Der Wahrheit ist immer nur ein kurzes Siegesfest beschieden, zwischen den beiden langen Zeiträumen, wo sie als paradox verdammt und als trivial geringgeschätzt wird.
“Truth is always granted only a brief victory celebration, between the two long periods of time where it is condemned as paradoxical and dismissed as trivial.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus (1819)
An expression with an epistemological, not just philosophical, flavor. Schopenhauer’s thought, in fact, is dominated by cosmic pessimism, arguing that reality is driven by a blind and irrational force, the Will to Live, a source of perpetual suffering, since to will is to desire, and to desire means to lack and suffer. For him, existence is an oscillation between pain and boredom, and the paths to liberation are temporary (art) or permanent (compassion and asceticism), and deny the will itself, transforming non-will into the ultimate goal.
