In August 1821, while living in Berlin, Arthur Schopenhauer, 33, had a falling out with a neighbor, 47-year-old Caroline Louise Marquet, a seamstress. That day, he was angered by the noise of three women chatting in the hall of his apartment. When he asked them to leave, two of them complied, but Marquet refused.
Marquet then claimed that Schopenhauer had kicked and punched her and pushed her down the stairs, leaving her paralyzed on her right side and unable to work. He, on the other hand, claimed that he had merely pushed her and that she had fallen deliberately to sue him.
After a six-year legal battle, which ended in May 1827, Schopenhauer was ordered to pay her medical expenses, as well as an annual pension of 60 thalers for the rest of her life. On the day she died in 1842, the great philosopher of mercy noted in his register, in Latin: Obit anus, abit onus – “The old woman died, the burden was lifted.”
Moral of the story: don't make noise around philosophers.
The case of Immanuel Kant
Schopenhauer based his pessimistic philosophy on that of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who also hated noise. Although gregarious and fond of laughter, Kant needed absolute silence to write. He is said to have once moved from one apartment to another because of the crowing of a rooster.
In May 1784, Kant, who had lived his entire life in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), wrote a letter to the chief of police complaining about “the singing of prayers by the hypocritical prisoners of the prison.” He was troubled not only by the noise but also by the insincerity of the prayers, which, he believed, were performed only to impress the guard.
Schopenhauer on noise
In his essay On Noise and Cacophony (1851), Schopenhauer attacks most strongly not the chatter of women but the crack of whips in narrow, noisy streets (the 19th-century equivalent of noisy engines or cars with modified mufflers): “Hammers, barking dogs, and the cries of children are unbearable; but it is only the crack of the whip that is the real killer of thought.”
According to him, the crack of the whip is even more unbearable because it is unnecessary and, worse, useless.
Schopenhauer connects intolerance to noise (misophonia, “hatred of sound”) with intellect and creativity: “There are people, many indeed, who would laugh at this sensitivity to noise; but these very people are not sensitive either to argument, thought, poetry or art, that is to say, to any intellectual influence; which is connected with the coarse quality of their brain.”
For Schopenhauer, genius is the ability of the mind to focus on a single point. But once a focused mind is interrupted, it is no different from an ordinary mind. He compares this to a large diamond that, when broken, loses most of its value, or to an army that, when dispersed, loses its power.
It is not only a matter of genius, but also of happiness, because, as all creative people know, there is no greater happiness than that of a focused mind. Aristotle conceived of God as a mind that turns upon itself in a state of pure bliss. On the other hand, people who are afraid to think deeply or who cannot, use noise to fill and numb their minds.
What modern science says
Was Schopenhauer right when he linked sensitivity to noise to intelligence and creativity? Recent research at Northwestern University suggests that real creativity may be linked to a lower ability to filter out “irrelevant” sensory information. This “open filtering” may help the brain connect ideas that don’t usually go together, favoring creative thinking.
But on the other hand, these excessive ideas can appear as "noise" that hinders concentration.
The genius mind is like a high-compression engine, which starts to knock when fed poor "fuel", that is, chaos and ambiguity.
Although he may have overstated his conclusions, Schopenhauer seems to have grasped something important.
