Author: Daniel Harding

‘Eadem, sed aliter’ (‘The same, but different’) would be an apt summary of renowned nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s take on history. Despite this seemingly frank dismissal of the value of history, Schopenhauer’s philosophy of history provides a refreshing and unique take on history that was contradictory to the times he wrote in, and yet even though he was writing during ‘Germany’s “historical” nineteenth century,’[1] Schopenhauer has been of little interest to historians of idea and those interested in the philosophy of history. This is not particularly surprising given Schopenhauer’s usual place as an outsider or on the periphery of canonical philosophers as he has for long been ‘considered as too literary or rhetorical by analytical philosophers, too metaphysical by the logical positivists and scientific naturalists, and was too unhistorical and apolitical for the Hegelians and phenomenologists.’[2] Schopenhauer’s peculiar position in the philosophy of history has thus resulted in him being misappropriated in his views, either seen to be fuelled by a personal vendetta with Hegel[3] or providing a cynical degradation of the value and practice of history in light of his pessimistic outlook.[4] Subsequently, there is a need to look beyond these reductionist and Eurocentric accounts of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of history to illuminate the importance and nuances of his critiques of historical practice in his intellectual context as well as see beyond his wholly negative appraisal of history towards his meaningful account on how to practice history honourably.

A full reconstruction of Schopenhauer’s philosophy and its relationship to his philosophy of history is beyond the scope of this article. Additionally, an in-depth study of his critiques of the philosophy of history has been done recently,[5] as well as countless studies of his relationship to his various contexts, namely his relationship to Orientalism, Kantianism, Idealism and such, have been exhausted. Rather, in this article, I am simply attempting to show Schopenhauer’s value to intellectual historians in viewing him as a genuine thinker in the philosophy of history who offers a strong critique of the practice of history in the nineteenth century as well as providing a remedy to these issues with his own philosophy of history. In providing such critiques and his own philosophy, Schopenhauer was explicitly criticising the intellectual, social, political and cultural contexts of his time, namely the birth of modernity in Europe and its Enlightenment influence.  Thus, Section I of this article will look at Schopenhauer’s scientific and objectivist critique of history and show how it forms an explicit criticism of Enlightenment rationality. Section II will discuss Schopenhauer’s critique of teleological history, which forms his strongest criticism of Enlightenment ideals and modernity, as well as his contemporaries, particularly Hegel, as it provides a strong opposition to the concept of progress and optimism in history. Section III will move away from Schopenhauer’s critiques and look beyond his European borders to show the importance of the Orient to Schopenhauer’s philosophy, which aids in his undermining of the West, as well as his view of how to honourably practice history given his pessimistic views. Section IV will conclude.

I

Before assessing Schopenhauer’s views on the value of history and how it can be practised in a meaningful way, it is necessary to critically examine and understand his critiques of the philosophy of history, especially in relation to his broader criticisms of his European intellectual contexts. This is because before looking at what Schopenhauer thought of how history ought to be practised, we need to look at how he perceived history to be practised at his time and why it was a mistaken one. Schopenhauer criticises the scientific practice of history, which further transforms into an explicit critique of the values of his time, namely the Enlightenment obsession with rationality and universal truth.

The concept of history as a science, or scientific history, is a debate that has been contentious since Aristotle, with these debates particularly prominent since the nineteenth century aided by attempts to assimilate history with natural sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[6] Even in his discussion surrounding the concept of scientific history, Berlin does not once mention Schopenhauer, highlighting the lack of seriousness with which Schopenhauer’s opposition to the philosophy of history has been taken. In Schopenhauer’s magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation, he provides his most substantial critique of the philosophy of history, starting in Volume I with his criticism of the unscientific nature of history which is developed in Volume II and his other later works in which he develops his critique of those who study history as a science, bringing in a wider critique of history as concerning only particulars as well as being subjective and lacking basic trustworthiness. Schopenhauer admits history does substantiate some sort of rational knowledge, but it is ultimately always imperfect and constitutes mere knowing and, hence, is superficial.[7]

Whilst a full historical background of the notion of scientific history is a task too large to cover in this essay, it is important to note that Schopenhauer’s arguments in both Volume I and II of The World as Will and Representation are responding to a growing impetus by historians to treat history as a natural science, with this view further exacerbated in the nineteenth century. Berlin notes that this direction of historical thinking was one borne out of the Enlightenment as the desire to turn history into a data-driven, observable and measurable discipline would become ‘the scientific sociology dreamed of by the materialists of the French Enlightenment… and their nineteenth-century followers- Comte, Buckle, Spencer, Taine, and many a modern behaviourist, positivist, and “physicalist” since their day.’[8] Schopenhauer devotes the first half of his chapter ‘On History’ to this scientific critique, arguing that ‘History alone cannot properly enter into this series [sciences], since it cannot boast of the same advantage as the others for it lacks the fundamental characteristic of science, the subordination of what is known; instead of this it boasts of the mere coordination of what is known.’[9] For Schopenhauer, it is a categorical error to consider history as science because whilst science gains knowledge of a particular ‘by means of the universal,’ history ‘must comprehend the particular directly, and continue to creep along the ground of experience, so to speak’ thus making it a ‘contradiction’ to call history a science as it would be ‘a science of individual things.’[10] The attempt to treat history as a natural science was an egregious error to Schopenhauer as the attempt to study history as if it were a science obtaining rational, universal knowledge or as if it were to obey natural scientific laws was a disservice to both the practices of science and history, and ultimately diminished the value of history. The distinction between particulars and universals is, for Schopenhauer, the dividing line between science and non-science, which history is part of. History, unlike science or philosophy, cannot allow us to discover universal truths or knowledge and only ‘has to do with the absolutely particular and with individuals, which by their nature are inexhaustible, it knows everything only imperfectly and impartially.’[11]

Schopenhauer expands on the pitfalls and futility of practising history as science by comparing it to the study of mathematics or biology. For instance, in mathematics, we can know the properties of a triangle by using our knowledge of their laws, and similarly, by knowing what is true of all mammals (e.g., what organs and senses they have) we can know these features to be similarly true of a bat without having to dissect it.[12] However, in history, we cannot start with universal laws or assumptions as ‘the universal is not the objective universal of concepts, but merely a subjective universal of my knowledge, that can only be called universal only in so far as it is superficial.’[13] For Schopenhauer, this is the fundamental issue of trying to scientise history as historians that try to work accordingly to turn history into a futile endeavour: ‘The mere, pure historian, working only according to data, is like a man who, without any knowledge of mathematics, investigates by measurement the proportions of figures previously found by accident, and therefore the statement of these measurements found empirically is subject to all the errors of the figure as drawn.’[14] This strikes at the heart of the unreliability of history as it was practised in Schopenhauer’s time, as he is critical of those natural scientists, philosophers and such, who since the seventeenth century had attempted to practice history as though it was the same form of endeavour as mathematics or physics. Schopenhauer saw the failures of the historical scientists of his time and critiqued the attempts to assimilate science and history. As Jensen summarises, Schopenhauer is providing a critique of ‘the Enlightenment maxim that an explanation is sufficient when it can deduce particular instances from universal laws.’[15] Subsequently, for Schopenhauer, the closest history can come to science is to be ‘considered a continuation of zoology, insofar as with all animals it suffices to observe the species, yet with mankind.’[16] This critique of Schopenhauer’s is perhaps a more implicit one against the ideals of his time than the teleological one that will be discussed later but, nonetheless, provides a juxtaposition to the social scientists that sprung from the Enlightenment and natural sciences that tried to treat history as a science.

From Schopenhauer’s distinguishing between history and science comes a more simple, but still powerful, critique of the value of history as it was seen by his contemporaries and those before him. This is a simple one of objectivity. Historiographical claims cannot claim to be objective and accurate, nor universal, like the claims of science and philosophy, due to their temporal dependency and imperfect nature. History’s lack of objectivity and universality results in its claims also not being able to disclose any inner truths, as truth is unchanging and eternal for Schopenhauer. When discussing the imperfections of history, Schopenhauer cites ‘Clio, the muse of history…as thoroughly infected with lies as is a common street whore with syphilis.’[17] One of the main reasons for histories general untrustworthiness is its inexhaustibility, i.e., we cannot know everything that has ever happened, as the historian ‘cannot have seen all and ascertained everything’ and thus the picture that the historian paints is mostly a false one, or at least one in which ‘the false outweighs the true.’[18] For Schopenhauer, there is no such thing as objective history but merely narratives that attempt to grasp at truth from a standpoint of limited knowledge. Consequently, the attempts of such types of historiography are pointless and instead ‘far more real, genuine, inner truth is to be attributed to poetry rather than history.’[19] Such scientific revisions of history were thoroughly misguided for Schopenhauer, who saw the contradiction of the Enlightenment attempt to turn history into a science as history could not meet the Enlightenment standards of science and truth. Attempts of pure history were, at best, a waste of time as they could never claim any objective or universal truths and were littered with mistruths. This unscientific nature of history is the basis of Schopenhauer’s critique of the philosophy of history, in particular as it was perceived from the Enlightenment and his German contemporaries as the scientific vision of history is what led to such strong visions of history as a rational journey towards progress, the nation-state, empire and other European projects of the Enlightenment.

II

Whilst Schopenhauer was critical of the attempt to assimilate history and science, as done by the Enlightenment thinkers and positivists, such as Comte, this was mainly an issue of semantics and classification as well as questions of truths and universality. For Schopenhauer, this scientific view had more sinister consequences in the philosophy of history: that of teleology. This is where Schopenhauer’s opposition to the philosophy of history is at its forefront as he delivers a powerful critique of not only systematic or teleological narratives of history but also the underlying assumptions and ideals these are predicated upon, namely, Eurocentric narratives of progress, reason, and modernity. Equally, this is where Schopenhauer is seen to be most pessimistic and denigrating in his view of history, however, this depends on what lens we choose to evaluate Schopenhauer’s philosophy of history from. In this section, I will avoid an in-depth discussion of the technical philosophy or logic in which Schopenhauer legitimates his attack on the philosophy of history and rather focus on its significance considering his intellectual as well as social, political and cultural contexts.

Schopenhauer’s attacks on the philosophy of history, especially teleological histories, were first discussed academically by Gottfried who argues his criticisms were driven by his own personal rivalry with Hegel and notes his more pessimistic view of history changing from Volume I to Volume II of The World as Will and Representation as result of this personal vendetta.[20] This debate of his war with Hegel, although relevant, has somewhat been responded to and discredited as the main motivation for Schopenhauer’s attacks on the philosophy of history as his criticism goes beyond trivial personal matters and constitutes a truly thorough philosophical investigation.[21] Thus, Schopenhauer’s critique of teleological history is that given we cannot attribute scientific features or laws to the study of history like natural sciences, we cannot see history as any sort of stadial theory or narrative of progress as if it has an end-point or is striving towards any goal. Even more radically, Schopenhauer argues that history is ‘Eadem, sed aliter’ [‘The same, but otherwise’] and, consequently ‘the attempt to construct it as a whole with a beginning, middle, and end, together with connexion fraught with meaning, is vain and based on misunderstanding.’[22] These theories of history as a trajectory towards an end goal, via a narrative of constant or linear progress,  were cheap and misguided philosophies predicated upon a blind belief in reason, progress and optimism. Subsequently, Schopenhauer’s critique of teleological or systematic philosophies of history is an explicit attack on the ideals at the core of his Enlightenment predecessors and German philosophers who were consumed by the idea of history moving towards human betterment and inevitable progress. Although these were the main targets of Schopenhauer’s critiques, his views also rejected materialists, such as Marx, who believed in history having stages moving towards an end goal, e.g., communism. In this critique, Kang is right in pointing out that Schopenhauer’s philosophy of history ‘shared the conservative suspicion of utopian aspirations and radical politics.’[23]

Whilst it is somewhat problematic to talk of simple, unifying Enlightenment principles, such as notions of progress and reason, or even to talk of a singular Enlightenment, these debates are, albeit interesting, beyond the scope of this essay.[24] Thus, without trying to be overly reductionist, when looking at Schopenhauer’s philosophy of history as a critique of Enlightenment ideals and modernity, a basic assumption of the Enlightenment being fundamentally based upon a belief in the rationality of man, human progress, freedom, civil society and some form of nation-state will be assumed. Equally, an in-depth discussion of Hegel’s philosophy of history or German idealism and the belief in progress is a task too large for this essay.[25] Nevertheless, Schopenhauer, in his attack on teleological forms of historical theory, was surmounting a critique of these ideas which were prevalent in his time, such as the dominance of Hegelianism.

Beyond his attacks on Hegel, Schopenhauer was particularly critical of what he called ‘Hegelian pseudo-philosophy’, which attempted ‘to comprehend the history of the world as a whole, or as they call it, “to construct it organically”’ but was rather ‘a crude and shallow realism.’[26] Hegelianism was at fault for mistaking ‘the phenomenon as the being-in-itself of the world’ with its views being supported by ‘certain, mythological, fundamental views which it tacitly assumes.’[27] For instance, Hegel’s conception of the world-historical spirit or Geist that drives mankind towards its telos is the spirit itself: ‘the ultimate end of mankind, the end which the spirit sets itself into the world.’[28] Simply put, Hegel sees the dialectic process between the Spirit (Geist) and history that ultimately creates the absolute expression of the Spirit in the form of the nation-state as the social order of the community. Schopenhauer condemns this view as it is guilty of ‘raising the temporal aims of men to eternal and absolute aims, and then constructing with ingenuity and imagination their progress to these through every intricacy and perplexity.’[29] Additionally, Schopenhauer sees Hegel as mistakenly conflating external events or the progress of history with his Spirit, as it is only the individual or inner life that is significant as they alone concern the will and thus ‘have true reality and are actual occurrences, since the will alone is thing-in-itself.’[30] Essentially, Schopenhauer is critiquing a strain of historical thinking that attaches an end-goal to its historical narrative, such as the nation-state, and wrongfully imagines such a narrative to be a historical fact. Rather, such narratives are imaginary and external events described by historians are only significant in their relation to the individual and the will, such history, consequentially, are ‘in fact only the long, heavy, and confused dream of mankind.’[31]

Schopenhauer’s criticism of teleological histories was a surprisingly unique one of his time and provided the antithesis to Enlightenment or Hegelian narratives of history as predestined progress towards human betterment. This view was propagated by one of Schopenhauer’s more influential predecessors in German thought, as Immanuel Kant also committed the sin of subscribing to teleological narratives of history: ‘the history of the human race as a whole can be regarded as the realisation of a hidden plan of nature to bring about an internally- and for this purpose also externally- perfect political constitution as the only possible state within which all natural capacities of mankind can be developed completely.’[32] This conception of history as a rational progression with an inevitable goal to realise is exactly what Schopenhauer despises as he sees such ‘constructive histories’ as ‘guided by a shallow optimism’ which ultimately always end in ‘a comfortable, substantial, fat State with a well-regulated constitution, good justice and police, useful arts and industries.’[33] Subsequently, the argument for a teleological narrative of the whole of human history is a crude one, for it mistakenly glorifies history as a rational narrative towards the ends that the historian envisions. In this sense, Schopenhauer can be seen as an enemy of the Enlightenment as he sought to undermine the European ‘rationalist optimism of modernity and the eschatological horizon of their thoughts.’[34] Moreover, Schopenhauer was
a direct contradiction to the Enlightenment optimism that saw history as a fateful journey towards some concept of the good, in contrast to Leibniz’s ‘best of all possible worlds,’ Schopenhauer saw the world as ‘radically bad.’[35] Ultimately, for Schopenhauer, the blind faith in reason and progress that had dominated the philosophy of history in the nineteenth century was a problematic one. Teleological narratives of history as well as scientific histories devalued history, and despite their hegemony in discourses at the time, Schopenhauer provided one of the few vigorous critiques of these methodologies, thus constituting him a worthy place in the study of the philosophy of history.

III

As we have now seen Schopenhauer’s main objections to the philosophy of history, in his intellectual context, such as Hegelian constructions of history, and the extending critiques of his philosophy, namely Enlightenment obsession with reason and progress, we are left to question what value did Schopenhauer leave history with. The polemic and, at times, hostile nature of Schopenhauer’s writing is, perhaps, the cause of why his contributions to the philosophy of history have been ignored or glossed over. With such statements as: ‘If we have read Herodotus, we have already studied enough history from a philosophical point of view,’[36] it is understandable that Schopenhauer has been seen as an antagonist to the study of history, or less so, as simply irrelevant to the philosophy of history. In reverse of the scientific histories as well as constructionist histories of progress that came out of the Enlightenment and Hegelianism, Schopenhauer argues for history as a form of eternal recurrence as ‘from beginning to end it constantly repeats only the same thing under a different name and in a different cloak.’[37] This leads us to the key passage in which we can see Schopenhauer’s doctrine of history as ‘Eadem, sed aliter,’ i.e. a repetition of the same in various forms:

The true history of philosophy thus consists in the insight that, in spite of all these endless changes and their chaos and confusion, we yet always have before us only the same, identical, unchangeable essence, acting in the same way today as it did yesterday and always. The true philosophy of history should therefore recognize the identical in all events, of ancients as of modern times, of the East as of the West, and should see everywhere the same humanity, in spite of all differences in the special circumstances, in costume and customs. This identical element, persisting under every change, consists in the fundamental qualities of the human heart and head, many bad, few good.[38]

From this viewpoint, Schopenhauer having rejected history as a science, narrative of progress or a means of knowing mankind, it seems as though the pessimist has similarly summarised human history as the same endless tale of suffering: the will’s desire to live counteracted by the same inexplicable cycles of suffering and woes that torment the modern man as much as it did the ancient one, and the European man as much as the Oriental one. Most scholars have not ventured further than this view of Schopenhauer and the philosophy of history, as Jensen neatly summarises the considered view:

Whether the history of the American Civil War, the French Revolution, the fall of Troy, the Belgian Congo, apartheid in South Africa, the killing fields of Cambodia, the lesson is always precisely the same for the famous pessimist: the fate of existence and by extension of our selves is to strive and to strive in vain. The value historiography is also that of myth, whether that of Sisyphus or Tantalus or Gautama: to live is to suffer the consequences of the world as Will.[39]

Subsequently, we need to move away from this modern, Eurocentric interpretation of Schopenhauer’s philosophy to fully appreciate his value to intellectual historians (although it must be noted Jensen does briefly discuss the virtue of Schopenhauerian history to nonprofessional historians and writers) via how he conceived of how to practice history, as he called it, ‘honourably.’[40] After rejecting modern European systematic histories, Schopenhauer shows the value of both ancient and Oriental modes of thought in how we conduct history.

Thus, Schopenhauer does attribute some virtue to history, it is not a road to nowhere or completely pointless, but it is only after we reject the aforementioned types of history mentioned in previous sections, i.e., scientific and teleological, that we can find a more peculiar and nuanced manner in which to practice an honourable type of history.  For instance, Schopenhauer has great reverence for Herodotus (who he refers to as the ‘father of history’) and other ancients, stating that ‘the great ancient historians are therefore poets in the particulars where data forsake them, e.g., in the speeches of their heroes’ and the manner in what they handle their material ‘gives their presentations unity and enables them to retain inner truth.’[41] Subsequently, Schopenhauer sees histories which conflate with poetry and art or focus solely on the individual as the most enlightening form that history takes. Compared to world-histories or histories of the state for example, this form of history, i.e. biography, as ‘the truly depicted life of the individual in a narrow sphere shows the conduct of men in all its nuances and forms, the excellence, the virtue, and even the holiness of individuals, the perversity, meanness, and malice of most, the profligacy of many.’[42] By moving away from narrative or scientific histories, we can engage in a form of history that focuses on the complexities of individual human life in its particulars, which is a universal experience; subsequently, by focusing so closely on one thing it brings out the universal: ‘history shows us mankind just as a view from a high mountain shows us nature.’[43] As a result, Schopenhauer is, essentially, arguing that history is of value when we move away from grand narratives of nations and the state, for example, and focus on the individual life as this allows us insight into life and the nature of man. Some scholars, such as Kang, still see Schopenhauer as attempting to overcome history through philosophical acts that reject conventional historians’ concerns of surface phenomena and instead opt for understanding the deeper nature of things.[44] Kang is only right to a certain extent with this judgement as, while Schopenhauer does certainly reject the efficacy of histories of nations, politics and social transformations, he does attribute a value to history beyond a simple aid to the philosophical insight of the individual.

In seeing the true value of history to Schopenhauer, we are required to turn our eye to his influence of the Orient, namely that of Indian thought, especially Buddhism and Hinduism. Whilst a reception of Eastern ideas in Schopenhauer’s philosophy is a task beyond this essay, the influence of these modes of thought are well documented by himself and other scholars. Edward Said, the famous historian, is somewhat critical of Schopenhauer in his use of the Orient to prove his points on the philosophy of history, arguing he uses the Orient largely in a Western sense: ‘Europe and Asia were our Europe and our Asia- our will and representation, as Schopenhauer said. Historical laws were in reality historians’ laws, just as “the two forms of humanity” drew attention less to actuality than to a European capacity for lending man-made distinctions an air of inevitability.’[45] Said is perhaps unsympathetic in his treatment of Schopenhauer, but does strike at the crux of the matter which is that ultimately Schopenhauer does make use of Oriental schools of thought to undermine the Western certainty and faith in human-driven world-histories (with the world rather being Europe) that abided by scientific laws or laws of progress. Schopenhauer recognises the need to broaden our gaze of history beyond European borders:

When the history of China and India is open to us, the endlessness of material will reveal the failure of our path and compel lovers of knowledge to realize that we must recognize the many in the one, the rule in the individual case, the activity of peoples in the knowledge of mankind, but not that facts must be endlessly enumerated.[46]

To move beyond our narrow perceptions of history, Schopenhauer argues that we need to consider history from a different vantage point. Ultimately, this renewed perspective brings Schopenhauer back to a deeply pessimistic conclusion, the notion that ‘every life-history is a history of suffering, for, as a rule, every life is a continual series of mishaps great and small.’[47] In this conclusion, Schopenhauer is clearly influenced by the Buddhist philosophy of Samsāra, the notion that life and death are a repeated series of suffering. Ironically, Schopenhauer is perhaps guilty of his own critique by attributing a law to history, i.e., by treating history as the inevitable study of the suffering of existence, he is guilty of placing his own law upon the nature of history. However, this deeply pessimistic outlook does not further denigrate the value of history to Schopenhauer but rather is the starting point in which we must accept to allow an honourable version of history to flourish. Once we see the many in the one, as in the East and the West, in the ancient and the modern, we can promote history to a place whereby it is ‘to be regarded as the rational self-consciousness of the human race’ in the sense that ‘what the faculty of reason is to the individual, history is to the human race.’[48] In this sense, the virtue of history is by its illumination of how we understand ourselves as a collective body of humans who each suffer the same fate of endless suffering. Whilst not an optimistic vision of history, Schopenhauer most certainly is proposing an honourable philosophy of history, which he believes is valuable in allowing us to understand ourselves, but more so, allow the human race to become conscious of itself in a universal manner.

IV

Therefore, I hope to have articulated a persuasive argument that shows Schopenhauer to be a valuable figure in the philosophy of history. This is because his critiques of the practices of history of his time are still relevant today, and perhaps even more so after the brutality of the twentieth century undermined the nineteenth-century view of history as continual progress. With figures such as E.H. Carr still seeing history as progressive in 1961, arguing that ‘history is meaningless in a static world,’[49] Schopenhauer’s philosophy of history provides a new perspective in which history can be valuable without subscribing to Western ideas of progress, science and rationality. In this sense, Schopenhauer was before his time as, in the wake of Enlightenment optimism and modernity, he did not become attached to these doctrinal philosophies of history and instead offered a more universal and personable form of history that he believed could help us to expose the true nature of life and existence despite all its sufferings.

Daniel is a recent graduate from UCL and Queen Mary’s University of London with a master’s in the history of political thought and intellectual history. He is currently an English language teacher in Phrae, Thailand. His main intellectual interests span the broad history of ideas.

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[1] Jensen, K. Anthony. “Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of History” History and Theory, vol. 57, no. 3 (2018), p. 370

[2] Vandenabeele, Bart. “Introduction: Arthur Schopenhauer: The Man and his Work” In A Companion to Schopenhauer edited by Bart Vandenabeele (Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) p. 1

[3] This view is most prominently formulated in Gottfried, Paul. “Arthur Schopenhauer as a Critic of History.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 36, no. 2 (1975), pp. 331–38. 

[4] For instance: Ausmus, J. Harry. “Schopenhauer’s View of History: A Note” History and Theory, vol. 15, no. 2 (1976), pp. 141-145

[5] See Jensen. “Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of History” pp. 349-370

[6] Berlin, Isaiah. “History and Theory: The Concept of Scientific History.” History and Theory vol. 1, no. 1 (1960), p. 1

[7] Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation, Volume II translated by E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1966) Ch. 38, pp. 439-441

[8] Berlin. “History and Theory: The Concept of Scientific History.” p. 3

[9] Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation, Volume II. Ch. 38, p. 440

[10] Ibid. Ch. 38, p. 440

[11] Ibid. Ch. 38, p. 440

[12] Ibid. Ch. 38, pp. 440-441

[13] Ibid. Ch. 38, p. 441

[14] Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World and Will as Representation, Volume I translated by E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1966) §51, pp. 246-247

[15] Jensen. “Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of History.” p. 351

[16] Schopenhauer, Arthur. Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 2 edited by Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) §233, p. 402

[17] Ibid. §233, p. 402

[18] Schopenhauer. The World and Will as Representation, Volume I. §51, p. 245

[19] Ibid. §51, p. 402

[20] Gottfried. “Arthur Schopenhauer as a Critic of History.” pp. 334-347 especially.

[21] Ausmus. “Schopenhauer’s View of History: A Note” provides the main counter to Gottfried.

[22] Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation, Volume II. Ch. 38, p. 444-445

[23] Kang. “Escape from Samsāra: Schopenhauer’s Opposition to the Philosophy of History” p. 486

[24] For instance: Israel, Jonathan. “Enlightenment! Which Enlightenment?” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 67, no. 3 (2006), pp. 523–45. 

[25] For discussion of this see Slaboch, Matthew. “’Eadem, sed aliter’: Arthur Schopenhauer as a Critic of ‘Progress.’” History of European Ideas, vol. 41, no. 7 (2013), pp. 935-940

[26] Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation, Volume II. Ch. 38, p. 442

[27] Ibid. Ch. 38, p. 442

[28] Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Lectures on the philosophy of world history translated by H.B. Nisbet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) p. 63

[29] Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation, Volume II. Ch. 38, p. 444

[30] Ibid. Ch. 38, p. 443

[31] Ibid. Ch. 38, p. 443

[32] Kant, Immanuel. Political Writings edited by Hans Reiss, translated by H.B. Nisbet. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) p. 50

[33] Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation, Volume II. Ch. 38, p. 442-443

[34] Constantinidés, Yannis. “Two great enemies of the Enlightenment: Joseph de Maistre and Schopenhauer” in Joseph de Maistre and the legacy of Enlightenment edited by Carolina Armenteros and Richard A. Lebrun (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011) p. 107

[35] Ibid. p. 107

[36] Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation, Volume II. Ch. 38, p. 444

[37] Ibid. Ch. 38, p. 444

[38] Ibid. Ch. 38, p. 444

[39] Jensen. “Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of History.” p. 365

[40] Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation, Volume II. Ch. 38, p. 445

[41] Schopenhauer. The World and Will as Representation, Volume I. §59, p. 324 and §51, p. 246

[42] Ibid. §51, p. 247

[43] Ibid. §51, p. 247

[44] Kang. “Escape from Samsāra: Schopenhauer’s Opposition to the Philosophy of History.” p. 495

[45] Said, Edward. Orientalism. (UK: Penguin Random House, 2003) p. 115

[46] Schopenhauer. Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 2. §233, p. 402

[47] Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation, Volume I. §59, p. 324

[48] Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation, Volume II. Ch. 38, p. 445

[49] Carr, Edward Hallet. What is History?  (UK: Penguin Random House, 2001) p. 128