by Arthur Schopenhauer
In his chapter “On Women” of the very brilliant collection published in English as Essays and Aphorisms, Schopenhauer wrote the most insightful thoughts about women I have ever read, of which I’ll quote some sentences (no ellipsis added between excerpts):
1
Women are suited to being the nurses and teachers of our earliest childhood precisely because they themselves are childish, silly and short-sighted, in a word big children, their whole lives long: a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the man, who is the actual human being, “man”.
In the girl nature has had in view what could in theatrical terms be called a stage-effect: it has provided her with superabundant beauty and charm for a few years at the expense of the whole remainder of her life, so that during these years she may so capture the imagination of a man that he is carried away into undertaking to support her honorably in some form or another for the rest of his life, a step he would seem hardly likely to take for purely rational considerations. Thus nature has equipped women, as it has all its creatures, with the tools and weapons she needs for securing her existence, and at just the time she needs them; in doing which nature has acted with its usual economy.
2
The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and more slowly does it mature. The man attains the maturity of his reasoning powers and spiritual faculties hardly before his twenty-eight year; the woman with her eighteenth. And even then it is only reasoning power of a sort: a very limited sort. Thus women never see anything but what is closest to them. To consult women when you are in difficulties, as the ancient Teutons did, is by no means a bad idea: for their way of looking at things is quite different from ours, especially in their propensity for keeping in view the shortest road to a desired goal and in general what lies closest to hand, which we usually overlook precisely because it is right in front of our noses.
It is for this reason too that women display more pity, and consequently more philanthropy and sympathy with the unfortunate, than men do. Thus, while they possess the first and chief virtue [compassion], they are deficient in the secondary one [reason] which is often necessary for achieving the first.
3
Fundamentally, women exist solely for the propagation of the race. Men are by nature indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies. Because in our case a hundred different considerations are involved, while in theirs only one is decisive, namely which man they have succeeded in attracting. Another reason may be that, because they are all in the same profession, they all stand much closer to one another than men do.
Man strives for a direct domination over things, either by comprehending or by subduing them. But women is everywhere and always relegated to a merely indirect domination, which is achieved by means of man, who is consequently the only thing she has to dominate directly. Thus it lies in the nature of women to regard everything simply as a means of capturing a man, and their interest in anything else is only simulated, is no more than a detour, i.e., amounts to coquetry and mimicry.
Nor can one expect anything else from women if one considers that the most eminent heads of the entire sex have provided incapable of a single truly great, genuine and original achievement in art, or indeed of creating anything at all of lasting value. What there ought to be is housewives and girls who hope to become housewives and who are therefore educated, not in arrogant haughtiness, but in domesticity and submissiveness.
11 replies on “On Women”
Excellent snippets. You’re on mark with your ideas on women, Cesar.
IFA
Reblogged this on vikingbitch's Blog and commented:
Wow. And we wonder why there is a dearth of European women wanting to procreate?
Nursing is not a silly profession. Teaching young people how to read and write is difficult. How many men reading this bullshit have actually homeschooled their own children? How many have actually injected a 4 inch needle into themselves or someone else.
I find that when men get sick, they are huge fucking babies. Not all, but many. I read this guy’s stuff and I have to wonder is he is projecting a bit here.
Well okay then, if women are childish, silly, and short-sighted, why don’t all then men reading this b.s. go indulge in their wank culture and procreate and take care of their homes and themselves then?
I know quite a few family members who do indeed behave like babies with their wives but I wouldn’t consider them real men. Schopenhauer did not behave like a baby: he lived alone his mature life.
In my own family experience, my sisters, female cousins, my own mother, grandmas and godmother have been far stupider than my brothers and dad, but what scientifically counts are IQ studies and the fact that, generally, men think with the left hemisphere and women with their right one.
Again, read Roger Devlin before commenting in these threads.
Thank you.
“In my own family experience, my sisters, female cousins, my own mother, grandmas and godmother have been far stupider than my brothers and dad…”
Bahahaha!
Well that speaks more of an individual’s gene pool versus his or her respective genitalia
Responding to the above quote?
I have lived years in the US, the UK and Spain and it’s all the same: the women I’ve met (with the exception of Paulina) are dumber than the male Americans, Brits and Spaniards I also met.
By the way, commenter Thordaddy says bad things about me in your site because he used to post here and I banned him after he became insulting.
Arthur Schopenhauer was obviously clueless about women. He seems somewhat inclined to believe that nurture is nature. Women seem natural born teachers and nurses, because nature equipped them to provide the necessary breast milk. It made more sense for the mother to stay home and nurse and otherwise raise the child up from infancy to more self-sufficiency.
Men have proven that they make awesome teachers and nurses. Three of my best teachers were men and I have been very impressed by male nurses I have come across, because they have never been limited by their gender only to certain fields and they do what they do out of a very male sense of philanthropy.
That is only one of the reasons why I would say that pity, sympathy, compassion, and philanthropy are traits more consistent to men than women, because those traits come out of more personal autonomy, power, and self-confidence, but women are too pragmatic for that much as they are forced by the male philosophy which dominates the culture to pay lip service to those themes.
No matter how much they believe that FEMINISM is responsible for any and all Anti-White Male Middle/Working Class legislation, this legislation is written and executed by disproportionately Elite White Males. I don’t know WHY WN seem so invested in GIRLLLL POWER that they totally buy this latest excuse for why EWM do what they have ALWAYS historically done; screw the average WM.
That wouldn’t happen with a body of women. As Schopenhauer correctly noted, men are indifferent to each other, women are natural enemies. That’s why women wouldn’t take jobs or privileges away from their own sons to give them to the sons of other women! We view any woman who would do that as a bad mother!
But then humanity has always had much stricter standards for mothers than fathers. IRL I have noticed that a man who abandons his son as a young child is welcomed back by him like the proverbial prodigal son if he later takes an interest in him. Mothers who do that are rarely to never forgiven.
Schopenhauer is also mistaken in his view about male versus female dominance. IMO, men are more into conquest than true dominance. I view conquest as laying siege to and ultimately invading a country or city, but true dominance has more to do with occupying said territory indefinitely until it is absorbed into the greater empire.
If men were successful at dominance, i.e. occupation, then empires wouldn’t end up being subverted by fifth columnist ethnics and then collapse, Europe would still have her colonies and wouldn’t now be in the process of being invaded by all her former colonists.
Men are too occupied with The Big Picture to concern themselves much with any details, no matter how troubling. Women are more detail-oriented, because they have been historically often forced to pay the brunt for men’s oversights, i.e. The Trojan Women and the most recent example, German Women at the hands of Soviet Occupation Forces.
Because he is a man and only things on a macro level, Schopenhauer thinks quantity is more important than quantity. Especially in eras where her sphere of influence was very limited, it was much more practical and effective for the pragmatic woman to focus on quality over quantity.
Helen, by virtue of her beauty and coquetry dominated many men, but she was ultimately put back under the thumb of Menelaus after the sacking of Troy had been achieved. Esther by virtue of her pragmatism dominated the only man who counted; Ahaseurus. Not only was she able to engineer the deaths of any threats to her own people, but she effectively ruled Persia through her husband.
IMO, any successful future WN country is going to be one where the men delegate the micro details to women rather than outsourcing them to alien male ethnics (as they have always historically done) while they themselves continue to oversee the macro part of things. Otherwise, they will continue to find themselves displaced and dispossessed by those same alien male ethnics.
However, I see no reason for optimism that this will happen thanks to WN investment in the illusion of GIRLLL POWER and their knee-jerk reactionary antics like Heartiste Chateau gaming, and Barefoot and Pregnant Misogyny even though a woman is fecund for less than half of her life.
I never read Rosie.
No one has stated here that women are to be blamed.
We are to blame for inventing feminism. Cf. the incipient feminism of John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell and more recently how Downton Abbey beautifully depicts in many seasons how men started to empower women since the beginning of the last century:
https://westsdarkesthour.com/2013/12/13/downton-abbey/
Cly-
These men are set in their ways. They are convinced all women are dumb and useless just to upgrade themselves- ‘hey, at least I am not a woman.’
Just look at the dipshit who uses the handle ‘typicalniggerbehavior’ – his argument is niggerly.
Over it. Your posts are brilliant and anyone with 2 brain cells can see that, but these turds for brains won’t even take the time to process what you write.
And they wonder why they don’t get laid. Duh.
Getting laid is ethno-suicidal. Traditional marriage alone is the goal.