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Arthur Schopenhauer: On Thinking for Yourself

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This is a translation from scratch of Schopenhauer’s short essay, “On Thinking for Yourself” (“Selbstdenken”).1 Why? Because I found the existing translations I’m aware of dissatisfying, and because I thought it might be fun. The goal was to convey some of Schopenhauer’s raw style by being a bit more literal in some places, while also trying to better preserve his wit for modern readers. Obviously, there is no concession to political correctness here whatsoever (the very thought), and no attempt to simplify anything. It came out a little less cleaned up and less academic than other translations, but hopefully more true to the original spirit and ideas. Translating 19th century German is an interesting exercise. There are many words here with an extremely rich philosophical meaning that are impossible to translate directly without writing whole essays about them. Translating such texts is a game of truly feeling yourself into the author: taking a step back after reading a paragraph and

This is a translation from scratch of Schopenhauer’s short essay, “On Thinking for Yourself” (“Selbstdenken”).1 Why? Because I found the existing translations I’m aware of dissatisfying, and because I thought it might be fun. The goal was to convey some of Schopenhauer’s raw style by being a bit more literal in some places, while also trying to better preserve his wit for modern readers. Obviously, there is no concession to political correctness here whatsoever (the very thought), and no attempt to simplify anything. It came out a little less cleaned up and less academic than other…

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