I read in the Einstein book that Schopenhauer was a major influence on his thinking....Interesting.

MORE FROM J.S.: I remember him writing that there is nothing so certain that that EVIL exists and is pervasive. In this sense he was agreeing with the ancient Christian understanding of original sin. Reinhold Niebuhr picked up on that and used it to destroy the unfounded optimism of early 20th century liberalism. Some of our friends in the church would do well to read some of that. We have entered a period in mainline Protestantism where sin has virtually disappeared...it is all explained away. The only sinners are the people who disagree with them!!!

FROM MOLINER, G.S.: Part of our 17,000 nonverbal means of communication.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In visiting with people in nursing homes and more elderly and disabled, just make an observation that people's faces seem to last a longer time than the rest of the their bodies. The muscles and everything in the face most often keep right on working so there is the most similarity in all of our heads while from the neck down we become much more dissimilar. My opinion.