ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the relationship between George Moore’s work and the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer, the representative philosopher of the late 1880s and early 1890s and the most egregiously anglophile of all German philosophers. The Schopenhaueriste ‘diverts himself with sadness, chatters with melancholy, and laughs with despair’, but has as a rule not read a word of Schopenhauer. Surely not, given his evident curiosity about Schopenhauer before 1886 and his acute sense of intellectual fashion. Besides, the Theophrastan character of the Schopenhaueriste fits ‘pagan Moore’ like a glove. The real Schopenhaueriste among the Médanistes was Maupassant, who knew Jean Bourdeau and was one of the first readers of his selection. The other echoes of Schopenhauer in Confessions are more specific. So far as the timing and extent of Moore’s knowledge of Schopenhauer is concerned, the evidence of the novels is surprisingly conclusive.
