Who can climb And remain silent?

On the way to Toulon they visited the notorious fortress where Louis XIV kept for many years a state prisoner in detention -the mysterious, unidentified Man in the Iron Mask. For Arthur this was a mental preparation for the impressions he would gain in the great arsenal of Toulon, the quarters of the galley slaves. Visitors were admitted there as if to a zoo: the convicts were chained up but could be viewed. Anyone was bound to be seized with horror. Arthur's mother reflected in her travel account on what might happen if the slaves were to break out one day: 'a neighbourhood full of horror'.

Arthur reacted differently. His imagination was stimulated not by fear for the intact world outside but by dismay at the pitiable world inside. 'They [the galley slaves] are divided into three classes,' he wrote in his diary on 8 April 1804; 'the first is made up of those who have committed only minor crimes and are here for a short time, deserters, soldiers guilty of insubordination, etc.: they only have an iron ring around one of their feet and walk about freely, i.e. within the arsenal, for no for<;at is allowed into the city. The second category consists of major criminals: they work in twos, chained together by their feet with heavy chains. The third category, the most serious criminals, are forged to the benches of the galley which they do not leave at all: these are employed on such work as they can perform sitting down. The fate of these unfortunates seems to me far more terrible than a death sentence. The galleys, which I have seen from the outside, seem to be the dirtiest, the most revolting place of sojourn imaginable. The galleys no longer put out to sea; they are old condemned ships. The beds of the for<;ats are the benches to which they are chained. Their food is only water and bread, and I do not understand how, without more substantive nourishment and consumed by grief, they do not succumb to their heavy labour; for during their slavery they are treated entirely like beasts of burden: it is terrible to think that the life of these miserable galley slaves, if that is not an exaggerated word, is totally devoid of joy: and for those whose sufferings have no end even after twenty-five years, also totally devoid of hope: can one imagine a more terrible sensation than that of one of those wretches, chained to a bench in the dark galley, from which nothing but death can sever him!-For some perhaps his sufferings are made worse by the inseparable company of the one chained to him by the same chain. And when finally the moment arrives which he has longed for with desperate sighs for ten or twelve years: the end of his slavery: what is to become of him? He returns to a world for which he has been dead for ten years: what prospects he might have had when he was ten years younger have vanished; no one wants to take in anyone coming from the galley: and ten years of punishment have not purged him of a moment's crime. He is bound to become a criminal for a second time and to end up on the gallows - I had a shock when I heard that there were six thousand galley slaves here. The faces of these men might provide appropriate material for physiognomical reflections' (TD, 15 5 ).

Arthur Schopenhauer attached more than mere physiognomical reflections to these impressions. The arsenal of Toulon left in him a supply of garish images, to which he was to refer back later in elucidating, in his Metaphysics of the Will, the fettering of individual existence and reason to the anonymous will to live: we are all galley slaves of the will that passes through us. Before all reason we are chained to a blind urge of self-assertion. The chain from which we are dangling simultaneously links us to our fellow men. Any movement we make ultimately causes pain to another being.

In Toulon, Arthur experienced that captivity from outside, as a kind of spectacle approached by an observer. But if captivity is universal, where then is the point of the observer? Where is there an outside? How can the universal become a spectacle? To this question Arthur Schopenhauer would subse-quently give a very delicate answer, an answer formulated in the language of subject philosophy, of Buddhism, of Pietist mysticism and of Platonism: there is a transcendental immanence, there is a super-earthly height without a heaven, there is divine ecstasy without God: the ecstasy of pure cognition is possible; the will can turn against itself; it burns in itself and becomes all eye: it no longer is, it only sees.

Still on his tour young Arthur Schopenhauer found occasion to experience the first models of such metaphysics of height. These were experiences of height in the literal sense.

Three times on his journey Arthur climbed a mountain: first the Chapeau near Chamonix, then Mount Pilatus, and finally the Schneekoppe in the Bohemian Giant Mountains. Each time he wrote an extensive report in his diary. The entries are high flights stylistically as well. Whereas normally he recorded his experiences with what could be a good deal of dutiful pedantry, these accounts of his climbs vibrate with the sense of an overwhelming experience, lending the report vigour and splendour.

First the ascent of the Chapeau. His way led him past an extensive glacier massif known as the Mer de glace. It was furrowed by rifts and crevasses, and at times masses of ice hurtled thunderously into the abyss. 'This spectacle, the sight of the huge masses of ice, the booming crashes, the roaring torrents, the rocks all round with waterfalls, up above the floating summits and snow-capped mountains, all this bears an indescribably wonderful imprint, one sees the enormity of nature, it is no longer everyday nature here, it has stepped out of its bounds, one feels one is closer to it' (TD, r 86).

This was an ennobling, a proud proximity; up there like and like were joined, down below were everyday things. Whoever climbs a mountain seeks nature at its best, but also at its most merciless, when anything human is rejected. 'In striking contrast to this sublime grand view was the laughing valley far below!' (TD, r 86). Up there, where Arthur stood, there was nothing to laugh about. Man is eclipsed, nature can step out of its 'bounds'. Whoever stands up to it passes the test of heroic solitude.

All this, of course, is still half play-acting; there was no real danger about this mountain tour. The height reached was considerable only to a lowlander. But realism is of no importance here. Arthur Schopenhauer experienced the mountain as meaning. Scenery gave him an experience, and his experience chose a definite scenery: that of height.

Three weeks later, on 3 June 1804, he climbed Mount Pilatus with a guide. 'I felt dizzy as I cast a glance at the crowded space I had before me .... I find that such a panorama from a high mountain enormously contributes to the broadening of concepts. It is so utterly different from any other view that it is impossible, without having seen it, to gain a clear idea of it. All small objects disappear, only what is big retains its shape. Everything blends; one sees not a multitude of small separate objects but one big colourful radiant picture, on which the eye lingers with pleasure' (TD, 219).

Arthur sees what is flattering to him. What is small disappears, blends, swarms. One is no longer part of it. What is big retains its shape. And he who views what is big and is removed from the swarm, is great himself. One is no longer tied to 'separate objects', one is now only an 'eye' resting on a 'colourful radiant picture'. Later, Schopenhauer would call this distant-view enjoyment the 'world eye'.

Finally, on 3 o July 1804 -the journey was nearing its end-came the ascent of the Schneekoppe. It was a two-day excursion. At the foot of the peak Arthur and his guide spent the night at a chalet: 'We entered a room full of carousing servants .... It was unbearable; their animalic warmth ... gave off a glowing heat' (TD, 265). The 'animalic warmth' of humans crowding together - later Arthur Schopenhauer would find for this the image of porcupines huddling together against cold and fear.

Having torn himself away from the spiky proximity of humans, Arthur reached the peak of the mountain at sunrise. 'Like a transparent ball and much less radiant than when one views it from below, the sun floated up and cast its first rays on us, mirrored itself first in our delighted glances, below us in the whole of Germany it was still night; and as it rose higher we watched the night creeping back lower and eventually yielding also down below' (TD, 266).

He was already in the light while down below darkness still reigned. 'One sees the world in chaos below one.' On top, however, all is of incisive clarity.

And when the sun finally lights up the valley, it does not discover there smiling, delightful plains but offers to the gaze 'the eternal repetition and the eternal alternation of mountains and valleys, forests and meadows and towns and villages' (TD, 266).

Why then undergo the hardships of descent? Eventually, however, it grew too cold at the top. In the chalet on the mountainside was a book in which hikers could leave their names for posterity. Arthur's entry has been found there:

Who can climb 

And remain silent?

Arthur Schopenhauer from Hamburg.

Quote from the book Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy
by Rudiger Safranski