Philosopher Schopenhauer was doomed to pessimism by his very circumstances, says Will Durant in his famous book, The Story of Philosophy . “(A) man who has not known a mother’s love – and worse, has known a mother’s hatred – has no cause to be infatuated with the world,” writes Durant in his inimitable style. Schopenhauer’s mother was a novelist of some repute. His father committed suicide when Schopenhauer was 17. His mother soon took to free love. She had little love for her husband anyway; she thought of him as too prosaic. Durant compares Schopenhauer’s dislike of his mother to Hamlet’s attitude to his mother after the death of his father. Schopenhauer grew up hating women. “(H)is quarrels with his mother taught him a large part of those half-truths about women,” says Durant. He despised women as impulsive creatures with no aesthetic sense and totally lacking in intelligence. He told his mother that she would eventually be known not for her books but for his. He
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