Abstract

Dr. Neeley seriously regards Schopenhauer's remarks about the unity, harmony, and consistencey of his philosophy. He may even be said to take Schopenhauer's consistency claims more seriously than any other major interpreter of his thought. Dr. Neeley who is also a lawyer as well as a professor of philosophy, treats Schopenhauer as if he were a client charged with a capital offense for a philosopher, i.e., producing an inconsistent philosophy. The charge of inconsistency has been a demon haunting Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy from the earliest critical reviews of his masterpiece, The World As Will and Representation, through the present. If one were to derive a conclusion regarding Schopenhauer's philosophy based on the dominant themes exemplified in the secondary literature, one may well infer that Schopenhauer's philosophy was the product of a brilliant, but radically flawed thinker. It would seem that Schopenhauer was capable of provocative ideas, flashes of isolated insights, which inspired some philosophers and many creative artists, but that his thought was saturated with irreconcilable paradoxes and contradictions, although this all was expressed in a clear and, at times