LOGIC AND RELIGION IN SCHOPENHAUER

Arthur Schopenhauer and his role in logic and religion is marked by opposites: Whereas Ernst Bloch said Schopenhauer was “the most Christian philosopher”, Fritz Mauthner called him the “prince of atheists”. Whereas Dale Jacquette explained that Schopenhauer had “dubious qualifications as logician” and therefore did not really belong to this discipline, Albert Menne stated that "Schopenhauer had an excellent command of the rules of formal logic (much better than Kant, for example)". The views on Schopenhauer as a religious and logical philosopher are therefore highly controversial. Only recently, however, it has become known to research that Schopenhauer was as intensely concerned with logic and mathematics as he was with religion. However, it has long been known that many of the topics discussed by Schopenhauer are in the field of tension between logical justification and religious conviction such as suicide, theodicy, salvation, instrumental reason, enlightenment, optimism and pessimism, nihilism, mysticism, irrationalism to name but a few examples.