Schopenhauer: Philosophy in an Hour. Paul Strathern

theory of colours, which is the usual product of a thinker who dismisses the ideas of his contemporaries with the derision he feels they deserve.

      The young Schopenhauer’s admiration for the aging Goethe was deep and heartfelt. And though their friendship was brief, it was the only such warm relationship he was to have in his life. It is no accident that Goethe was almost exactly the same age as Schopenhauer’s father would have been had he not committed suicide. Goethe’s benevolent brilliance was perhaps the only foil for the austere, powerful shadow of Schopenhauer’s dead father. But all this did little to improve things with mother. Goethe hardly helped matters at home when he informed Johanna Schopenhauer that her son would one day be recognised as a genius. In her view there was room for only one of this species on the family perch, and that place was already occupied.