The Philosophy Feud That Shaped Modernity In 1820, Arthur Schopenhauer made a decision that destroyed his academic career: he scheduled his lectures at the University of Berlin at the exact same time as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s. This was not an accident. It was a deliberate challenge. Schopenhauer believed Hegel was a charlatan, a purveyor of incomprehensible nonsense dressed up as profundity, and he wanted to expose him. The result was predictable: Hegel’s lecture hall was packed with students and intellectuals. Schopenhauer’s was empty. He gave up on academic life and spent the next four decades writing in bitter isolation,...