David Bather Woods - Can Pessimism Save Us? Schopenhauer's Surprising Message About Life | STM Podcast #246

On episode 246, we welcome David Bather Woods to discuss the life and philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, how his father's suicide shaped his beliefs about suicide, suffering as the source of compassion, happiness as the negation of pain, Schopenhauer's anti-slavery sentiment, his difficult relationship with Marxist thought and its thinkers, whether writing about changing the world for the better can be enough, why he believed life was worth living, and whether it's fair to judge his philosophy by his life and choices.

David Bather Woods is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is coeditor with Timothy Stoll of The Schopenhauerian Mind. He has contributed chapters to The Proustian Mind, Schopenhauer's Moral Philosophy, and The Palgrave Schopenhauer Handbook. His new book, available November 18, 2025, is called Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist.

| David Bather Woods |

► Website | https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/woods

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► Arthur Schopenhauer Book | https://bit.ly/ArthurSchopenhauerBiography

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