For a philosopher with a reputation that tends to be pooh-poohed as excessively gloomy and pessimistic, Schopenhauer and his posthumous popularity find no respite in one incident that occurred in the year 1821, when he was staying in his lodgings in Berlin.
A young and brilliant man then in his thirties, with a spitfire’s outlook and the temperament of a boiling kettle, he ran up against something that he had long since started disdaining: the lives and habits of frivolous normal people. Throw in a nervous disposition and the need for the silence and solitude demanded by the nature of his work, and you have a potent cocktail of confrontation.
Three such people of this oh-so-hated kind had materialized as maids that year in his lodgings. They had occasion to be talking outside his study, where he was of course studying away. After enduring their jabbering for some time, he finally took charge of things and, rising from his posture of profound contemplation with his eyes ablaze, he asked them steamily to leave off their talking and take a hike (this occurring, by the way, in the properly dialectal German of the time, maybe with some curses thrown in). Two of the three left, but one—that fateful one—stayed and refused to budge, angering the master of the heavenly spheres. They got into a heated argument, and things continued heating from there—she a woman scorned and punished and made all the more obstinate, and he obstinate by nature.
Then the argument became physical, limbs were tossed, and the matter ended to the chagrin of this noble philosopher with his throwing her down the stairs, like a sinfully mundane rag doll. Take that, lowly slut of the herd—tacet mulier!
Talk about philosophical genius. How about philosopher as murderer?
But things didn’t turn out so bad for our Schopenhauer. The woman survived and, brought to court, he fought the case until the matter was settled with his owing her an annual compensation of 60 thalers for the twenty-six years lasting until her death.
When she at last croaked, breathing a sigh of relief and feeling his pocketbook somewhat lighter and freer, Schopenhauer scribbled a note on the copy of her birth certificate sent to him: obit anus, abit onus. The old woman dies; the burden is lifted. A philosopher indeed.
