I dare say Schopenhauer’s pessimism is much gloomier and heavier than that of the suicidal Mainlander. Even though Mainlander paints a picture of a fractured cosmos doomed to decay, cannibalism and devastation as a result of the death of God, he at least maintains the integrity of the traditional God as a forethinking force. And should this lost unifier be brought back to life, all hope will be restored. But the metaphysical for Schopenhauer, despite being alive and well, can never serve as a refuge from the decay, cannibalism and devastation to which we’re subject. For these horrors exist by virtue of the underlying Will being what it is. Just as a portrait is inescapably bound to carry the signature of its painter, the world couldn’t be any different because the Will couldn’t be anything else. From the undifferentiated vantage of the unified Will, everything is all right. From the differentiated perspective of the fractured world, man, animal, and nature are eternally pitted against one another in an abusive relationship.
This ontologically tragic inevitability is at the heart of Schopenhauer’s pessimism with regard to man. In the animal world, the friction works itself out with none of the creatures being conscious enough to pass judgement on it or to entertain the possibility of a world without it. In the human kingdom, the possibility of a frictionless world motivates us to endure and perpetuate the friction. In either cases the friction reigns supreme, but while the animal is unconsciously enmeshed in this ontological failure, we are coerced by our own hyper-consciousness of this failure to bear it by denying its absolute reality altogether.
So why did Mainlander kill himself while Schopenhauer continued to flourish until his headstone naturally loomed into view? The answer, I suspect, may be linked to Schopenhauer’s famous statement that the biggest obstacle to happiness is the expectation that it can be had. By relinquishing all hope of a frictionless world, he rose like a hero of futility to a nameless place where he could meet the indifference of the Will with a higher, new found indifference.
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