Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and 19th-century pessimism

Abstract

In this article, I examine the fundamental differences and the key points that characterised Nietzsche’s engagement with Schopenhauer’s pessimism. From his youth, Nietzsche strove to reflect on nineteenth-century pessimism, having been profoundly influenced by “Master Schopenhauer”. In the 1880s, in particular, Nietzsche sought to overcome Schopenhauerian pessimism, due to the negative consequences of the morality of compassion and the metaphysics of the negation of the will. I ask whether there are decisive breaks between his ‘pessimistic’ youth, when he already considered himself ‘the most serious continuator of Schopenhauerian pessimism’, and his middle and late works, in which pessimism is radicalised into nihilism.