Schopenhauer's Practical Ethics: Pursuit of Happiness as Pain Avoidance

The core idea of Schopenhauer's practical philosophy is that the goal of life is to minimize suffering rather than pursue positive happiness.

### Schopenhauer's Practical Philosophy: The Pursuit of Happiness Through the Absence of Pain
* 🧠 Schopenhauer's "Counsels and Maxims" is a collection of practical ethics that does not aim for **completeness or systematic arrangement**.
* 💡 The central idea is that "**happiness is not a positive state, but the absence of pain**."
* 🔒 Pleasure is merely the removal of pain, and Schopenhauer advises directing efforts towards **avoiding suffering** rather than **pursuing happiness**.
* 🎭 The world is described as a place of **hypocrisy and false appearances**, where true joy is **rare** and often found in **unexpected, ordinary circumstances**.
* 📉 It is prudent to lower expectations and not strive for **extreme happiness**, as it is very easy to be **unhappy in life**.
* 🎭 Schopenhauer's philosophy is often seen as a **pessimistic view of life**, where the goal is to **endure and minimize suffering**.
* 🌰 "Everything in the world is like a hollow nut, with **little kernel anywhere**, and when it does exist, it is still **more rare to find it in the shell**."

[Music] Hi guys, I'm Dr. Anadale, and this is the first video in a new series about Schopenhauer's Counsels and Maxims. This is an excerpt from his last major work of 1850-1851, and this translation is from 1890, a public domain English translation. This was published by Prometheus Books in about 1995. I'm just going to read the text and offer my commentary, and we'll see how it goes. Let me know what you think. We'll start with the introduction, which is less than a page. Here we go. If my object in these pages were to present a complete scheme of counsels and maxims for the guidance of life, I should have to repeat the numerous rules, some of them excellent, which have been drawn up by thinkers of all ages from Theognis and Solomon down to La Rochefoucauld. And in so doing, I should inevitably entail upon the reader a vast amount of well-worn commonplace. But the fact is that in this work, I make

still less claim to exhaust my subject than in any other of my writings. An author who makes no claims to completeness must also, in great measure, abandon any attempt at a systematic arrangement. For his double loss in this respect, the reader may console himself by reflecting that a complete and systematic treatment of such a subject as the guidance of life could hardly fail to be a very weary some business. I have simply put down those of my thoughts which appear to be worth communicating, thoughts which, as far as I know, have not been uttered, or at any rate not just in the same form, by anyone else, so that my remarks may be taken as a supplement to what has already been achieved in the immense field. So comment first, this is obviously the work of practical ethics, not going to be a systematic work or even an extension of show up in our systematic work in the world as will and representation and other systematic works. It's going to be simply a collection of councils and maxims, as the title

promises. So we'll look at the practical elements of life. Something. This will be something more comparable to the Handbook of Epictetus or some work of practical advice back to Schopenhauer. However, by way of introducing some sort of order into the great variety of matters upon which advice will be given in the following pages, I shall distribute what I have to say under the following heads: one, general rules; two, our relation to ourselves; three, our relation to others; and finally, four, rules which concern our manner of life and our worldly circumstances. I shall conclude with some remarks upon the changes which the various periods of life produce in us. So there's the end of the introduction. Let's go then to section one, chapter one, general rules. One, the first and foremost rule for the wise conduct of life seems to me to be contained in a view to which Aristotle parenthetically refers in the Nicomachean Ethics, and here he quotes the Greek. I'm not going to try to pronounce it, but the citation is to

uh ethics book 7 chapter 11 or 12. Or as it may be rendered not pleasure, but freedom from pain is what the wise man will aim at. The truth of this remark turns upon the negative character of happiness, the fact that pleasure is only the negation of pain, and that pain is the positive element in life. This actually will pause for a comment. This may be the central idea from Schopenhauer's practical philosophy that life is pain, that to live is to suffer, and therefore success in life involves the minimization of suffering. It involves playing it safe, not trying to achieve some positive good, some real substantial benefit in a state that we would call happiness. That he's going to say is a source of error and misery. So to act correctly is to realize that happiness has no positive character, only pain has positive character. To escape from pain, therefore, is to be happy. So to realize that happiness is something negative, the absence of pain, that's really the core of what Schopenhauer has to say in this part of

the book so back to the text though I have given a detailed proof of this proposition in my chief work. And here his footnote is to the world as will and representation book one. I may supply one more illustration of it here drawn from a circumstance of daily occurrence. Suppose that with the exception of some sore or painful spot, we are physically in a sound and healthy condition. The pain of this one spot will completely absorb our attention, causing us to lose the sense of general well-being and destroying all our comfort in life. In the same way, when all our affairs but one turn out as we wish, the single instance in which our aims are frustrated is a constant trouble to us, even though it be something quite trivial. We think a great deal about it and very little about those other and more important matters in which we have been successful. In both these cases, what is met with resistance is the will. In the one case, as it is objectified in the organism. In the other, as it presents itself in the struggle of life.

and in both, it is plain that the satisfaction of the will consists in nothing else than that it meets with no resistance. It is, therefore, a satisfaction which is not directly felt. At most, we can become conscious of it only when we reflect upon our condition. But that which checks or arrests the will is something positive. It proclaims its own presence. All pleasure consists merely in removing this check, in other words, in freeing us from its action. And hence pleasure is a state which can never last very long. Interesting connection here with the idea of the will. The will wants what the will experiences then are barriers to the realization of its desires, of its wants. This is what we experience as pain and as suffering. So what is happiness? What is joy? It is the removal of the barrier to the will so that it can achieve its goal. This is the true basis of the above excellent rule quoted from Aristotle, which bids us direct our aim not towards securing what is pleasurable and agreeable in life, but towards avoiding as far as possible its innumerable evils.

if this were not the right course to take, that saying of Voltaire's, happiness is but a dream and sorrow is real, would be as false as it is in fact true. A man who desires to make up the book of his life and determine where the balance of happiness lies must put down in his accounts not the pleasures which he has enjoyed, but the evils which he has escaped. That is the true method of eudaimonology. For all you diamonology must begin by recognizing that its very name is a euphemism, and that to live happily only means to live less unhappily, to live a tolerable life. There is no doubt that life is given us not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome, to be got over. I'll pause again just to say that this is a classic Schopenhauer line: the goal of life is to endure, to tolerate, to settle, not to achieve some exalted state of bliss, to achieve a positive happiness. There are numerous expressions illustrating this, such as dige vitamin.

vita de fungi, or in Italian, si scampakosi, or in German, manmosuken dirt tsukomen ever sean dirk develcomen, and so on. In old age, it is indeed a consolation to think that the work of life is over and done with. Let's have a pause here to say, we might also think here of capitalist comments to Socrates in Book One of Plato's Republic on that very point. The happiest lot is not to have experienced the keenest delights or the greatest pleasures, but to have brought life to a close without any very great pain, bodily or mental. To measure the happiness of a life by its delights or pleasures is to apply a false standard, for pleasures are and remain something negative. That they produce happiness is a delusion cherished by envy to its own punishment. Pain is felt to be something positive, and hence its absence is the true standard of happiness. And if, over and above freedom from pain, there is also an absence of boredom, the essential conditions of earthly happiness are attained, for all else is

chimerical long paragraph here on page eight of this text and Schopenhauer's told us really connecting this with ideas folk wisdom and uh slogan of Voltaire's that life is pain pleasure is and remains something negative. The difficulty that comes in life is the intellectual philosophical error of supposing that there is a positive happiness or flourishing to be had. In fact, there are simply threats to fend off. And if you arrive at the end of your life having successfully avoided calamity, having fended off all of the threats and all of the sources of pain and suffering in your life, then you have lived as happily as it is possible for a human being to live. I think most of the rest of this book is just going to be simply the the deep realization. I'm sorry, the sort of practical realization and consequences of that deep truth if Schopenhauer's if Schopenhauer is correct about it. I think his whole philosophy is built around that exact point. Pain is affirmative. Pain is positive.

a positive existence. It's real happiness is the absence of pain, the way darkness is the absence of light. Okay, to think otherwise is to court disaster and unhappiness. As to court misery, it follows from this that a man should never try to purchase pleasure at the cost of pain, or even at the risk of incurring it. To do so is to pay what is positive and real for what is negative and illusory. While there is a net profit in sacrificing pleasure for the sake of avoiding pain. So what's the rule here? Don't risk pain and loss for the sake of happiness. Instead, sacrifice your happiness in the interest of avoiding pain. This is the sort of practical version of the error that we make, that we would make. We need to keep our priorities straight, Schopenhauer seems to say. In either case, it is a matter of indifference whether the pain follows the pleasure or precedes it. While it is a complete inversion of the natural order to try and turn this scene.

of misery into a garden of pleasure. To aim at joy and pleasure rather than at the greatest possible freedom from pain. And yet, how many do it? There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view and looking upon the world as a kind of hell. And in confining one's efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire. What an image, right? Imagine that the world is hell. Your goal is to find a slightly less flamey part of hell in which to suffer the remainder of your life. The difficult again, that the error is aiming at joy, aiming at happiness. That's just a mistake. The fool rushes after the pleasures of life and finds himself their dupe. The wise man avoids its evils. And even if, notwithstanding his precautions, he falls into misfortune, that is the fault of fate, not of his own folly. As far as he is successful in his endeavors, he cannot be said to have lived a life of illusion, for the evils which he shuns are very real.

even if he goes too far out of his way to avoid evils and makes an unnecessary sacrifice of pleasure, he is in reality not the worse off for that. For all pleasures are chimerical, and to mourn for having lost any of them is a frivolous and even ridiculous proceeding. So at the end of your life, the pains that you have avoided are, he's saying, a kind of real positive benefit to you. The pleasures that you might have missed out on, you haven't missed really anything. Here, reading this now, I'm thinking of the way in which Nietzsche and Nietzsche's philosophy of the will to power seems a very hard pushback against this idea, this will to pessimism, this will to nothingness that he'll call it. So maybe a point of contrast here between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Maybe I also want to think of Nietzsche's influence on Wagner in this regard. The failure to recognize this truth, a failure promoted by optimistic ideas.

is the source of much unhappiness. In moments free from pain, our restless wishes present, as it were, a mirror - an image of happiness that has no counterpart in reality, seducing us to follow. In doing so, we bring pain upon ourselves, and that is something undeniably real - something like a will of the sort of magic mirror, sort of fairy tale that there's happiness there. This is the sort of Dr. Seuss, you know, I had trouble getting to Sola Salud um vision. It's misleading. The wise man refrains from following these trails. Afterwards, we come to look with regret upon that lost state of painlessness. It is a paradise which we have gambled away. It is no longer with us, and we might in vain, we long in vain to undo what has been done. One might well fancy that these visions of wishes fulfilled were the work of some evil spirit conjured up in order to entice us away from that painless state, which forms our highest happiness. A careless youth may think that the

world is meant to be enjoyed as though it were the abode of some real or positive happiness, which only those fail to attain who are not clever enough to overcome the difficulties that lie in the way. If I were clever enough, I could achieve happiness. That's really I need to be super clever. This false notion takes a stronger hold on him when he comes to read poetry and romance, and to be deceived by outward show, the hypocrisy that characterizes the world from beginning to end, on which I shall have something to say presently. The result is that his life is the more or less deliberate pursuit of positive happiness, and happiness he takes to be equivalent to a series of definite pleasures. In seeking these pleasures, he encounters danger, a fact which should not be forgotten. He hunts for game that does not exist, and so he ends by suffering some very real and positive misfortune: pain, distress, sickness, loss, care, poverty, shame, and all the thousand ills of life. Too late, he discovers the trick that has been played upon him. But if the rule I have mentioned is

observed, and a plan of life is adopted, which proceeds by avoiding pain. In other words, by taking measures of precaution against want, sickness, and distress in all its forms. The aim is a real one, and something may be achieved, which will be great in proportion as the plan is not disturbed by striving after the chimera of positive happiness. This agrees with the opinion expressed by Goethe in The Elective Affinities and there put in the mouth of Milder: The man who is always trying to make other people happy, to desire to get rid of an evil is a definite object, but to desire a better fortune than one has is blind folly. The same truth is contained in that fine French proverb: The good, the best is the enemy of the good, leave well alone. And as I have remarked in my chief work (footnote: The World as Will and Representation, Book Two, Chapter 16), this is the leading thought underlying the philosophical system of the Cynics. For what was it that led the Cynics to repudiate pleasure in every form?

it was not the fact that pain is in a greater or less degree always bound up with pleasure. To go out of the way of pain seemed to them so much easier than to secure pleasure. Deeply impressed as they were by the negative nature of pleasure and the positive nature of pain, they consistently devoted all their efforts to the avoidance of pain. The first step to that end was, in their opinion, a complete and deliberate repudiation of pleasure as something which served only to entrap the victim in order that he might be delivered over to pain. The point here being, as the ancient cynics, the dog philosophers, saw, that one can't have pleasure without an accompanying pain, and so one is best off avoiding the pain by sacrificing the pleasure. And that seems to be just the type of advice that Schopenhauer offers us here. We are all born, as Schiller says, in Arcadia. In other words, we come into the world full of claims to happiness and pleasure, and we cherish the fond hope of

making them good, but as a rule, fate soon teaches us in a rough and ready way that we really possess nothing at all, but that everything in the world is at its command, in virtue of an unassailable right, not only to all that we have or acquire, to wife or child, but even to our very limbs, our arms, legs, eyes, and ears, nay, even to the nose in the middle of our face. And in any case, after some little time, we learn by experience that happiness and pleasure are a fata morgana, which, visible from afar, vanish as we approach; that on the other hand, suffering and pain are a reality which makes its presence felt without any intermediary, and for its effect stands in no need of illusion or the play of false hope. So what promises you pleasure and happiness and joy is deceptive. It is this kind of will-o'-the-wisp or fantasy misleading you, luring you away. If the teaching of experience bears fruit in us, we soon give up the pursuit of pleasure and happiness and think much.

more about making ourselves secure against the attacks of pain and suffering. We see that the best the world has to offer is an existence free from pain, a quiet tolerable life, and we confine our claims to this as to something we can more surely hope to achieve. For the safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy. This just incidentally this sounds like the work of a somewhat embittered old man. Perhaps, perhaps yes, perhaps no. Merck, the friend of Guerita's youth, was conscious of this truth when he wrote: It is wretched the way people have of setting up a claim to happiness, and that too is a measure corresponding with their desires, that ruins everything in this world. A man will make progress if he can get rid of this claim and desire nothing but what he sees before him. Accordingly, it is advisable to put very moderate limits upon our expectations of pleasure, possessions, rank, honor, and so on, because it is just this striving and struggling to be happy to dazzle the

world to lead a life full of pleasure which entail great misfortune it is prudent and wise i say to reduce one's claims if only for the reason that it is extremely easy to be very unhappy while to be very happy is not indeed difficult but quite impossible. Let me pause over that for a moment because it seems like it's something important and fairly clear that Schopenhauer has said. It is should we reduce our claims we aim for less we lower our ambitions why it is very extremely easy to be very unhappy in this life but it is not not not only difficult but impossible to be very happy so rather than going for the extreme happiness we should aim to avoid the very easy fate the very common fate of being very unhappy. Back to the text with justice sings the poet of life's wisdom and here he's quoting uh in Latin from Horace's odes. I'm going to skip the Latin because my pronunciation is not great. Uh the quote is the horse's odes uh 2 10. The golden mean is best to live free.

from the squalor of a mean abode, and yet not be a mark for envy. It is the tall pine which is cruelly shaken by the wind, and the lofty towers that fall so heavily, the highest summits that are struck in the storm. He who has taken to heart the teaching of my philosophy, who knows, therefore, that our whole existence is something which had better not have been, and that to disown and disclaim is, and to that to disown and disclaim it is the highest wisdom, he will have no great expectations from anything or any condition in life. He will spend passion upon nothing in the world, nor lament over much if he fails in any of his undertakings. He will feel the deep truth of what Plato says (a quotation in Greek footnote Republic book 10 number 604): Nothing in human affairs is worth any great anxiety, or as the Persian poet has it, Though from thy grasp all worldly things should flee, grieve not for them, for they are nothing worth, and thou will world in thy possession be.

joy not for worthless are the things of earth since to that better world it is given to thee to pass speed on for this is nothing worth the footnote is to uh the translator's note uh is um uh from anvar e suhaili the lights of canopus schopenhauer again the chief obstacle to our arriving at these salutary views is the hypocrisy of the world to which i have already eluded and hypocrisy which should be early revealed to the young one of the problem here i think he's saying is that the young people full of poetry and romance will pursue this positive happiness and decades later come to realize that it was all an illusion they had best have taken the other line so to become chopin harry in this practical sense seems to mean to as a young person give up on that advanced pursuit most of the glories of the world are mere outward show like the scenes on a stage there is nothing real about them ships festooned and hung with penance firing of canon

illuminations beating up drums, and blowing of trumpets, shouting and applauding, these are all the outward signs, the pretense and suggestion, as it were, the hieroglyphic of joy. Hieroglyphic of joy, that's a great, it's a great expression, but just there, joy is, as a rule, not to be found. It is the only guest who has declined to be present at the festival. Where this guest may really be found, he comes generally without invitation, he is not formally announced, but slips in quietly by himself. Song [Music] often making his appearance under the most unimportant and trivial circumstances, or in the commonest company, anywhere, in short, but where the society is brilliant and distinguished, joy is like the gold in the Australian mines, found only now and then, as it were, by the caprice of chance, and according to no rule or law, oftenest in very little grains, and very seldom in heaps. All that outward show, which I have described, is only an attempt to make people believe that it is really joy.

which has come to the festival, and to produce this impression upon the spectators, is in fact the whole object of it. It's all a sham. It's all a show. Don't fall for the show. Don't go to Australia seeking gold, which you'll find in tiny grains and not in great abundance. Okay, realize this truth early in your life, he's suggesting with mourning. It is just the same, that long funeral procession moving up so slowly. How melancholy it looks! What an endless row of carriages! But look into them. They are all empty. The coachmen of the whole town are the sole escort the dead man has to his grave. Eloquent picture of the friendship and esteem of the world. This is the falsehood, the hollowness, the hypocrisy of human affairs. Take another example: a room full of guests in full dress being received with great ceremony. You could almost believe that this is a noble and distinguished company. But as a matter of fact, it is Compulsion, Pain, and Boredom who are the real guests, for where many are invited.

it is a rabble even if they all wear stars. Really good society is everywhere of necessity very small. In brilliant festivals and noisy entertainments, there is always at bottom a sense of emptiness prevalent. A false tone is there. Such gatherings are in strange contrast with the misery and barrenness of our existence. The contrast brings the true condition into greater relief. Still, these gatherings are effective from the outside, and that is just their purpose. Chamfort makes an excellent remark that society le circles is like a miserable play, a bad opera without any interest in itself, but supported for a time by mechanical aid, costumes, and scenery. This is some Schopenhauer sounds here, almost like um, was it Hamlet in his famous soliloquy, right lives but an actor that struts upon the stage for a short time. Um, this is pessimism. And so too with academies and chairs of philosophy. You have a kind of signboard hung out to show the apparent abode of wisdom, but wisdom is another guest who declines.

the invitation she is to be found elsewhere. The chiming of bells, ecclesiastical millinery, attitudes of devotion, insane antics. These are the pretense, the false show of piety and so on. Everything in the world is like a hollow nut. There is little kernel anywhere, and when it does exist, it is still more rare to find it in the shell. You may look for it elsewhere and find it, as a rule, only by chance. That's the end of section 1 of Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer. I've offered a brief commentary here. I hope you found it helpful. I'll look into the next sections in the next video. If you'd like to give me some feedback or suggestions, please leave a comment in the box below. Thanks for watching today. Goodbye. [Music]

Schopenhauer: Life is Pain | Counsels & Maxims 1

I teach philosophy in Emmitsburg, Maryland. I do not speak for any institution.


Christopher Anadale

Analyzing Schopenhauer's Counsels and Maxims

Schopenhauer's work is a collection of practical ethics, focusing on councils and maxims for wise conduct in life.

The central idea is that the wise aim for freedom from pain rather than pursuing pleasure, emphasizing the minimization of suffering for a truly successful life.

The book is divided into sections addressing general rules, our relation to ourselves, our relation to others, and rules concerning our manner of life and worldly circumstances, as well as the changes brought by different life periods.

The Role of Will and Desire in Human Happiness

The satisfaction of the will is found in the absence of resistance, leading to a fleeting state of pleasure.

Happiness and joy come from removing barriers to the will, rather than pursuing pleasurable experiences.

True happiness is measured by the troubles and evils one avoids, making a tolerable life the real goal of human existence.

The Philosophy of Happiness According to Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer believes that true happiness comes from the absence of pain, rather than the pursuit of pleasure.

He argues that pleasure is fleeting and illusory, while pain is a positive existence.

The philosopher advises prioritizing the avoidance of pain over the pursuit of happiness, as this ultimately leads to a more fulfilling life.

The Pursuit of Happiness and the Illusion of Pleasure

Schopenhauer argues that seeking pleasure and happiness is a mistake, as the avoidance of pain brings true benefit.

He believes that optimistic ideas and chasing after pleasure only lead to unhappiness.

Schopenhauer suggests that the wise choice is to refrain from following the seductive mirage of happiness and to avoid the pain that it brings.

The Pursuit of Happiness and the Cynical Philosophy

The pursuit of positive happiness leads to real misfortune and suffering, according to Schopenhauer.

He advocates for a life plan that focuses on avoiding pain and distress rather than chasing after pleasure.

This philosophy is in line with the beliefs of the Cynics, who rejected pleasure in favor of minimizing pain.

The Pursuit of Happiness and the Wisdom of Moderation

The pursuit of pleasure and happiness is ultimately deceptive, leading to inevitable suffering and disappointment.

Schopenhauer and Horace both advocate for the wisdom of moderating one's expectations and desires for a more secure and less miserable existence.

Instead of striving for extreme happiness, it is prudent to aim for a quiet and tolerable life, free from the constant pursuit of pleasure.

The teaching of the philosophy emphasizes the futility of expecting too much from life and the wisdom of not placing great importance on worldly things.

The hypocrisy of the world leads young people to pursue a happiness that is ultimately an illusion, as true joy is found in unassuming circumstances, rather than in outward displays of success.

Joy is portrayed as a rare and spontaneous occurrence, not bound by rules or laws, and is often found in small moments rather than grandiose events.

The Deceptive Nature of Society and Human Affairs

Public displays and festivals are just a facade, hiding the emptiness of human existence.

Schopenhauer criticizes the hollowness and hypocrisy of society, comparing it to a miserable play supported only by costumes and scenery.

He expresses pessimism about the pretense of wisdom and piety in the world, highlighting the rarity of true substance among the superficiality.