J. L. Borges.

An interview by DENIS DUTTON and MICHAEL PALENCIA-ROTH [Denis Dutton] – Denis Dutton: Why don’t you tell us about some of the philosophers who have influenced your work, in whom you’ve been the most interested?

Jorge Luis Borges: Well, I think that’s an easy one. I think you might talk in terms of two: those would be Berkeley and Schopenhauer. But I suppose Hume might be worked in also, because, after all, of course Hume refutes Berkeley. But really, he comes from Berkeley — even if Berkeley comes from Locke. You might think of Locke, of Berkeley, and of Hume as being three links in an argument. But when somebody refutes somebody else in philosophy, he’s carrying on the argument.

Michael Palencia-Roth: Where would Schopenhauer come in?

Borges: Schopenhauer is very different from Hume. Of course, Schopenhauer had his idea of the Will. That is not to be found in Hume. But of course in the case of Berkeley it is different. I suppose he thought of God as being aware of all things all the time, I mean if I don’t get him wrong. If we go away, does this room disappear? No, it doesn’t, of course, because God is thinking about it.

Now, in the case of Schopenhauer, I was rereading Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Idea, and I was rather taken aback, or rather baffled I should say, or puzzled by something that keeps on recurring in Schopenhauer. Of course it may have been a slip of the pen, but as he goes back to it, and as he was a very careful writer, I wonder if it is a slip of the pen. Well, for example, Schopenhauer begins by saying that all this, the universe, the stars, the spaces in between, the planets, this planet, those things have no existence, except in the mind which perceives them — no?

Continued at DenisDutton.com | An audio (mp3) file is here | More Chronicle & Notices.