Clue Watch: Arthur Schopenhauer

No one can call the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, a Jeopardy! favorite. He shows up maybe every other year, except in 2005, when he got 3 whole clues! Then he was retired for almost 4 years. Mostly all his clues deal with his negativity. In 2014, they even brought his mother into it.

4/3/2014 PHILOSOPHERS $1000: This German, the “philosopher of pessimism”, had such a gloomy outlook that even his own mother disliked him
11/8/2012 JEOPARDY! ENNUI $200: Ennui means this; Schopenhauer calls it the feeling of the emptiness of existence, & I feel it when I read Schopenhauer
4/20/2010 “CHOP!” $2000: This “Philosopher of Pessimism” was born in Danzig in 1788
10/19/2009 POTPOURRI $1000: Schopenhauer wrote that to do this “is to halve your rights and double your duties”; so he never did
12/13/2005 PHILOSOPHERS $1,000 (Daily Double): A Gershwin song says, “My nights were sour, spent with” this gloomy German philosopher
5/20/2005 AUTHOR! ARTHUR! $2000: This German philosopher (what, you need more?) was known for his pessimistic life views & Kant-influenced works
2/14/2005 PHILOSOPHY $2000: This was a real 4-letter word for Schopenhauer, as it urges us on to pointless desires & death
6/14/2002 CROSSWORD CLUES “P” $1600: Schopenhauer’s specialty (10)
9/9/1998 WISE GUYS $200: Leibniz was a noted philosopher of optimism; Schopenhauer, of this opposite view

We only found one clue where Schopenhauer was given as a wrong answer.

5/2/2005 PHILOSOPHERS $2000: This 20th century German wondered about the nature of being in works like “Being and Time”

Martin Heidegger was the right answer. He has even fewer clues than Arthur Schopenhauer, but the last one was in 2015 so that makes Schopenhauer more DUE FOR A CLUE than Heidegger.

More info:

• Harper’s Magazine had Six Questions for Arthur Schopenhauer
• Wikipedia’s page on Johanna Schopenhauer
• The PhilosopherMail.com has a lot of information and a pic of a young Schopenhauer, with some info on his love life (not very flattering).
• GoodReads.com has 524 Arthur Schopenhauer quotes.