eating club to ensure that no one sat next to him.

He turned homeward to his one–bedroom cottage, as sparsely furnished as

his office, situated on the grounds of a grand house in Pacific Heights, not far

from Julius`s. The widow, who lived alone in the house, rented the cottage to him

for a modest sum. She needed the additional income, valued her privacy but

wanted an unobtrusive human presence nearby. Philip was the man for the job,

and they had lived in isolated proximity for several years.

The enthusiastic greeting of yelps, barks, tail wagging, and acrobatic leaps

into the air offered by Rugby, his dog, usually cheered Philip, but not on this

evening. Nor did his evening dog walk nor any of his other routine leisure

activities bring Philip tranquillity. He lit his pipe, listened to Beethoven`s Fourth

Symphony, read distractedly from Schopenhauer and Epictetus. His full attention

was caught once, for only a few moments, by one particular Epictetus passage.

If you have an earnest desire towards philosophy, prepare yourself from the

very first to have the multitude laugh and sneer. Remember, if you are

persistent, those very persons will afterwards admire you.... Remember if you

ever happen to turn your attentions to externals, for the pleasure of anyone, be

assured that you have ruined your scheme of life.

Yet his sense of uneasiness remained—an uneasiness that he had not

experienced in some time, a state of mind that in years past had sent him out like a

sexually crazed beast on the prowl. He strode into his tiny kitchen, cleaned his

breakfast dishes from the table, turned on his computer, and submitted to his only

addictive vice: he logged in to the Internet chess club and played five–minute blitz

games silently and anonymously for the next three hours. Mostly, he won. When

he lost it was usually through carelessness, but his irritation was short–lived:

immediately he typed in «seeking a game,” and his eyes lit up with childish

delight as a brand–new game commenced.

Porcupin

es,

Genius,

and

the

Misanthr

opist`s

Guide

to

Human

Relations

hips

_________________________

Bythe time I was thirty I

was heartily sick and

tired of having to regard

as my equals creatures

who were not really so at

all. As long as a cat is

young it plays with paper

pellets because it

regards these as alive

and as something similar

to itself. It has been

the same for me with

human bipeds.

_________________________

The porcupine fable, one of the best–known passages in all of Schopenhauer`s

work, conveys his frosty view of human relationships.

One cold winter`s day a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely

in order, through their mutual warmth, to prevent themselves from being

frozen. But they soon felt the effects of their quills on one another, which

made them again move apart. Now, when the need for warmth once again

brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so they were

tossed between two evils, until they discovered the proper distance from

which they could best tolerate one another. Thus the needs for society, which

springs from the emptiness and monotony of men`s lives, drives them together

but their many unpleasant and repulsive qualities once more drive them apart.

In other words, tolerate closeness only when necessary for survival and

avoid it whenever possible. Most contemporary psychotherapists would

unhesitatingly recommend therapy for such extreme socially avoidant stances. In

fact the bulk of psychotherapy practice is addressed to such problematic

interpersonal stances—not only social avoidance but maladaptive social behavior

in all its many colors and hues: autism, social avoidance, social phobia, schizoid

personality, antisocial personality, narcissistic personality, inability to love, self–aggrandizement, self–effacement.

Would Schopenhauer agree? Did he consider his feelings toward other

people as maladaptive? Hardly. His attitudes were so close to his core, so deeply

ingrained that he never viewed them as a liability. On the contrary, he considered

his misanthropy and his isolation a virtue. Note, for example the coda of his

porcupine parable: «Yet whoever has a great deal of internal warmth of his own

will prefer to keep away from society in order to avoid giving or receiving trouble

and annoyance.»

Schopenhauer believed that a man of internal strength or virtue will not

require supplies of any kind from others; such a man is sufficient unto himself.

This thesis, interlocked with his unwavering faith in his own genius, served as a

lifelong rationalization for the avoidance of closeness. Schopenhauer often stated

that his position in the «highest class of mankind» imposed the imperative not to

squander his gifts in idle social intercourse but instead to turn them to the service

of humanity. «My intellect,” he wrote, «belonged not to me but to the world.»

Many of Arthur`s writings about his supreme intelligence are so flamboyant

that one might consider him grandiose were it not for the fact that his assessment

of his intellectual prowess was accurate. Once Arthur applied himself to being a

scholar, his prodigious intellectual gifts became evident to all about him. The

tutors who prepared him for the university were astounded at his precocious

progress.

Goethe, the one man of the nineteenth century whom Arthur considered his

intellectual equal, eventually came to respect Arthur`s mind. Goethe had

pointedly ignored the young Arthur at Johanna`s salons when Arthur was

preparing for the university. Later, when Johanna asked him for a letter of support

for Arthur`s application to the university, Goethe remained masterfully

noncommittal in his note to an old friend, a professor of Greek: «Young

Schopenhauer seems to have changed his studies and occupations a few times.

How much he has achieved and in what discipline, you will readily judge for

yourself if, out of friendship for me, you will give him a moment of your time.»

Several years later, however, Goethe read Arthur`s doctoral dissertation and

was so impressed with the twenty–six–year–old, that during Arthur`s next stay at

Weimar, he regularly sent his servant to fetch him for long private discussions.

Goethe wanted someone to critique his much–labored work on the theory of

colors. Though Schopenhauer knew nothing of this particular subject, Goethe

reasoned that his rare innate intelligence would make him a worthy discussant. He

got rather more than he bargained for.

Schopenhauer, greatly honored at first, basked in Goethe`s affirmation and

wrote his Berlin professor: «Your friend, our great Goethe, is well, serene,

friendly: praised be his name for ever and ever.» After several weeks, however,

discord arose between them. Arthur opined that Goethe had made some

interesting observations on vision but had erred on several vital points and had

failed to produce a comprehensive theory of color. Dropping his own professional

writings, Arthur then applied himself to developing his own theory of colors,

differing in several crucial ways from Goethe, which he published in 1816.

Schopenhauer`s arrogance eventually corroded their friendship. In his journal

Goethe described the ending of his relationship with Arthur Schopenhauer: «We