than to suppose that the last work is always the more correct; that what is written later on is in every case an improvement on what was written before; and that change always means progress (Schopenhauer)

Views WWers?

Many crimes are committed in the name of progress, a word fast losing credibility.

Sometimes (usually under the influence of alcohol) I wonder. Had Shakespeare suffered a modern editor, would the second last line of Romeo and Juliet read 'Charging, three-sixty, clear!'

I don't think Schopenhauer was thinking in terms of progress necessarily representing improvement. Progress is basically moving on or moving forward - whether for better or worse is not fundamental to it.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'correct' - 'better' maybe?

As regards re-working, there are geniuses who can write fascinating stories and faultless prose first time around. The rest of us are unlikely to produce anything that could not benefit from subsequent editing or considered reflection. In this case, change usually means improvement.

As regards producing new work later than previous work, who knows? Earlier work might have fresher inspiration (butnot necessarily) while later work might be more proficient as the result of experience.

A lot of writers produce something magnificent early on, then struggle unsuccessfully for years afterwards to produce something else to match it. Others just get better and better.

I'm not sure there's any satisfactory answer to your question.

Chris

Wasn't Schopenhauer famous for being a miserable git who lusted after young girls?

My honest view about that quote is that it's a bit bloody obvious, isn't it? Not all change is change for the better. How 'insightful'. Snort.

JB

I think that's a 19th century battle, that Schopenhauer's fighting, isn't it? Think of all those confident, energetic Victorians, convinced they were doing good, better, best... Though people still use 'evolution' and 'evolved' as if it meant improvement, which it doesn't: again, just change, making no moral or political statement about the value of that change.

Emma

It seems to sum up a politician's position to a T. Change for the sake of change, because they believe all change is progress. I just wish they'd leave things to settle in, for a change.

It seems to sum up a politician's position to a T.

I remember asking my father if David Owen had been a good Foreign Secretary, because I rather fancied him. And Dad said, 'Well, he's a politician, and politicians always want to be doing something. Whereas foreign affairs are almost entirely reactive: you can't make things happen in the world, you can only cope with them better or worse when they do.' Douglas Hurd understood that, but then he was a diplomat long before he took to politics...

Emma

Er...I don't know if I've made the quote clear but it relates to WRITING. Change in relation to WRITING. The extract is from a chapter called "On Writing".

Traveller, you may set the topic, but there's no rule that says people can't deviate from it. Saying that, was there something specifically about writing you wanted to mention, to bring the topic back on course?


- NaomiM

I just feel people have missed the point of the quotation. Here's some more to help you understand its context.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The Art of Literature

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ON AUTHORSHIP.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake. While the one have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, the others want money; and so they write, for money. Their thinking is part of the business of writing. They may be recognized by the way in which they spin out their thoughts to the greatest possible length; then, too, by the very nature of their thoughts, which are only half-true, perverse, forced, vacillating; again, by the aversion they generally show to saying anything straight out, so that they may seem other than they are. Hence their writing is deficient in clearness and definiteness, and it is not long before they betray that their only object in writing at all is to cover paper. This sometimes happens with the best authors; now and then, for example, with Lessing in his Dramaturgie, and even in many of Jean Paul’s romances. As soon as the reader perceives this, let him throw the book away; for time is precious. The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.

Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest men all come from the time when they had to write for nothing or for very little. And here, too, that Spanish proverb holds good, which declares that honor and money are not to be found in the same purse—honora y provecho no caben en un saco. The reason why Literature is in such a bad plight nowadays is simply and solely that people write books to make money. A man who is in want sits down and writes a book, and the public is stupid enough to buy it. The secondary effect of this is the ruin of language.

A great many bad writers make their whole living by that foolish mania of the public for reading nothing but what has just been printed,—journalists, I mean. Truly, a most appropriate name. In plain language it is journeymen, day-laborers!

Again, it may be said that there are three kinds of authors. First come those who write without thinking. They write from a full memory, from reminiscences; it may be, even straight out of other people’s books. This class is the most numerous. Then come those who do their thinking whilst they are writing. They think in order to write; and there is no lack of them. Last of all come those authors who think before they begin to write. They are rare.

Authors of the second class, who put off their thinking until they come to write, are like a sportsman who goes forth at random and is not likely to bring very much home. On the other hand, when an author of the third or rare class writes, it is like a battue. Here the game has been previously captured and shut up within a very small space; from which it is afterwards let out, so many at a time, into another space, also confined. The game cannot possibly escape the sportsman; he has nothing to do but aim and fire—in other words, write down his thoughts. This is a kind of sport from which a man has something to show.

But even though the number of those who really think seriously before they begin to write is small, extremely few of them think about the subject itself: the remainder think only about the books that have been written on the subject, and what has been said by others. In order to think at all, such writers need the more direct and powerful stimulus of having other people’s thoughts before them. These become their immediate theme; and the result is that they are always under their influence, and so never, in any real sense of the word, are original. But the former are roused to thought by the subject itself, to which their thinking is thus immediately directed. This is the only class that produces writers of abiding fame.

It must, of course, be understood that I am speaking here of writers who treat of great subjects; not of writers on the art of making brandy.

Unless an author takes the material on which he writes out of his own head, that is to say, from his own observation, he is not worth reading. Book-manufacturers, compilers, the common run of history-writers, and many others of the same class, take their material immediately out of books; and the material goes straight to their finger-tips without even paying freight or undergoing examination as it passes through their heads, to say nothing of elaboration or revision. How very learned many a man would be if he knew everything that was in his own books! The consequence of this is that these writers talk in such a loose and vague manner, that the reader puzzles his brain in vain to understand what it is of which they are really thinking. They are thinking of nothing. It may now and then be the case that the book from which they copy has been composed exactly in the same way: so that writing of this sort is like a plaster cast of a cast; and in the end, the bare outline of the face, and that, too, hardly recognizable, is all that is left to your Antinous. Let compilations be read as seldom as possible. It is difficult to avoid them altogether; since compilations also include those text-books which contain in a small space the accumulated knowledge of centuries.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the last work is always the more correct; that what is written later on is in every case an improvement on what was written before; and that change always means progress.