Sandy asked:

Compare and contrast Hegel and Schopenhauer.

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Hegel was a successful philosopher, Schopenhauer a failure. But then, Hegel needed the money,
whereas Schopenhauer did not. These are two areas where they differ. They also had different views
on women. Hegel was a happily married man and enjoyed the admiration of female members of the
reading public, whereas Schopenhauer despised women and therefore tended to have very
unfortunate relations with members of the opposite sex. For example, he hated to see them
chattering on sidewalks and staircases and once took the extreme measure of silencing his cleaning
woman by throwing her down the stairs. She broke a leg and sued him and got a life's pension
awarded to her, payable by Schopenhauer, of course.

I should also mention that their prose style differs somewhat, for although they both wrote in German,
Hegel's language is like a tropical forest, dense and dark but punctuated with flashes of luxuriant
colour (a bit like a black python winding up a black tree while a shaft of sunlight plays on the plumage
of a parakeet). Schopenhauer's diction, on the contrary, is stately and sonorous, flowing along
majestically like a river of gold into the autumn sun.

Their social relations were not the best. Hegel took hardly any notice of Schopenhauer; and this
made the latter so cranky, that he started using rather nasty epithets like 'insane' and 'fraudulent'
about Hegel's philosophy. But even then no-one took any notice.

As to their philosophy, there is much to compare. They both studied Kant and they both studied with
Fichte in their youth. But whereas Hegel criticised his former teacher in the genteel fashion
appropriate to academic etiquette, Schopenhauer bestowed the epithets I just mentioned on Fichte as
well. He might have been lucky that Fichte was dead, because the latter commanded his audiences
like an army sergeant and might have made mince meat of the aristocratic Schopenhauer. Anyway,
they both pilfered from the dead Fichte's writings whatever they could use: Hegel the dialectical
method and much else besides, Schopenhauer the concept of Will and Imagination, which appears in
the title of his only book.

Other than these few things, I can't think of any other obvious comparative and contrasting features
between Hegel and Schopenhauer. If you need more, you might just have to read a little bit. Now this
is a difficult issue, I'd be the first to admit. Both Hegel and Schopenhauer wrote huge blockbusters,
and this leaves anyone in a pickle who hasn't got the time or the inclination. You might, for example,
read what authors Singer and Janaway wrote about these philosophers in the Oxford Very Short
Introductions, but this way you only get a vague drift, like the salt spray from a wave wafting inland,
which is not the same as ducking into it. You get an opinion,not a philosophy. But that's a choice you
might need to make.

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney