The Will to Live [by David Lehman]

“They say that Schopenhauer [pictured] is pessimistic. That is not saying very much. [His] is a grandiose and tragic vision which, unfortunately, coincides perfectly with reality.”

– Witold Gombrowicz, A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes

1. Arthur Schopenhauer was a competitive man
   who felt nothing but scorn for Hegel.
   So he scheduled his philosophy lectures
   on the same day and at the same time
   and therefore Hegel had a packed auditorium
   while only a handful of us – a Polish writer,
   an ex-girlfriend, a few wayward apostles
   and I – heard Schopenhauer’s lectures
   on Descartes, doubt, and the will to live.

2. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Everything proceeds from this proposition.

3. Many philosophers, professional sad sacks,
   make merry with women and whiskey at night.
   Not Schopenhauer. He was logical. Eating
   a delicacy like pressed goose livers with
   a good Sauterne proved only that nothing
   exists except the temporary satisfaction
   of a hunger that will return and a thirst
   without which no liquid tastes good.
   Pleasure is merely the absence of pain,
   not a thing in itself, and the same may be said
   of peace in relation to war. And yet –

4. Look at all the things we need to endure –
   death and pain, struggle and fear –
   in order for the species to survive
   and so great is our determination to live
   that endure these hardships we do, putting
   a good face on things, hurricanes
   and suicide bombers, the death of adulthood
   and the abandonment of the beautiful
   English language. And yet –

5. One of the apostles asked about suicides.
   What about them, Schopenhauer replied.
   "Don’t they invalidate your theory
    Of the will to live?” “Not at all,”
    he smiled for once. “In suicide they prove
    the will to live is greater than they are.”

6. There were two proofs:

    (a) God must exist
    if we can conceive of god

    (b) God must but cannot exist
    if we can conceive of that
    than which nothing greater
    can be or be conceived.

    Therefore,
    God has to exist
    as a logical possibility
    impossible to disprove
    or credit.
    That’s what he said.
    I wrote it down.
    You may think he was
    a world-class pessimist
    but then you didn’t know him
    as I did in Berlin
    a hundred years before Hitler.

– David Lehman (October 2004)   

Comments

[Karen Beckworth]

I notice the date. Do you remember where and when you wrote this poem?

[Slow Reader]

Today I am reading your brilliant poem
Yesterday I watched a film which American soldiers took as they liberated Buchenwald
walking skeletons, and those who had to be carried by soldiers
mountains of gassed bodies waiting to be disposed of
The camera panned over rows of men packed into wooden bunkers ...
one of those faces was my 58-year-old grandfather
"and so great is our determination to live"
Thank you, Dr. Lehman, for this poem

[Angela Ball]

What a joy to read this poem.