I Can Complain. Schopenhauer, Pessimism and the Crisis of Higher Education

Taking a Pessimistic Outlook 

UK Higher Education is under strain. Pointing to rising tuition fees, Andy Burnham in his ‘People’s Question Time’ referred to the sector being ‘in a state’, without offering an explanation for why universities are struggling to make up their lost income. Even positive news, such as the University of Exeter reneging on its projected redundancies, can be met with the cynical view that their aggressive voluntary severance scheme met whatever saving threshold. The sector's precarity finds its way into almost every classroom. Last week, during a teaching qualification induction, a fellow participant asked whether they would be able to continue their studies if they were made redundant. What a question. When they should be enjoying an opportunity for career growth, they were worried about that same career ending. 

In the absence of a governmental offer to HE, outside interests have sensed an opportune moment to prop up universities. Our University Superannuation Scheme pension has major stakes in Palantir, the US company at the forefront of the not so slow shift into surveillance capitalism (Tucker, 2026). Commercial LLM companies have partnered with some of our most prestigious cultural heritage institutions: ostensibly to improve student and staff experiences, despite their complex and heterogeneous collections providing a clear route round the data wall via generating new model training data.

This portrait is a pessimistic one, painted with feelings we’ve all felt working in the current university environment.

Why not lean into such an experiential feeling? Just for a moment … 

In doing so, I found myself reading Arthur Schopenhauer’s (1788 - 1860) ‘On University Philosophy’ (1851). Considering his status as the ‘father of pessimism’, notable for his work on human suffering, Schopenhauer’s view of universities is unsurprisingly harsh. That said, in its negativity and drabness, it raises some interesting parallels to our current predicament … parallels that move beyond common moans, grumbles and complaints. 

Is such philosophy helpful today in understanding and navigating university pressures?

Can engaging with pessimism actually be a productive and empowering model for educators? 

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Schopenhauer and the Modern Academy

‘Human Grinder’, Deborah Lupton / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Schopenhauer’s rebuke of university philosophy has been related to present academia, albeit insufficiently. In his essay, ‘Why Arthur Schopenhauer would have hated modern education’, Brinkhof (2021) engages in some top-tier historical anachronism. As my parents used to tell me, ‘hate is a strong word’ and, in this case, the use of the word flattens Schopenhauer’s complex relationship with university education. Instead of engaging with larger intellectual themes - Schopenhauer was after all a philosopher, the essay focuses on his frustration with ‘lengthy citations and overly complicated language’. That Schopenhauer is grappling with how external cultural pressures impact the pursuit of truth is almost entirely lost. 

What Brinkhof (2021) does outline is that Schopenhauer’s thoughts on education were influenced by his disastrous tenure at the University of Heidelberg, typified by only five students attending his lectures: scheduled at the same time as Hegel’s to draw attention away and thus repudiate the philosopher's idealism (1). That said, we should remain mindful of relegating philosophy to biography, something that Brinkhof (2021) again fails to recognise, instead writing: “If the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer were to rise from the grave and enroll at a modern-day liberal arts college, chances are he would not even make it past his intro courses”.

A more nuanced take regarding Schopenhauer’s academic career can be found in Stewart (1995: 271), which states “where focusing claim here simply to the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of his biography, then we miss an important point that he raises”. Schopenhauer framed university philosophy as a dichotomy between his own, a “pole star truth alone, naked unrewarded, unbefriended, often persecuted …”, and the philosophy of the academy, directed by the caprice of special interests and ulterior motives (Stewart, 1995: 271). According to Schopenhauer these interests were found in church dogma, reminding us that 19th century German academics were civil servants and closely aligned to prevailing Lutheranism. Nowadays, outside of the Catholic University of America, Notre Dame and Liberty University, few academic departments, especially in the UK, must align with such church dogma. 

Alongside the church, Schopenhauer mentions the wishes of publishers as another illegitimate influence on philosophy. In relating this to the modern academy, Stewart (1995: 272-273) suggests:

“Today these influences come not so much from the publisher but rather from the administrators and the university system in general. I think that we need only replace the word ‘publisher’ by the word ‘administrator’ or ‘hiring committee’ …”

Today, most academics would likely agree that the rise of commercial publishers, alongside additional processing charges and predatory journals warrants their status as an outside pressure. In citing administrators, we can only wonder whether Stewart is a favourite of his professional services colleagues. I jest. 

In Stewart’s (1995) view, these influences have led to increasingly specialised academic research, interests and language - to the point that nobody is in a position to fully evaluate work. In this case, “value becomes unwittingly placed on the quantity of published material at the expense of quality”, coupled together with the well-known 'publish or perish' model of research. However, like Brinkhof (2021), Stewart (1995) appears to take Schopenhauer and wield his pessimism against his biggest pet peeve, extending his argument around research quantity to state that lesser ability philosophers cloud truly valuable work and hinder our access to them. 

Potentially, this blog post is doing just that … 

In any case, it can be observed that Schopenhauer’s criticism of universities remains underutilised, whether as a historical perspective on philosophical teaching or as a comparison to our current education crisis. 

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Directing University Institutionalism 

In refocusing on Schopenhauer’s philosophy, his prevailing view was that church dogma led to sophists, Hegel being the foremost, and that their intellectual dishonesty was the principal spirit of the philosophical age (2). Here, we could simply switch out church dogma for present day pressures, as Brinkhof (2021) and Stewart (1995) are inclined. Nonetheless, this appears too easy, a bit too like for like. Instead, let’s use Schopenhauer as a foundation for thinking about the institutionalisation of universities, a later terms taken from sociology but useful in thinking on legitimate intellectual pursuits. In doing so, we can better understand the constraining and enabling effects of current rules imposed by ulterior third parties on our universities and our role as educators. 

Schopenhauer begins by stressing that universities provide a subject with official existence and ‘plants it before the eyes of people’, in turn inspiring young and capable minds. Though the institution provides legitimacy, it too becomes a site for conflict, whereby the field rejects whoever teaches otherwise. What we are left with is an account of universities that holds similarities with more recent institutional theory, where institutions are seen to be social patterns that are regulated by rewards and sanctions (Jepperson, 1991). The reward might be a full lecture hall, in the case of Hegel, or a string of publications as Stewart (1995) suggests. Although not strictly academia, yet within my own field of Digital Humanities, immediate thoughts turn to Timnit Gebru and her dismissal from Google in 2020 over biases in large language models. In facing such pressures, Schopenhauer (1851, 160) suggests that philosophers are split between those that appear quite cheerful about the matter, whose real concern is to earn a fair livelihood - understandably, and those who are willing to live for the cause, not live off it. Perhaps we should aspire to such noble independence, although even Schopenhauer contends that this incurs risk and cannot be expected of everyone.

More recent theory suggests that institutionalisation, within a given process of behavioural maxims, leaves enough room for individual interests and motives (Lepsius, 2016). However, this process leads us to adopt ‘rationality criteria’, whereby certain values and guiding ideas are substantiated and institutionalised. This process holds a strong interrelationship with broader political culture, whether church dogma or Silicon Valley influence, with these forces too requiring institutions to orientate their amorphous values. Guiding ideas therefore compete, seen in our introductory discussions over how to enagage or not engage with extractive AI companies, causing competition and conflict among institutions (Scott, 1991: 170). 

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Productive Pessimism 

We can read Schopenhauer as a dichotomy between true philosophy vs sophism. However, in relating his work to the current academy, something deeper emerges about the role of intellectuals as one of struggle. Lepsius (2016), in thinking of modern institutionalism, frames intellectuals as influencing the form and direction of this process. We can see that impact on institutional reform today, especially with the recent news from Exeter. In revealing tensions between our mission as educators and some of the financial actions of our universities, we can steer the process of institutionalism toward a more positive direction. Weber (1972) frames institutionalism as bureaucracy, influenced by ‘priests’ who administer rationality criteria in an institutionalised context and ‘prophets’ who externally criticise such criteria (3). However, we must remain conscious that any individual can be both priest and prophet. As educators, we require the utmost reflexivity to reveal the shady dealings of our institutions but also use our research and care for our students as guiding principles. Through this, we can direct our current institutionalisation away from its current precipice. Not so pessimistic now ...

It is a plant that, like alpine rose and edelweiss, thrives only in free mountain air, but gets out of control with artificial cultivation (Schopenhauer, 1851: 168).

Notes

1. In many cases, five students would now lead to a full course restructure and your academic position being severely questioned.

   
   

2. Schopenhauer believed this pressure to be unique to philosophy as a discipline, because of its pursuit of truth, opposed to other fields of research where academics only have the duty to teach to their ability. Currently, precarity is impacting wider university structures, not specific disciplines, although those in departments that bring greater funding are often spared the same redundancies.

   
   

3. Weber appears to purposefully borrow church language unlike Schopenhauer, seeing the process of modern institutions as beginning from the separation of church and state.

References

Brinkhof, T. (Dec 14, 2021) ‘Why Arthur Schopenhauer would have hated modern education’, Big Think. Available at: https://bigthink.com/high-culture/schopenhauer-hegel-higher-education/

Jepperson, R.L. (1991) Institutions, institutional effects and institutionalism. In: Powell W.W., Di Maggio P.J. (eds) The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 143–163.

Lepsius, M. Rainer (2016) Max Weber and Institutional Theory, Claus Wendt (ed.) Springer: Cham, Switzerland.

Schopenhauer A. On University Philosophy (1851). In: Roehr S., Janaway C. (eds) Schopenhauer: Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014, pp. 125-176.

Scott, W.R. (1991) Unpacking institutional arguments. In: Powell W.W., Di Maggio P.J. (eds) The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 164–182

Stewart, J. (1995) Schopenhauer’s Charge and Modern Academic Philosophy: Some Problems Facing Philosophy Pedagogy, Metaphilosophy, 26(3): 270–78. 

Tucker, I. (Apr 2, 2026) ‘Your Pension, Palantir’s war machine’, The Nerve. Available at: https://www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-pension-university-retirement-fund-universities-superannuation-scheme-divest-ai-arms-peter

Weber M (1972) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 5th edn. Roth G., Wittich C. (eds) University of California Press, Berkeley.