世界は最悪だと言い切った哲学者 #196
In episode 196 of Yuru Tetsugaku Radio (ゆる哲学ラジオ), host Hirata (平田) unpacks Schopenhauer's argument that this world is the worst possible world, tracing it from the concept of the Will through to Leibniz's opposing best-world thesis and Nietzsche's life-affirming rebuttal. Hirata is candid that Schopenhauer's philosophy left him completely unconvinced, and concludes that it is perfectly fine to simply keep your distance from ideas that do not resonate with you.
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What this episode answers
Why did Schopenhauer declare the world to be the worst possible world?
Because the true nature of the world is the Will—specifically the will to live—and since every being carries this Will, their interests inevitably clash, giving rise to inequality, disease, war, and every other negative event; the world's essence is therefore evil, and what is essentially evil cannot get any worse, making it the worst.
What is Leibniz's best-world thesis, and how does it oppose Schopenhauer?
Leibniz argued that God surveyed every possible world and chose the best one as reality; he and Schopenhauer looked at the exact same world and reached opposite verdicts—Leibniz seeing it as divinely selected perfection, Schopenhauer seeing it as pain-filled worst. Hirata notes that Leibniz lived a lavish life of success in diplomacy and mathematics, and suggests that people who succeed want to believe their world is the best, while those who do not find it looks like the worst.
What weaknesses does Hirata identify in Schopenhauer's argument?
First, Schopenhauer counts only the negatives produced by the Will while ignoring the good things it also generates, then labels the world's essence evil on that selective basis. Second, the premise that a single unified Will governs the whole world is never adequately explained—why one Will rather than a separate will for each being?
How did Nietzsche push back against Schopenhauer's pessimism?
Nietzsche challenged the very premise that suffering must be eliminated, responding to Schopenhauer's 'the world is painful, so let us negate the Will' with 'so what if it is painful?'—tracing the historical origins of that value judgment in On the Genealogy of Morality and developing it into the idea of eternal recurrence, which demands a way of living one could affirm even if the same life repeated forever.
Was Schopenhauer's own life really as miserable as his philosophy suggests?
Schopenhauer experienced three forms of loneliness—estrangement from his mother, being ignored by academia with books that did not sell and lectures students did not attend, and a legal dispute over a relationship—yet he was also wealthy, living off his father's inheritance; when an investment went bad he recovered his own funds in full while leaving his mother's and sister's money to be lost, prompting Hirata to note the irony of a philosopher of compassion abandoning his own family.
Schopenhauer's 'Worst-World' Thesis and Its Logic
Schopenhauer was the philosopher who flatly declared, "This world is the worst possible world that can be conceived." The structure of his argument is strikingly linear. The true nature of reality, he held, is the Will—concretely, the will to live. Because every being carries this Will and pursues it, interests collide and conflict erupts. Poverty and wealth, the spread of epidemic disease, war: every negative event in the world traces back to the collision of wills. The world's essence is therefore evil, and what is essentially evil cannot deteriorate further—it is, by definition, the worst.
Out of this worldview grows the ethical concept of *Mitleid*—literally "suffering together," or compassion. Because everyone suffers, not just oneself, Schopenhauer argued that mutual sympathy is a moral necessity.
Schopenhauer the Man: Three Loneliness and a Comfortable Fortune
Schopenhauer is said to have suffered three distinct forms of loneliness: estrangement from his mother, being systematically ignored by academia (his books did not sell and students did not show up for his lectures), and a legal dispute arising from a troubled relationship with a woman.
Hirata, however, finds an irony here. Schopenhauer lived off unearned income from his father's estate—he was, in short, a wealthy man. There is also a recorded episode in which, when an investment firm he had money in ran into trouble, he recovered his own funds in full while leaving his mother's and sister's investments to collapse, effectively worsening their lives. "He preached compassion," Hirata observed with a wry laugh, "and then told his own family to handle their own losses."
The Counterpoint: Leibniz's Best-World Thesis
The philosophical mainstream of Schopenhauer's 19th-century world was Leibniz's best-world thesis: God surveyed every possible world and chose the best one as reality. Among the billions of lives and the endless branching of choices at every moment, only one thread of actuality is selected—and that selection, Leibniz maintained, is God's choice of the best.
Leibniz himself lived a spectacular life, traveling the world as a diplomat and leaving achievements in both physics and mathematics. Hirata draws the contrast: "People whose lives have gone well want to believe they are living in God's best choice; people whose lives have not gone well find it looks like the worst. Their positions are completely different." If Leibniz occupied something like Fujiwara no Michinaga's famous posture of contentment—"this world is my world"—Schopenhauer stood at the exact opposite pole.
Weak Points in the Argument: Where Does the Will Come From?
Hirata identified two sticking points in Schopenhauer's reasoning.
The first is the problem of selective accounting. Yes, the Will produces wars; but it also produces good things. Why designate only the painful consequences as the world's essence while ignoring the rest?
The second is the problem of the Will's origin. The entire argument starts from the premise that a single Will governs the world—but why one Will rather than a separate will for each being? Schopenhauer borrows Kant's concept of the "thing-in-itself," yet there is little justification for that thing-in-itself being singular. Hirata concluded that the claim "everyone is a manifestation of the same single Will" amounts to saying "everyone has the same inner contents as me," and that only someone with an extraordinarily high opinion of himself could assert it so confidently.
Nietzsche's Rebuttal: Suffering Does Not Need to Be Removed
The philosopher who pushed back against Schopenhauer most directly was Nietzsche. Schopenhauer's popularity only began to grow when he was around 70, and the young Nietzsche read his works and became intensely absorbed in them. Wagner was equally devoted, sending fan letters and dedicating compositions to him—responses Schopenhauer apparently greeted with near-indifference.
What Nietzsche attacked was the foundational premise itself: that suffering must be eliminated. Where Schopenhauer said "the world is painful, so let us negate the Will," Nietzsche replied, "What is wrong with it being painful?" His *On the Genealogy of Morality* traces the historical origins of the value judgment that labels suffering evil in the first place.
Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence pushes further: no matter how one lives, the world does not change, and after death the exact same life repeats indefinitely—so one ought to live in a way one could say "yes" to even under those conditions. Hirata compared this to clicking "replay" on a YouTube video.
Schopenhauer's philosophy was, by Hirata's own account, completely at odds with his sensibility—yet as the stepping stone from which Nietzsche launched his own thought, Schopenhauer holds an indispensable place in the history of philosophy, and on that note the episode closed.
Takeaways
- Schopenhauer's worst-world argument—Will collides → suffering is the world's essence → it cannot get worse → worst—rests on two shaky pillars: the unproven premise that the Will is one single force, and the selective decision to count only the bad outcomes it produces.
- Leibniz and Schopenhauer evaluated the exact same world in diametrically opposite terms, and their contrasting life circumstances—one a lavishly successful diplomat-scientist, the other a man of isolation and failure—map directly onto the direction their philosophies took.
- Nietzsche began with Schopenhauer's pessimism but flipped it: rather than negating the suffering Will, he argued that suffering needs no removal, and developed that inversion into the full affirmation of life embodied in eternal recurrence.
This article is edited from a machine transcript of the first 30 minutes of the episode. It is not an official summary — please listen to the episode itself.