In an interview on Illuminating Essays

Arthur Schopenhauer’s The Wisdom of Life was published posthumously way back in 1890. He was a proponent of philosophical pessimism and believed that life is essentially evil. Your own works address many modern malaises, but I find your outlook quite uplifting and even hopeful, and I wondered what you feel you share in common with his philosophy?

I think I can correct both analyses. Though Schopenhauer comes out with some pretty extreme comments, he never loses his sense of humour and a lot of what he says has a slightly tongue-in-cheek quality. He delights in provoking us and I think it’s wrong to say that he is entirely grim-faced.

And as for myself – I feel very close to his personality. The Germans call it galgenhumor – which is a kind of gallows humour, which both he and I share. I have an unfortunate reputation for being a cheerful chap peddling happy thoughts.

I was interested to learn that Schopenhauer subscribed to the Buddhist belief that desires can never be fulfilled, and preferred instead to negate them. Was it very unusual for a European philosopher to align himself with Buddhism?

He was the first to do so and, you’re right, that’s something fascinating about him – that he took Buddhism seriously and integrated it into his philosophy.

Anyone past the age of 20 is sure to realise that our desires are pretty endless and that some of them are the result of a modern capitalist society. It’s very nice to be reminded by Schopenhauer that we won’t ever get to a stable position where our longings will end. But whereas some Buddhist texts are unappealing and quite strange, what Schopenhauer does is to write about Buddhism for the Western mind.

Schopenhauer believes that love is an immensely powerful force in the world and rejects the idea that it is trifling or accidental. How much does your own book Essays in Love fit with this outlook?

I don’t think I’d read him when I wrote it. But I think that Schopenhauer was a proto-Darwinist in that he suggested that the reason we fall in love is just to have children, that it’s a biological imperative and we can’t expect much happiness from it. No one can live with that – though it’s a very interesting provocation, it’s not something to absolutely believe in.