Since his philosophical writing adopted selflessness and self-abnegation, whereas Schopenhauer himself led the life of a self-centered curmudgeon in affluent comfort, the charge of hypocrisy and inconsistency was made against him.

Schopenhauer replied that it sufficed for a philosopher to examine the human condition and determine the best form of life for man: that he should also provide an example of it in his own proceedings was asking far too much.

Schopenhauer vividly illustrates the irony of the human condition where all too often the intellect acknowledges the advantage of going where the will is unwilling to follow. And since this tension between intellect and will was the keystone of his philosophy, Schopenhauer’s proceedings did perhaps manage after all to provide that example of living by one’s doctrine.

[E]ntre los veinte elementos constitutivos del temperamento y del carácter, hay uno que domina a los demás y corresponde al motor central de la conducta. ¿Qué facultad so verana aparece en Sarmiento que haga de las otras simples satélites y nos dé la clave de su extraordinario destino? No hay duda posible: es la voluntad. Y en estos países de inconstancia y apatía, es altamente significativo, y acaso presagioso, que la admiración del pueblo converja hacia un héroe de la voluntad; y que sea esta potencia dictatorial la única que conserve, ante los que no la poseen sino enferma y desmedrada, todo su radiante prestigio de ultratumba.

[T]he test of what is right in politics is not thewill of the people, but thegood of the people[.]