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Being · 08-20-2009, 08:17 PM

‘Rascal! Your name!’: Schopenhauer vs the Internet trolls - Telegraph Blogs

Quote:

I’m in no doubt that if we forced everyone who wanted to respond to a blog post or online article to use their real name, the Internet would be transformed. Overnight it would cease to be a cesspool of trollery and abuse, and would flourish instead as a veritable 18th century coffee house of “scientific education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation and political fermentation”.
But it turns out I’m a couple of hundred years behind the curve. Karen Van Godtsenhoven - a reader of my blog - has just pointed me to a passage she discovered while reading Schopenhauer’s ‘ The Art Of Literature‘. In it, Arthur S. discusses the evils of anonymity.
Fortunately, as Schopenhauer died in 1860 (and the translator, T. Bailey Saunders, followed him in 1928) I’m free to quote liberally from the text here. I think you’ll agree that, flowery language aside, the words could very easily have been written about today’s Internet trolls.
Schopenhauer writes…
“But, above all, anonymity, that shield of all literary rascality, would have to disappear. It was introduced under the pretext of protecting the honest critic, who warned the public, against the resentment of the author and his friends. But where there is one case of this sort, there will be a hundred where it merely serves to take all responsibility from the man who cannot stand by what he has said, or possibly to conceal the shame of one who has been cowardly and base enough to recommend a book to the public for the purpose of putting money into his own pocket. Often enough it is only a cloak for covering the obscurity, incompetence and insignificance of the critic. It is incredible what impudence these fellows will show, and what literary trickery they will venture to commit, as soon as they know they are safe under the shadow of anonymity.