Selections from Parerga and Paralipomena: Volume 2

Written by Arthur Schopenhauer

Narrated by Leighton Pugh

Volume 2 of Parerga and Paralipomena has a very different character from Volume 1.

There are, in total, 31 Essays, 24 of which are presented here. The range of topics is very varied, opening with 'On Philosophy and Its Method' and including 'On Pantheism', 'On Ethics', 'On Jurisprudence', 'On Men of Learning', 'On Thinking for Oneself', 'On Religion' and 'The Vanity of Existence'.

Quite a few open windows on to the personality of Schopenhauer himself - for example, he praises dogs as companions, argues that animals should be chloroformed before slaughter: animal welfare was very much in his sights. He inveighs against useless indulgence in luxury: 'the most effective way of alleviating human misery would be to diminish luxury, or even abolish it altogether.'

A thinker at home with his thoughts, he remarks with a touch of resigned humour: 'The pen is to thought what the stick is to walking, but one walks most easily without a stick, and thinks most perfectly when no pen is at hand. It is only when a man begins to get old that he likes to make use of a stick and his pen.'

His writings range widely over the international intellectual and cultural spectrum. There are numerous references to Eastern thought - especially Buddhism and Brahmanism as translations into European languages from Pali and Sanskrit gathered force during Schopenhauer's active life. He clearly found himself comfortable in this body of thought, often comparing it favourably with the Western Judaic-Christian heritage. As always he makes liberal use of quotations and footnotes and these have been translated and incorporated into the main text for this recording.

For Leighton Pugh, who has now recorded the main body of Schopenhauer's work for Ukemi Audiobooks, spending many days in the studio with this hugely influential figure has been like 'training at altitude.' He remarked that the time spent with the varied and accessible essays in Parerga and Paralipomena Volume 2 proved to be among the most enjoyable.

Translations by T Bailey Saunders, Ernest Belfort Bax, Walter Jekyll and Charles Joséfé.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukemi Audiobooks from W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Apr 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781004133734

Arthur Schopenhauer

Nació en Danzig en 1788. Hijo de un próspero comerciante, la muerte prematura de su padre le liberó de dedicarse a los negocios y le procuró un patrimonio que le permitió vivir de las rentas, pudiéndose consagrar de lleno a la filosofía. Fue un hombre solitario y metódico, de carácter irascible y de una acentuada misoginia. Enemigo personal y filosófico de Hegel, despreció siempre el Idealismo alemán y se consideró a sí mismo como el verdadero continuador de Kant, en cuyo criticismo encontró la clave para su metafísica de la voluntad. Su pensamiento no conoció la fama hasta pocos años después de su muerte, acaecida en Fráncfort en 1860. Schopenhauer ha pasado a la historia como el filósofo pesimista por excelencia. Admirador de Calderón y Gracián, tradujo al alemán el «Oráculo manual» del segundo. Hoy es uno de los clásicos de la filosofía más apreciados y leídos debido a la claridad de su pensamiento. Sus escritos marcaron hitos culturales y continúan influyendo en la actualidad. En esta misma Editorial han sido publicadas sus obras «Metafísica de las costumbres» (2001), «Diarios de viaje. Los Diarios de viaje de los años 1800 y 1803-1804» (2012), «Sobre la visión y los colores seguido de la correspondencia con Johann Wolfgang Goethe» (2013), «Parerga y paralipómena» I (2.ª ed., 2020) y II (2020), «El mundo como voluntad y representación» I (2.ª ed., 2022) y II (3.ª ed., 2022) y «Dialéctica erística o Arte de tener razón en 38 artimañas» (2023).