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Frederick Beiser continues to unfold the German philosophical tradition, refusing to let a static and narrowly construed canon of "big names" obscure important philosophical debates in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany. Weltschmerz focuses on the pessimism controversy, the debate over "the thesis that life is not worth living, that nothingness is better than being, or that it is worse to be than not be" (4).
The most important philosopher in the book is Arthur Schopenhauer. Chapters 1–4 are devoted to Schopenhauer's legacy, metaphysics, pessimism, and "the illusion of redemption." Chapter 1 lays out important information about Schopenhauer's central role in German philosophy in the latter half of the nineteenth century, while chapters 2–4 combine an overview of Schopenhauer's philosophy with important, if controversial, contributions to contemporary Schopenhauer scholarship. For example, Beiser defends a reading of Schopenhauer that "involves a form of transcendental realism, that is, the assumption of the independent reality of the world of experience" (40). With respect to Schopenhauer's pessimism, Beiser emphasizes Schopenhauer's broadly hedonic and even egoist arguments based on the fact that "life consists in suffering" (49). Oddly, despite his helpful recognition of both eudemonic and idealistic reasons for pessimism in general, Beiser basically ignores Schopenhauer's own moral arguments for pessimism based on our sympathy with other living beings.
Succeeding chapters unfold...