Schopenhauer and Sex

When one thinks of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, one cannot help but conjure up the image of a sombre and misogynistic old man, whose pessimistic outlook on life left little to be desired. While the shortcomings on some of his theories have to be acknowledged, I would nevertheless like to pay homage to one of his key ideas, coined as the ‘Will to Life’ (Wille Zum Leben) as expressed in his 1818 publication, The World as Will and Representation.

Rejecting the Aristotelian view of humans as rational animals, Schopenhauer believed that people were indeed irrational and solely guided by their own selfish desires. It was this intrinsic Will to Life, a force possessed by each individual that helped them cling to existence whilst negating any forms of reasoning or logic. While the implications of this statement are far reaching, Schopenhauer was particularly interested with how this Will related to our perceptions of sex.

The phrase “love is blind” would resonate soundly with Schopenhauer. When it came to falling in love or finding a life partner, he believed that humans did not utilize the potential of their intellect in order to make a rational decision. This infatuation was instead, in Schopenhauer’s opinion, a subconscious yearning to reproduce and pass on one’s genes. He believed that lovers were drawn together in order to create balanced offspring by equilibrating extreme physical attributes in themselves. In true pessimistic fashion, the implications of this according to Schopenhauer meant that the person who may be the most suitable to produce a child with, will most certainly never be compatible with us.

“Love …casts itself on persons who, apart from the sexual relation, would be hateful, contemptible, and even abhorrent to the lover.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

The sadness or melancholia that follows post coital orgasm, or post-coital tristesse as it is known today, is a feeling that Schopenhauer argued is a testament to his claim. It is the realization that we are all slaves to the Will of Life, as it takes precedence over our own happiness. Post coital sadness should then follow as an explanation to the conclusion of a segment of Schopenhauer’s Will to Life. If a person has been successful in copulating, then they have fulfilled their need to reproduce and are momentarily caught in the abyss of meaninglessness.

“Directly after copulation, the devil’s laughter is heard.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

In the ongoing debate of nurture vs. nature, it would appear that Schopenhauer would side with the evolutionary reasoning behind our drive for sexual relations with a particular person. However much we may want to believe that our decisions are guided by rational thought, this unfathomable intrinsic Will acts on our behalf in order to propagate our genetic material. The need for this deception as Schopenhauer would argue, is because we wouldn’t acquiesce to reproduce if we hadn’t completely lost our minds. Unfortunately, Schopenhauer does nonetheless adopt a hetero-normative perspective on his Will to Life proposition and fails to include a homosexual narrative.

So, what do the writings of this 18th – 19th century German philosopher mean for us

in our present day lives, if there is even anything to be learned at all? Well, Schopenhauer’s perceptions of attraction should help us deconstruct our own lust towards specific persons, in a bid to understand ourselves and our relationships better. Crushes, intense admiration, or infatuation, depending on how you want to label it, could be the mere projections of our own desires onto other people, an inexplicable innate magnetism, or perhaps even a form of societal conditioning. Regardless what the reasoning behind our enchantment with a distinct person is linked to, it is crucial to know that the perfect lover we yearn for at a distance, is generally not so suitable for us once we get to know them and have moved past that initial bout of passion. This is mostly because that ideal partner we have conjured up in our mind, does not exist and never will.

Schopenhauer provides us with a healthy dose of pessimism that is definitely needed in our modern day society, which sells us the notion of true love. This romanticized chronicle of meeting our soulmates, with whom we spend the rest of our lives with, is nothing more than the fantasized conviction that we will be able to evade our inescapable existential loneliness. Nevertheless, no matter how aware we are of this simple fact, many of us will continue to seek out a partner who will make us forget, even if for a short while, that we are irredeemably alone.