Arthur Schopenhauer's books in Samtliche Werke

• January 28, 2007
• James Skemp
• philosophy

In this article, I'll be covering the five books that compose the German Sämtliche Werke, published by Suhrkamp.

Sämtliche Werke consists of the following five books;

1. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I
2. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung II
3. Kleinere Schriften
   • Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde
   • Über das Sehn und die Farben
   • Über den Willen in der Natur
   • Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik
   • Preisschrift über die Freiheit des Willens
   • Preisschrift über die Grundlage der Moral
4. Parerga und Paralipomena I
5. Parerga und Paralipomena II

Benefits over the English versions

The major benefit of the German editions of Schopenhauer's works is the fact that these German editions can be bought as part of a collection from a single publisher. The English editions, on the other hand, range from (for those done by the great E. F. J. Payne) Dover to Cambridge to Oxford and beyond.

Not only does this mean that you're bookshelf is going to look off, it also means that there's no one index that covers all of the works. Not the case with this German edition. The five books are the same size and style, and the fifth book contains a full index of the collection.

The compact size also means that's far easier to move these books around. Unfortunately, the margins are a bit small, which means you'll be limited more than usual on how much you can write in the margins. Line-spacing too is an issue, which means you'll be pushing it if you try to underline a line more than once.

With this German edition, you're looking at approximately 4,150 pages over the five books (~731 + 925 + 872 + 622 + 998). Of course, you have to know German ...

Read more about the English version books.

• arthur schopenhauer