r/schopenhauer

A lot of times I hear how lovely it is to be alive because of the small moments of love and beauty along the way. But is this enough to justify living in the first place?

Are these temporary goods that we experience (in life) such as moments with family, laughter with friends or experiencing nature enough to justify the burden of continually having to live and strive?

Doesn’t the nature of those temporary goods depend largely on the final destination. For EXAMPLE, if you run a marathon the goods can be a runners high, cheering from the crowd or a refreshing break of water. But do those things in themselves justify running the marathon or why someone starts running in the first place. No. One runs it for the achievement, satisfaction and health rewards in the long run. In this example, the painful nature of the marathon is justified by the many positives aligned with the end result. That is not however the case with life. We on the other hand strive without choosing too and towards nothing in particular. In that case why are we supposed to be grateful for the small moments along the way. We are simply blindly striving for something that we will never attain (a lasting sense of contentment) by a force which we do not completely understand.

One may in contrary to this argue that some goods have value in themselves such as spending time with someone that you love. This can be viewed as something you do for its own sake rather than seeking encouragement for a larger reward. But is love something that is truly something you want to experience or is it simply a manifestation of your biological instincts with the eventual goal being to procreate and in turn propagate/ transfer this suffering to others in the long run? I also agree with Schopenhauer’s view on the fact that if we were properly in charge of our own intellect, we would choose people very different that the ones we fall in love with.

To conclude I do believe that we are simply blindly striving towards nothing in particular, against our will and experiencing a great deal of suffering across the way. And these small moments are nothing, but delusions created by those that are drunk on optimism to justify living by subverting our expectations towards the very nature of our existence.