Concept
Parerga and Paralipomena
Overview
Parerga and Paralipomena (Greek for "Appendices" and "Omissions", respectively; German: Parerga und Paralipomena) is a collection of philosophical reflections by Arthur Schopenhauer published in 1851. The selection was compiled not as a summation of or introduction to Schopenhauer's philosophy, but as augmentary readings for those who had already embraced it, although the author maintained it would be comprehensible and of interest to the uninitiated nevertheless. The collection is divided into two volumes, covering first the parerga and thereafter the paralipomena to that philosophy. The parerga are six extended essays intended as supplementary to the author's thought. The paralipomena, shorter elaborations divided by topic into thirty-one subheadings, cover material hitherto unaddressed by the philosopher but deemed by him to be complementary to the parerga.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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(2) The moral world, which is absolutely common to both, and, whether normal or pathological, is best represented in its simplicity. (3) The world of fancies, forebodings, apparitions, chance and fate. This is available to both, only it must of course be approximated to the world of the senses. In this world there arises a special difficulty for us moderns, because we cannot easily find substitutes for the fabulous…
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe's literary essays
States what Parerga and Paralipomena is.
He would instead have done truth the justice to say: never has a religion, directly or indirectly, either as dogma or as allegory, contained a truth. For all religions grew out of dread or necessity, and came into existence through an error of the reason. They have, perhaps, in times of danger from science, incorporated some philosophical doctrine or other into their systems in order to make it possible to continue…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
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The two others are concealed allegories, “Don Quixote” and “Gulliver’s Travels.” The first is an allegory of the life of every man, who will not, like others, be careful, merely for his own welfare, but follows some objective, ideal end, which has taken possession of his thoughts and will; and certainly, in this world, he has then a strange appearance.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
The author is tied to Parerga and Paralipomena in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Parerga and Paralipomena
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Idealism.