Contents[edit]

Volume One (parerga)

Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal

and the Real

Fragments for the History of Philosophy

On Philosophy at the Universities

Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent

Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual

Essay on Spirit Seeing and everything

connected therewith

Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Volume Two (paralipomena)

Short ruminations divided by topic into thirty-one
subheadings. Chapter II, "On Logic and Dialectic",
includes an introduction to The Art of Being Right,
Schopenhauer's posthumously published
discourse on rhetoric.[3] Chapter XXXI, "Similes,

Parables, and Fables", describes the hedgehog's

dilemma, an analogy about the challenges of
human intimacy.
Publication[edit]

In light of the unenthusiastic reception of the

philosopher's earlier publications, publishers were
reluctant to commit to this, his last major work. It
was only after significant difficulty and through the
persuasion of the philosopher's disciple Julius
Frauenstdt that Hayn of Berlin consented to
publish the two volumes in a print run of 750
copieswith an honorarium of only ten copies for
its author.[2][4]
Parerga and Paralipomena drew the attention
of John Oxenford, a noted observer and translator
of German literary culture, who contributed a
favourable, albeit anonymous, review of the work
for the English quarterly journal Westminster
Review in 1852.[2][4] The following year, Oxenford
would write for the journal an article on

Schopenhauer's philosophy entitled "Iconoclasm

in German Philosophy", which, translated into
German and printed in the Vossische
Zeitungwould spark immediate interest of
Schopenhauer's work in Germany and propel the
obscure figure to lasting philosophical
prominence.[2] In the following years,
Schopenhauer succeeded on having published
new editions of all his previous work on the
strength of the revived interest, although his plans
for a revised edition of Parerga and
Paralipomena were stymied by the deterioration
of his health in the months preceding his death in
1860.[4]
Style and influence[edit]

The subject matter and stylistic arrangement of

the paralipomena were significant influences on
the work of philosopher and psychologist Paul
Re, and through him most notably the
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,[5] whose later

work exploresfollowing Schopenhauerthe

relation of man to himself, the universe, the state,
and women through the art of aphorism.[6