Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit

Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit closes the first volume of Arthur Schopenhauer's Parerga und Paralipomena, published in Berlin in 1851, and is the part of that collection most often printed on its own.

Schopenhauer takes "wisdom of life" in its everyday sense, the art of arranging a life to get as much pleasure and success from it as possible, and calls the study of it eudaemonology.

He admits at the outset that this is a compromise with the ordinary view of happiness, one his own philosophy does not share, and his advice leans towards avoiding unhappiness rather than chasing pleasure.

He sorts what shapes a person's lot into three parts: what a person is (health, temperament, character, intelligence), what a person has (property and possessions), and what a person represents in the eyes of others (reputation, rank, honour and fame).

The first, he argues, counts for far more than the other two, because everything that happens to us is felt through our own consciousness, and happiness belongs most to those who are sufficient to themselves. Two further chapters follow: a set of counsels and maxims for conduct, and a reflection on the different periods of life.

English readers often meet the book in two halves. Thomas Bailey Saunders translated the opening chapters as The Wisdom of Life and the rest separately as Counsels and Maxims, so many editions under the first title hold only part of the text.